[HN Gopher] If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued
___________________________________________________________________
If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued
Author : weltview
Score : 728 points
Date : 2025-06-02 08:59 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (betterthanrandom.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (betterthanrandom.substack.com)
| chii wrote:
| water is useful. Diamond is valued.
|
| So be the diamond, not the water. Unless there's no water around
| anymore...
| kypro wrote:
| Assuming you wish to be valued more than you are useful.
| mrheosuper wrote:
| you are saying diamond is not useful ?
| yoz-y wrote:
| Diamonds that are actually useful are quite cheap, compared
| to the useless ones.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| The title is a false dichotomy; you should be both, if you're
| only valued but not useful you're part of this echelon of seat
| fillers who get fired at layoff rounds to cut costs.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Usually the valued ones are in charge of hiring and firing.
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| That's deep.
| red_admiral wrote:
| From King Solomon's Mines, there's a line from the indigenous
| "bad witch" when she's trapped the protagonists in the jewel
| hoard cave - something like "What will white man to with the
| jewels now? Eat them, perhaps?"
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| So, basically, be super rare? And hard to work with?
| nubinetwork wrote:
| > If you're reading this and wondering which side of the line you
| are on, I encourage you to take a moment to step back and look
| beyond the surface. Are you valued, or just useful?
|
| Thanks for reminding me again that my 20 year career has been
| completely useless, other than being a "seat-filler".
| acheron wrote:
| I've been heavily feeling that recently too. I think in 20+
| years of working there were maybe 2 or 3 of them where I had
| even a little bit of "valued".
| shahinghasemi wrote:
| But if you want to be valued you must be useful at the first
| place.
| elric wrote:
| I don't think so. A lot of managers value people who excel at
| talking big while doing little (if any) useful work, while they
| ignore the useful people who actually get things done.
| lnsru wrote:
| Playing office politics right is the most important thing at
| work. Doing real work is secondary. On other hand as a
| workhorse I punch occasionally every management's darling in
| the face. They don't like me, but they know, that somebody
| must do technical heavy lifting. Of course, I am number one
| in the layoff's list :-)
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Can you work well in a team ?
|
| Being a work horse is nice. But if you can't work with
| others, that might be one you are on the layoff list
| necovek wrote:
| You can never be sure of that (your conclusion). I had
| consistently disagreed with one of my managers, and ended
| up with the most positive performance review ever from them
| (I expected the opposite). It did help that I delivered on
| what I insisted on, of course :)
| kypro wrote:
| I understand the negative perception around the importance
| of playing "office politics", but realistically when people
| are working as a team it's important people can be
| cooperative, and office politics is mostly just the
| exercise of being a cooperative member of the team.
|
| 99% of the time people are not getting promoted or retained
| simply because they're more friendly with people at the
| top, but because they're broadly respected, cooperative,
| and have some adequate level of competency.
|
| The anti-social 10x developer who sits in the corner of the
| office grunting at people with his headphones on might spit
| out a lot of code, but does so while causing friction and
| problems within the wider team. They might think highly of
| themselves, but they fail to see how a company full of
| these people cannot operate efficiently.
|
| Doing "real work" + making effort to be liked and
| cooperative with those around you is the right strategy.
| Over indexing on just being like or just doing real work
| isn't going to get you very far.
|
| You said, "they don't like me" and if that's true I do
| think you should try harder to be liked. You can still
| raise objections to things and have your own input, but
| learning how to do that in a way that doesn't irritate
| people or derail the team is an important skill to have.
|
| I empathise though because I struggle with this myself -
| I'm autistic so I find it hard to be likeable and
| communicate with nuance. I have lost jobs and promotions
| because of my inability to play well in teams in the past.
| Even today it's hard, but it's better now I at least try my
| best.
| lnsru wrote:
| I think, you're mixing up normal group dynamics with
| toxic office politics. When someone very visibly starts
| licking a* of the superiors. And the superiors very
| visible promote that individual. Everyone else is somehow
| confused and alienated afterwards. Not my first toxic
| environment.
|
| I funded my studies working as intern at the university,
| it was sometimes rough, but very competitive work
| environment. There were some intrigues regarding lab
| funding and permanent positions, but it was fine after
| all. What I found later working for smaller and bigger
| companies is too bizarre. The amount of people who are
| ready to slit colleague's throats for 200EUR pre-tax
| monthly salary increase is shocking high.
|
| Working in a team is nice unless the team is not
| functional. One can bake much bigger cake in a team.
| But... it appears there are too many people who will take
| team's result and present as their own. Or just ignore
| their work packages. Or managers not resistant to a*
| licking.
|
| I have good relationship with colleagues on my level and
| with my direct manager. Production guys come to me with
| technical problems, because they're afraid of other
| hardware developer. The thing is that it's ok to be not
| liked by everybody. I don't like uneducated general
| manager assigned to this company by the new owner. I
| don't like the bozo explosion happening here. The
| production guys don't like other hardware developer. My
| manager does not like interim HR manager. But it's fine
| as long as it does not lead to psycho relationships and
| toxic behavior.
| hegstal wrote:
| The anti-social 10x developer is more often than not the
| anti-social 1x developer that makes everyone else move at
| 0.1x or worse. Not that I directly blame them for it -
| there is far too much focus on the individual here. It's
| not so common they are bad people, but more that their
| own management doesn't provide them with the incentives
| to behave any other way. It's all about incentives. If
| the incentives are there, the parties involved will
| inevitably find a way to compromise in a way that works
| for them, but if the incentives are fundamentally
| misaligned, there is no way this gets resolved. The only
| option is to run.
| larrled wrote:
| Toxic people and environments are not uncommon. It sounds
| like you've not experienced that too much, which is good.
| But there are sociopaths, liars, ladder climbers,
| manipulators, narcissists, and lots of other imperfect
| people who care more about their own title and
| compensation than the product or coworker harmony. As an
| autistic person, you might invest in learning how to spot
| such people to protect yourself.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| I used to think that.
|
| And then I started working for a different kind of companies.
|
| I screen out any structure with VC money.
|
| It means I work for company that you never heard of, but that
| are profitable year after year.
|
| How? They are very careful who gets in. And they make sure
| everyone is actually useful. Ration manager to worker is
| really really low.
|
| Oh, and they build a product with the intends of selling it.
| Crazy, I know.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Useful can means many things. A scapegoat is useful, for
| example.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Not useful to the person being shit on for no fault of their
| own...
| nkrisc wrote:
| Of course, but that's my point. You may be useful, but
| that's not always good.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Unfortunately, no. The lack of correlation is probably a good
| measure for the dysfunctionality of an organization.
| igvadaimon wrote:
| I was valued. Then the company laid off the whole country and
| stopped hiring in that country.
|
| In the end it's just luck.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| If you weren't offered a relocation package, then you probably
| weren't actually valued. Probably along with the entire office
| in the country.
| npodbielski wrote:
| Maybe he was valued in his department but department was not
| valued inside the company.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| That's... what I said.
|
| The entire office was likely seen as "staff augmentation"
| rather than strategic.
| igvadaimon wrote:
| My team/org wasn't even in that country, I was just working
| remotely from it.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| Folks don't want to hear it, but our careers are based more on
| luck than any of us would like.
|
| I avoided the first big round of layoffs at my last company.
| How? By being so overwhelmingly awesome and valuable that they
| couldn't afford to lose me?? NO!
|
| I agreed to a smaller pay increase that year so a team member
| could get a much-deserved larger raise. I accepted more stock
| grants to help make up the difference. The next round of
| layoffs was based on stock packages granted to employees. More
| stock granted == more better, right?
|
| Sheer luck I didn't get the notice that time.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| I have always been useful not valued, worked at 8 or more places.
| Only people who value me are family. Businesses don't.
|
| You find out pretty quick: suddenly on PIP, or get bullied
| thereafter because you phrased something slightly off in a Jira
| comment. If I can get paid and treated OK, I see that as good.
|
| Don't put stock in business relationships. Try to have good ones
| but put stock in ... assets, family, health, etc.
|
| Now I have seen valued people but they are rare. And if push come
| to shove I'm sure that bond could break.
| ktallett wrote:
| This is key. Such nuances and changes can be seen as a real
| negative behaviour by some when of course they are not.
| msgodel wrote:
| The only way to have a pleasant relationship with a corporation
| is to approach it with as much apathy is they do.
| apwell23 wrote:
| thats what they want too
|
| if you bring even a tiny bit of your spunk, enthusiasm and
| passion to work you;d be labeled a problem immediately.
|
| They want apathetic mindless drones.
| zwnow wrote:
| Which is the correct approach for enterprises with tons of
| employees. Humans are never happy once they reach groups of
| certain sizes. Can only handle projects with certain sizes
| with apathy. Initiative may be looked for in smaller
| environments.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Ah the joys of the MonkeySphere.
| 0xEF wrote:
| I've heard what you're describing phrase as follows:
|
| "If you want to know who truly values you, look for the people
| who would not be able to replace you with someone else."
|
| That usually has us pointing to friends and family, with the
| odd exception.
| JadeNB wrote:
| I'm not sure this is a reliable guide. I'm in academia, and
| the people who really can't be replaced are the
| administrative staff with hard-won institutional knowledge
| and connections--but they're valued far less than splashy
| big-name faculty with no institutional loyalty.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| Yet the admin staff is the first to get fired and treated
| badly any time something changes.
|
| While faculty basically no matter how useless can never be
| fired.
|
| "can't be replaced" has two opposing meanings in your post.
| directevolve wrote:
| They can't be fired, but if they stop bringing in grants,
| they can face steep pay cuts and lab closure.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Why would administrative staff ever be valued over the
| people providing the core purpose of the institution?
| jcims wrote:
| Perform an experiment.
|
| Ask them all to take a month off and see which has
| greater impact and over which timescales.
|
| Usefulness and value have different dimensions that can
| be orthogonal or even in opposition to one another. Many
| of us have worked in the presence of brilliant assholes
| and had to ponder that question.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| I agree. It sounds like lack of documented processes and
| leadership oversight have made that corner of the
| organization a kind of personal fiefdom of the
| administrative staff.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I agree. It sounds like lack of documented processes
| and leadership oversight have made that corner of the
| organization a kind of personal fiefdom of the
| administrative staff.
|
| There are lots of problems with the way universities are
| set up, but, from the point of view of a faculty member
| and, I suspect, also that of a student, "more leadership
| oversight" would solve none of them. (Unless it was
| accompanied by a change of university leadership from
| those who think of a university primarily as a business,
| to those who think of a university primarily as a
| university. I have only spent a long time at one
| university, so it is possible that this problem is
| peculiar to my university, but my impression from talking
| to my colleagues is that it is not.)
| Disposal8433 wrote:
| I have the same experience. Multiple companies with a crazy
| manager that bullied and insulted employees. The bosses never
| do anything because the manager is always right.
|
| At my last job I was the only developer who knew bash and
| Linux. I handled everything until a new CTO came and destroyed
| the servers with his lack of technical knowledge.
|
| I was critically useful to the company until I broke down due
| to the daily harassment. I became valued the instant I gave my
| two weeks notice, but I still told them to go to hell.
| dakiol wrote:
| > At my last job I was the only developer who knew bash and
| Linux.
|
| Where or how so you find such jobs/companies? Whenever I
| interview for non faang companies I've been asked things like
| the cap theorem, concurrency issues, microservice patterns,
| ddd, and of course on top of that the live coding and systems
| design interviews.
|
| For once, I'd like to join a company in which I seem to bring
| something only I know.
| coldpie wrote:
| Sounds like you want systems programming? Some areas to
| look in could be open source companies and embedded
| software.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Those are mostly incompetent companies. You might be the
| only one who knows something critical, but it's not as fun
| as it seems.
| rokhayakebe wrote:
| They still did not value you in the end. That was just
| manipulation to get you to stay.
| havefunbesafe wrote:
| If you ever own a company, you'll find this concept flipped
| upside down.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Don 't put stock in business relationships._
|
| If this is your mentality, is it any wonder you aren't valued?
|
| People post things like this and I'm not sure they have any
| emotional intelligence whatsoever. Sure, your work/job doesn't
| have to be your entire life. But what about a little pride in
| what you're doing? Working with smart people towards a goal to
| do something useful?
|
| If your mentality is "just show up for work, do what they ask
| and go home" then it should be no surprise you're at the top of
| the list to get laid off. I wouldn't want to work with a person
| who "puts no stock in business relationships".
| munchler wrote:
| > If your mentality is "just show up for work, do what they
| ask and go home" then it should be no surprise you're at the
| top of the list to get laid off.
|
| Conversely, if you think that devoting yourself to work will
| put you at the bottom of the list to get laid off, you _are_
| in for a big surprise eventually.
| geodel wrote:
| Huh, eventually everyone living is gonna die.
|
| But more likely people who do bare minimum at work and
| always wait for someone else to ask else they just leave
| for home are first one to go. And it is happening to
| "minimal interest in work" folks in my team as I type this.
|
| It is not even about having them do work beyond normal
| hours. But just checking in normal hours if something need
| be done while they have spare cycle.
|
| I guess it is all fine, employee made their choice and
| management theirs.
| munificent wrote:
| Consider that your point and the parent are opposite ends
| of a continuum and that healthy relationships lie somewhere
| in the middle.
|
| Any transaction becomes increasingly zero-sum as you get to
| either end of the value proposition difference between the
| two parties. The non-zero area is in the middle.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Has it ever occurred to you that you have it backwards?
|
| He has this mentality because he has never been valued, not
| the other way around.
| rexer wrote:
| Certainly there's a feedback loop, impossible to say which
| came first
| 77pt77 wrote:
| If you're called by your family you are better off than the
| majority of humans.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I recently had a bout of this at my current work.
|
| For a while I was struggling to pinpoint my discontent, but I
| ended up realizing it was because I felt I was undervalued
| compared to the contributions I had made over the years.
|
| As it happened, my superiors had come to realize the same, so
| when I asked for a talk, they preempted my plan by announcing
| this.
|
| As mentioned by the article, I've since been included in much
| more strategic talks and discussions to help shape the future of
| the company, as we're moving our products from the desktop to the
| web.
|
| It's still something I'll keep an eye on, but just realizing the
| source of my frustration was very helpful. It also made me more
| aware of how I shouldn't sacrifice too much unless it's being
| valued, as opposed to just being more useful.
| writebetterc wrote:
| > As it happened, my superiors had come to realize the same, so
| when I asked for a talk, they preempted my plan by announcing
| this.
|
| What is "this"?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Sorry, was in a hurry
|
| By "this" I meant that they had undervalued me and my
| contributions.
|
| As a consequence I got a promotion and, as mentioned,
| included in higher-level talks.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Was in a hurry, so realize I forgot my main point.
|
| I wish I had realized the source of my frustration and thus
| acted on it earlier.
|
| It lead to a quite downbeat feeling, which still lingers a bit
| every now and then.
|
| Of course this was just before the current mass layoffs, so
| getting a new job was definitely an option then, which I almost
| certainly would have taken had they not seen me.
| dedicate wrote:
| Isn't being incredibly useful actually a pretty solid way to be
| valued, especially in the trenches? Maybe 'useful' is just
| 'valued' in work boots instead of a fancy suit.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Speaking from experience... it's hard to tell. Yes, but also:
| no. I _know_ 'useful' is employable.
|
| I have been more easily valued for my 'use' by being easier to
| manipulate. Or, sorry, felt more open/safe. Money spends the
| same: barely, too much work.
|
| Layoffs? To quote Janet Jackson: _' what have you done for me
| lately?'_
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| Depends on whether you want a say in the direction of the
| trench you are digging, or just want to dig from here until
| quitting time.
| hnthrow90348765 wrote:
| It should be, but the cold, hard meritocracy just doesn't
| exist, so you need to combine your useful work with soft skills
| to have your work valued
| phyzome wrote:
| It would be nice if that were true, but there isn't as much
| correlation between those two as one would wish.
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| People can get used to a certain level of usefulness from a
| person, and start to take it for granted. The first time you
| swoop in and do something in an hour that had been holding
| others up for weeks, they're astounded by your usefulness. The
| tenth time, it's just what you do, so it's expected.
|
| And yes, that does seem to happen more if you're wearing work
| boots, probably because people who never wear work boots assume
| that, if it can be done in work boots, it can't be as
| astounding and valuable as it appeared at first, or you would
| have moved beyond work boots by now.
|
| Usefulness may hold its value in the trenches, but the people
| ultimately deciding everyone's salary generally aren't in the
| trenches.
| z3t4 wrote:
| It's more like: Are you useful, or are you friends with the top
| management. I would say most jobs are 10% skill, 90% softskill
| and social ranking
| ktallett wrote:
| Everyone can provide value to the world if we accept them for who
| they are, and what they love and can offer. The issue lies when
| we, as a society, decides what is valuable and what isn't.
| dotdi wrote:
| > I had become the go-to person for making things run smoothly,
| for fixing urgent problems, for delivering. But every time I
| pushed toward more strategic and ambitious directions, there was
| a lot of can-kicking and "let's think about it" that went
| nowhere. I was incredibly useful to the organization, but not
| necessarily valued, and at some point, I started feeling a sense
| of stagnation. Compensation was good, the actual job was aligned
| with my interests, but that sense of being just a useful
| caretaker was hitting my motivation. In the end, I had to move on
| to another role.
|
| this hits home, hard.
| brabel wrote:
| I was reading that and thinking "some people are never happy".
| I mean, they got a nice job, nice compensation, recognition...
| the only thing missing, apparently, was that they were not part
| of the company's "strategy team"? In my experience, you can be
| the smartest person in the world, if the company already has a
| small strategy team (or top management) that is pulling all the
| strings and they're happy with that setup, you'll basically
| never be able to become a part of that, barring major changes
| in the company's org chart.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| Well yeah, the only way to get to that position is if you get
| in early on a startup, make one your own, or get along really
| well with the top brass and have the knack for it.
| necovek wrote:
| If someone is valued, they will at least get pulled into
| private, 1-1 conversations with one of those people pulling
| all the strings.
|
| No matter if their suggestions would be followed, their
| opinion would be heard, which ultimately establishes how
| valued one is.
|
| I've seen this happen more than once, and most often, that
| person was recommended as the successor for who they advised.
|
| I've been on both sides, and I like being "valued" that way:
| otherwise, I just feel like I am not contributing with the
| best I can provide, and not enjoying the ride.
|
| It's just who I am, and it's not about "never being happy" --
| we all aspire to some things, and this beats compensation to
| me.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| If you are happy being a worker bee it's great. If you want
| to take on more responsibility and have a seat at the table,
| it feels like you're being treated with kiddy gloves.
|
| A lot of the kind of work the author mentions is done with
| the expectation that it will translate into more
| responsibility or influence at some point. If the company
| said "you're a great developer, but you'll never be more than
| that" the author probably wouldn't have invested to the same
| degree.
| UK-AL wrote:
| This is explicit strategy companies use. To be expected
| apples_oranges wrote:
| According to this definition, being involved more, I'd rather be
| useful than valued. Like Socrates who went to the market to see
| what things he doesn't need, I cherish each meeting I am not
| invited to. It's a blessing.
|
| As long as the pay is good (or better) than in the "valued" path,
| useful is better.
|
| Exception: I have equity and the decisions made are bad.
| ronbenton wrote:
| With all the layoffs happening in my company, I'll take at
| least a bit of being valued right now
| rokhayakebe wrote:
| Side hustle. Sidelancing.
| rimbo789 wrote:
| The pay for the useful pay is so rarely better than valued
| though
| mergy wrote:
| I like and appreciate the authors points but just wish they would
| have done more with the connection of the two.
|
| You might be valued because you are many things. You might not be
| valued because of many things. If you are able to be useful and
| valued, while also being fulfilled and happy personally and
| professionally -- that's great.
|
| But, there is normally not a direct and clear situation like this
| in organizations. If there is, enjoy it while you have it.
| Normally, it's not as direct and clear to assess and understand.
| You are also part of this equation. The dynamics in an
| organization are normally not consistent.
|
| Dynamics in organizations can shift quickly. Culture can also
| mean you could be doing all you can but the situation is no
| longer good for you for a variety of reasons or good for the
| organization.
|
| Informed re-evaluation of your own value in your situation, at
| reasonable points, is vital. You may be not as great as you think
| you are, you might not be able to feel valued or useful in a
| changed or toxic environment. You may not care about that stuff.
| The organization may be incapable of providing any of that
| validation but, ultimately, it's up to you to decide what you are
| able to live with and why. How the organization provides whatever
| for you to contemplate is part of the calculation that must rest
| on your shoulders -- and that effort is ongoing and important.
| alganet wrote:
| Valued = useful + hard to find.
|
| The more rare you are, the more you are valued. You still have to
| be useful to be valuable though.
|
| In order to acquire those rare skills, an ungodly amount of work
| is often required. It is also a huge variable. A rare skill today
| can become useless tomorrow.
|
| Also, beware of indispensable people. "This company needs me" can
| have all sorts of causes. Maybe you didn't documented things
| right, maybe you just have a long history with them. It doesn't
| mean being rare. Being rare is feeling "this skill I have could
| be of use to any similar company and few people know it".
|
| The skill could be anything. Perfect pitch, excelent document
| writing, de-escalation, low-level bit shaving.
| ndand wrote:
| > Valued = useful + hard to find.
|
| I agree, but I think it slightly differently, Valued = useful +
| hard to replace.
|
| How difficult is to be replaced by some other human or a
| machine.
| suyash wrote:
| I'll add one more to this, "Pleasant personality". If you
| have are difficult to be with, you will be miserable and so
| will others around you, leaving you with very little or no
| allies. So new formula:
|
| Valued = Useful + hard to find + easy to work with
| qprofyeh wrote:
| Feeling valued is the key here. If you need external validation
| then by all means, work smarter towards it. Become a manager.
| Become a company influencer. Build a brand, and sell it hard.
|
| At some point later in life, I hope you'll figure out your own
| sense of value, true to your being, and decoupled from what
| others may grant. Your raison d'etre.
| mindwok wrote:
| I'd say value, in the way the author defines it, is more a
| function of scarcity. If you are someone who can get stuff done
| but you are easily replaced, you are useful - not valuable. If
| you can get things done that nobody else can, or will, then you
| are valued.
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| In capitalism _everything_ is a function of scarcity. I wonder
| how long we are going to keep up that particular charade.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| Didn't know other economic systems beat the fundamental
| nature of physics and reality where infinite isn't simply a
| concept. Are you sure you're considering a "charade" in the
| right direction?
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| That's strange, because capitalism is the one that thinks
| infinity is real. Also it's trying to break nature, quite
| literally given the state of our climate.
|
| There are other ways to cooperate that don't depend on
| sociopathy and infighting.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| > That's strange, because capitalism is the one that
| thinks infinity is real.
|
| Your rhetoric doesn't pass. You contradict yourself in a
| single turn. Can't cite "scarcity" and "infinity" powers
| this fictional economic system you thought of as
| "capitalism".
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| You miss the point. It's not I don't believe in scarcity
| or the second law of thermodynamics, it's that I critique
| capitalism's handing of it that is by its very nature
| exploitative, short-sighted and unsustainable. It needs
| various and extensive guardrails to be functional at all
| otherwise it would have destroyed us already.
|
| It's the classic "capitalism is built on scarcity but
| behaves as if infinite growth is possible"-critique.
| There are interesting responses to that but "it's
| contradictory" ain't one of them.
| meepmorp wrote:
| > I wonder how long we are going to keep up that particular
| charade
|
| about as long as the real world continues to have finite
| resources and people have differing ideas about what to do
| with them
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| Capitalism is just one solution to that problem and I'm not
| convinced it's the best one.
| submeta wrote:
| What a wonderful text. I have seen soo many colleagues who do
| solid, if not extraordinary work, yet they get paid mediocre
| salaries. And then there are people who create an aura, as if
| they can walk on water. And get promoted constantly, get new
| roles, new opportunities. But when you scratch the surface, they
| are not necessarily doing much better work, but they are
| informed, know latest trends, use the right buzz words, bring a
| fresh air into the team, new models, mindsets, paradigms. And
| they think very highly of themselves. Unlike the others who do
| their job well, but are treated not like rock stars, and do not
| signal that they are ready to leave the company. So they always
| stay where they are, get paid the same. And management does not
| feel like treating them special to keep them.
| simianwords wrote:
| Why does this not create an arbitrage opportunity to pick the
| useful ones who are not valued if you are a CEO or manager?
| red_admiral wrote:
| I presume there is said opportunity, after all that's what
| company-hired "headhunters" are for.
|
| But you also need to find people who are useful, undervalued
| (in the sense of the article, not in the sense of pay), and who
| are also willing to take the risk of jumping into a new
| environment even if that's uncomfortable at first. That means
| they need somehow to check that they'll be really valued at the
| new place, not just given a fancy title but no real decision-
| making involvement.
|
| My guess is there's a positive correlation between useful-but-
| not-valued people and ones who are risk-averse and/or not the
| best social climbers, because the people who are both
| technically and socially brilliant or risk-taking are either
| valued already, or have already left your organisation.
| simianwords wrote:
| If they are not risk taking they are not valuable.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Depends how safety-critical the system is? If you're one of
| the few that can maintain an old aircraft, medical
| equipment, COBOL software for a nuclear power plant etc.-
| then you don't want risk-takers, you want steady hands that
| keep your system running.
| red_admiral wrote:
| From the company's point of view, good management is finding the
| people who are useful and making them feel valued.
|
| A useful person tends to have the ability to get hired elsewhere,
| and will sometimes do this even at a drop in salary, if they are
| more valued elsewhere.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| > A useful person tends to have the ability to get hired
| elsewhere
|
| Sometimes being able to demonstrate that itself can increase
| your value to your current company.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| It takes some guts to be in management, but being a good worker-
| bee will only get you so far. You have to know how to work with
| others, you have to be able to make critical decisions at the
| right moment. Not everyone has the talent for it. And if you
| don't have it, you don't have it. Will you, as this author has
| described, find a comfortable position in life, be able to afford
| whatever you need? Absolutely. And you'll never have to be
| responsible for impactful decisions; you'll never have to fire
| anyone.
| apwell23 wrote:
| > It takes some guts to be in management
|
| > And if you don't have it, you don't have it.
|
| hope this is parody
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| Not everyone is a good manager either
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| > Will you, as this author has described, find a comfortable
| position in life, be able to afford whatever you need?
| Absolutely.
|
| Only when the times are good, as many of us had to learn the
| hard way.
|
| When times are tough and there aren't enough resources to go
| around - there is no substitute for being the one allocating
| the resources, or at least close to them.
| apwell23 wrote:
| not everyone has the skills to suck up to the person
| allocating resources
| 47282847 wrote:
| " I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking,
| stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are
| combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the
| General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90
| percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone
| who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest
| leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and
| strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must
| beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not
| be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only
| cause damage." - General and Commander-in-Chief Weimar Republic
| https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord
| zwnow wrote:
| Guess I fit the stupid and lazy category, interesting thoughts
| though. I act like I work half of the day and the other half I
| procrastinate and work simultaneously. Part of it may be ADHD
| but somehow it works out for me... Still getting my work done.
| repeekad wrote:
| Or you're clever and lazy but haven't found the right general
| to promote you to high leadership yet. I think of Sir Ken
| Robinson whenever I hear anyone say ADHD is synonymous with
| "stupid"
|
| https://youtu.be/iG9CE55wbtY
| rigrassm wrote:
| I had to double check that I wasn't sleep posting or
| something cause that's literally what 90% of my days are
| like.
|
| Probably 5% of the time I'll get stuck completely and those
| days are immensely stressful but on the flip side, the 5% of
| the time I actually am able to silence the procrastination
| demon in my ear, those days are so satisfyingly productive.
| apercu wrote:
| That kind of work avoidance sounds like a lot of work.
|
| Advice would be to try to find a job or role doing something
| you're interested it.
|
| A lot of the subject matter of my work is not that
| interesting to me, and the politics and lack of any sort of
| vision or leadership at most organizations these days makes
| project work sometimes stressful. But (maybe as a survival
| mechanism?) I've found that focusing on improving how I do my
| work and taking pride in my output (even if no one else
| notices) is a way for me to have some control over my work
| day.
|
| This way it's about me and I'm not looking for external
| validation (which isn't coming for a myriad of reasons that
| would be exhausting to list here).
|
| My point is that we all (most of us anyway) have to work so
| my theory is that it's best to try to find some balance of
| interesting, pays ok and you're good enough at it that you
| can find some meaning in your work.
|
| To me, work avoidance sounds mentally draining.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > work avoidance sounds mentally draining.
|
| Procrastination isn't an active thing, it just happens. If
| that doesn't make sense to you that probably means you
| don't have that particular issue.
| zwnow wrote:
| Nah actual work is mentally draining. While I avoid work I
| do private projects that are actually interesting to me. I
| work, just not on company stuff that I don't care about.
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| What personal projects are you working on these days? Or
| do you have multiple?
| zwnow wrote:
| I am a quitter, I start projects for 2 weeks until I find
| the next shiny thing. I have a tendency to quit once
| projects go from learning to tedious repetitive work.
| Carp wrote:
| I'm the exact same. Sometimes work scratches that itch
| and I can work a productive 8 hours. Other times it's
| boring repetitive work and I'll start slacking off.
| eyesofgod wrote:
| Same except the massively productive days are getting
| rarer and rarer.
| endemic wrote:
| > Advice would be to try to find a job or role doing
| something you're interested it.
|
| Sounds great, where do I find it?
| bitwize wrote:
| Sounds like upper management material!
| ionwake wrote:
| I worked as a small elite unit in a world leading airline, team
| of about 5 poeple that went down to basically 1 ( after I was
| finally labelled as "difficult to work with" - ( I actually was
| always quiet calm friendly used to working in critical teams
| and worked basically close to 12 hour days.
|
| Eventually a deadline was missed and "someone had to be
| blamed".
|
| Having worked in countless companies I was ready for this and
| calm, basically fine with it, just kept working hard.
|
| But I always remember of this one "middle manager" product lead
| or something, was constantly interrupting people, sitting with
| them, walking through what they were doing, following them, and
| eventually made a private accusation that I was "insulting
| other members of the team". ( I was basically silo'd knew no
| one, and also knew better than to criticise anyone). Stay with
| me...
|
| I got chewed out by a seemingly random , mild mannered usually
| polite manager who never had a problem with me, infront of a
| few people ( I didnt say anything - instinctively I just knew
| this mean I was about to be let go, nothing I would say would
| help, and tensions were high due to deadlines ), accused of
| being troublesome etc. I calmly said I didnt know what he was
| stating, he calmed down and left.
|
| Then I was "released from my contract".
|
| As a consultant I don't get upset by these things, I am fine
| with it, I work as hard as I can and when the contract is over
| I leave.
|
| However I will never forget how the one man, who never actually
| did any work, who interrupted everyone, and who made these
| accusations, was basically doing everything he could do "seem
| like he had a job".
|
| He was infact, not quite the "hardworking and stupid". My only
| amendment that perhaps he was a special version of this, the
| "hardworking and unethical".
|
| Only ever saw that once in nearly 2 decades of working but Im
| sure there were many more I didnt pick up on,
|
| He stayed on, causing trouble, disrupting etc, and I always
| realised its because he kept a close profile to his superior,
| who had no eyes on the ground, and blindly trusted him due to
| an overload of work.
|
| EDIT > Sorry I want to emphasise the main take away in my rant,
| is that the polite quiet well meaning, happy, working, well
| adjusted polite english gentleman behind me who was in
| management was suddenly shouting at me in front of others
| because he felt shocked at the accusation that I was a bad
| person, obviously which mean I deserved a dressing down, stood
| up and just starting shouting at me. This was a calm,
| relatively intelligent person, with his things in order, not
| affiliated with my project. Yet he just assumed an email chain
| from management around him, possibly with a very accusatory
| snippet from the trouble maker, was enough to convince him to
| act unprofessional and give me the dressing down. If anyone
| would have got into trouble or sued, it would have been this
| well meaning "smart" individual. That was my other main point.
|
| In the end, there were no moves I could have made, but it was
| incredibly surprising how many poeple were easily manipulated
| into being unprofessional etc because of false information
| coming from their tier / one tier up. Whole narratives painted.
| It was quite interesting. Eventually that individual must have
| been let go, but what a desperate, unethical way to live.
| eurekin wrote:
| > However I will never forget how the one man, who never
| actually did any work, who interrupted everyone, and who made
| these accusations, was basically doing everything he could do
| "seem like he had a job".
|
| Judging from your description, you could actually be a threat
| to his position. So that might be a preemptive strike.
| ionwake wrote:
| I had not even thought of that! I did accidentally after a
| 10 hour day - slip for for half a second and said
| "what!?!?" it was less than a second and I was half way
| through leaving - it was after working hours, it was a big,
| complex question and interrupted my flow brashly, I didnt
| even realise I had said it in the wrong tone and that other
| poeple may have heard it. I immediately did my best to
| answer the question, but that slight slip up must have made
| him feel embarrased and under threat. I remember it now. To
| be fair it was after work, the wrong moment and really an
| interruption, when a calm "can we discuss this at one
| point" was expected in that env.
| eurekin wrote:
| Another wild, unsubstantiated guess... The reason for him
| interrupting others, might be the stress caused by not
| understanding what's being said, but having to hold the
| professional image
| pixl97 wrote:
| A lot of people in management also have imposter syndrome
| which makes anyone under them that appears competent seem
| like a danger to them.
|
| While doing a contract and consulting I've ran into this,
| but nothing like my wife in her career.
|
| First corporate job as webdev/design, had her boss get
| fired for embezzlement of about quarter of a mil. Bosses
| after that kinda sucked so she left.
|
| Second job (marketing manager/design) was fine for a
| while, until her great boss left and they replaced her
| with a sketchy character. I listened in on a number of
| her meetings and we came to the conclusion that he wanted
| to bring in a contracting group that was going to give
| him kickbacks. This guy seemed highly threatened by her.
| She found another job and within 6 months that guy was
| fired and the people that still worked there didn't know
| the exact details but there were hush hush whispers of
| fraud.
|
| Third job (sr marketing manager) was fine with the first
| boss over her. But as always, that person found an even
| better paying position and left. Next director had an
| issue with taking other people's work and calling it her
| own. Wife did something unintentionally to embarrass the
| director in a meeting when the director had taken my
| wife's work and put her name on it and upper level
| management saw it. A few days later my wife was put on a
| PIP by her manager the director even though she had got
| outstanding remarks on the last quarter review that had
| ended a month before. Needless to say she did the
| following. Went and got a better job (director level now)
| but didn't tell them that. Then went to HR and filed a
| complaint over the PIP and ethics violations. After some
| back and forth it ended up with her leaving with a
| severance.
|
| Really everything I've seen in management as you go up
| higher in the food chain is that it seems everyone is
| willing to, and expects others to knife them in the back
| in a lot of companies.
| eurekin wrote:
| > and expects others to knife them in the back
|
| Sounds a lot like a projection, of what they would
| actually do
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| _...the polite quiet well meaning, happy, working, well
| adjusted polite English gentleman..._
|
| You need to watch out for those, speaking as one myself. We
| _did_ run an empire once and not by being nice. Have a look
| at George Orwell 's short pieces set in Burmah (now Myanmar).
| ionwake wrote:
| fantastic - will do!
| rokhayakebe wrote:
| I am in my mid forties. I have always walked away the moment
| I have been yelled at any job. Each time I have done this I
| had zero dollars in the bank. That is a privilege I give to
| my family, and they don't even use it. If it is a big
| organization walk straight to HR or go home and call a
| lawyer.
| ionwake wrote:
| I also agree it's o er the line. However what I do is I
| leave "on my Own terms" as a form of victory. I will make
| that the moment I mentally decide to leave but I let myself
| choose the timing as much as possible as a form of not
| letting my environment affect me. Not sure if that makes
| sense
| roncesvalles wrote:
| I've noticed a strong trend that newly hired managers suffer
| from imposter syndrome more than anyone else. Rocking the
| boat, lighting fires, picking fights with their reports or
| people outside the team - these are common symptoms.
| gadders wrote:
| It's almost like you could create a 2 x 2 matrix of Useful Vs
| Valued
|
| - Not Useful, Not Valued: Get good or change jobs/industries.
|
| - Not Useful, Valued: talks a good game (or is doing useful
| stuff that is not apparent)
|
| -Useful, Not Valued: Could be useful at non-strategic stuff, or
| does good work without self-marketing, or has bad management
| and needs to leave.
|
| - Useful, Valued: Ideal situation.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Some of these may also work in different life stages. Want
| reasonable job security & compensation but currently pursuing
| a masters / raising an infant / dealing with elderly parental
| care - "useful¬ valued" may not be so bad for a few years.
| JadeNB wrote:
| Isn't "not valued" at odds with "reasonable job security?"
| steveBK123 wrote:
| If there's a grid of 4 types of people, the two boxes of
| "not useful" are usually let go first
| closewith wrote:
| That's missing the point here completely, as it's not the
| useless who are let go first, it's the unvalued.
| lovich wrote:
| You respect your managers a lot more than I would.
|
| The not valued column is let go first via the fact that
| the value function is what decides if their managers care
| or not
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Good points and maybe expressed to generally by me.
|
| I suspect who is laid off first is more to do with the
| lifecycle of the company actually, having been in
| high/low/negative growth environments myself.
|
| I have found in negative growth environments, managers
| tend to get pretty sober about who is actually useful not
| just valued, and cut accordingly. Negative growth
| environments is also when more cuts happen, with
| generally a worse job hunting environment if you are cut.
|
| But in frivolous times, yes, I've seen plenty of useful
| people get cut.. but they always bounce back better
| anyway.
| closewith wrote:
| The opposite is true. In those situations, you want to be
| valued but useless.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| The punnet square of value and utility
| naikrovek wrote:
| > does good work without self-marketing
|
| I kinda feel called out. My work should speak for itself. It
| often does, but I will always forget it when it comes time to
| speak of myself nicely.
|
| I simply do not care to self-promote. It feels vain and
| vanity is one of the most useless things possible to me.
| Donald Trump is about 98% vanity, if you want to see what
| vanity is.
|
| Not being able to actually cite the things I've done to
| someone _who already knows what those things are_ has cost me
| several promotions, though. I can do the work, I can forecast
| needs, be ready for them, and solve them before they arrive,
| but because I don't self-promote, people who can't shut up
| about themselves get promoted beyond me.
|
| Now that I've typed all that out, I am remembering just how
| many times this has happened, and now twenty minutes into the
| week and I am 100% misanthropic. People suck.
| gen220 wrote:
| Hey, I've been where you are.
|
| > because I don't self-promote, people who can't shut up
| about themselves get promoted beyond me
|
| You need to re-frame this problem, so it's not about "self-
| promotion", and instead is about proactively forecasting
| the needs (as you put it) of your _manager_ , not just the
| technical system you're managing.
|
| If you view it as part of your job to document (not
| promote, just document) the work you've done, it's trivial
| to collect those links into a doc at the end of the
| promotion cycle, hand it to your manager and collect a
| promotion. Make sure that you're communicating throughout
| the cycle that you're expecting a promotion in your 1:1's
| and ask if you're on track towards that goal / if there's
| anything un-discussed you'd need to do to get there.
|
| It's critical to understand that this is not vanity, it's
| part of your job (if you want a promotion, that is). I hope
| this is helpful!
| naikrovek wrote:
| how can i understand what my manager needs if i don't
| know what he does?
|
| I have no idea what managers do, and I can't ever get an
| answer when I ask what managers do. "oh, all kinds of
| stuff." gosh, thanks. it's so clear, now.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Not sure if you are looking for an answer or just letting
| the steam out... But if you are searching for knowledge,
| then I would suggest picking up a book or two on leading
| people. It was a big surprise to me that such books exist
| and that they actually help understand the dynamics in
| companies, and how to achieve win-win outcomes. Good
| luck!
| infamouscow wrote:
| Being a leader and being a manager are completely
| different things.
|
| Leaders primary concern is for those under them.
|
| Managers primary concern is for those above them.
| gen220 wrote:
| It's important to understand the incentives of everybody
| in an organization, even if they're not able to
| articulate it clearly to you, you should make it your
| personal mission to understand them. The incentive
| structure of your manager (i.e. the standard by which
| they are judged) is to keep their ICs productive while
| also attempting to keep costs "under control" (i.e.
| growing, but at a predictable rate that is below some
| hurdle).
|
| If you want a promotion, your manager needs to be able to
| explain / provide evidence to _their_ manager (and so on,
| all the way to the board in theory) as to why you deserve
| a higher salary.
|
| If you are doing the right work, are able to provide them
| with an artifact (brag sheet / promotion packet) that
| concisely outlines the value provided, and consistently
| provide the signal that you'd be dissatisfied (i.e.
| potentially leave) without a promotion, you'll get a
| promotion. It's within your power to remove the only
| remaining obstacle _for them_ by providing the packet,
| which is 80% of their work in securing you a promotion.
|
| There are almost always more urgent issues for a manager
| to address than a high-performing employee who is quietly
| upset about not getting a promotion. By stepping up and
| helping them do this small part of their job, you're
| demonstrating empathy by solving an important but non-
| urgent problem for them. They will be grateful.
| gadders wrote:
| I am bad at this as well. I think part of it is to do with
| my upbringing as a poor, smart kid at a bad school. The way
| to be well thought of by teachers was to not cause a fuss
| and get good grades whilst the teachers concentrated on the
| disruptive kids.
|
| I shudder at the thought of becoming one of those
| _gobshites_ that asks senior management questions in
| townhalls like "How do you stay so grounded with all the
| awesome responsibility you are dealing with?"
|
| There a few things that motivated me to start self
| publicising a bit more:
|
| 1) A Chris Williamson podcast where he said "Shy bairns get
| nowt" and also "Somewhere there is someone with half your
| talent and twice your confidence earning 10x your salary."
|
| 2) I email all my senior stakeholders (not just my line
| manager) details of the major projects I am working on. I
| try and frame this as an "FYI" and an offer for them to add
| extra context or re-align my priorities.
|
| 3) You can try this approach as well:
| https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/
| naikrovek wrote:
| I've tried the brag document but I just can't do it. "ooh
| look at me, so special" i hate that crap.
|
| I don't need 10x my salary, I just want to feel valued by
| my team. I have never felt that in my entire life, even
| though team members often mention that I save their bacon
| repeatedly in team meetings with supervisors. it's like
| no one hears it.
|
| unless i change who i am as a person i will never be
| valued at work. it's just that simple. I won't play the
| vanity game solely for money. I won't do anything solely
| for money. I just want to feel valued and I don't think
| that is possible for me. I'm just not wired to feel that.
| So fuck me I guess. "you don't fit the mold kid, so you
| can go fly a kite"
| gadders wrote:
| I know what you mean.
|
| For me, the motivation to move out of my comfort zone and
| become more "braggy" was to provide a better standard of
| living for my family. And also my ego - getting annoyed
| at seeing less talented people do better.
| geodel wrote:
| It is good. I used to do that and get some positive
| feedback on it. But lately with change in management who
| are least interested in such mails, and with constant
| banging of stay in your lane, I just lost the energy.
|
| Point is these things can yield result but it is neither
| guaranteed nor welcome so many times. Also praising
| "leadership" is race to bottom, there are always bigger
| suck ups pushing themselves.
| htrp wrote:
| turns out the consulting firms stole from the german army
| greatgib wrote:
| And guess which ones got hold of most leadership positions in
| current days...
| temporallobe wrote:
| In reality it's more like a line graph with stupid to clever on
| the Y axis, and lazy to hardworking on the X axis.
| jrvieira wrote:
| Yeah that general doesn't seem too clever
| MrDrDr wrote:
| Thank you for posting this. Someone had told me this and
| attributed it to Clausewitz - so I've never been able to track
| it down. I've used it to make the case that laziness is not
| always a bad thing - i.e. lazy people find it easier to
| delegate.
| Archelaos wrote:
| Beware: anyone who confuses bourmonts with management rules
| belongs in the last category.
| stanford_labrat wrote:
| Love this quote and tell it to friends often. I strive to be
| the clever and lazy officer. It was also eye opening to meet
| the first hardworking+stupid individual of my career and see
| just how much damage they really could do.
| nand_gate wrote:
| My experiences track this, being lazy and clever is a cheat
| code in many ways.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| Unfortunately I've found that big tech companies are stuffed
| with "stupid and hardworking", an inevitable consequence of
| perf eval cultures that value work output over anything else.
| calrain wrote:
| Do your job and you will always be useful, rarely valued.
| dinetrimr wrote:
| I used to recognize this at my last job, pay was good but left
| searching for other opportunities where I felt valued in a team.
|
| Two years later and I've about burned through all my savings
| looking for any job at all. Seems like current market has decided
| my skills and connections are not enough. Fixing to just uber or
| something next month out of desperation. I used to make six
| figures.
|
| Turns out I decided to quit at the absolute worst time. I may not
| have been valued socially at the last gig but I felt somewhat
| useful. Nowadays enough time has passed and I no longer feel
| valued nor useful. The distinction fails to make any difference
| when the threat of losing it all constantly looms over you.
|
| If I could I would go back in time and berate my self to keep
| that job at all costs and remain valueless, instead of insist
| grass is greener for some nebulous quality of "valued". Some
| things like health insurance are just more important than some
| intangible ideas of being valued or not by higher ups I won't
| really understand.
| aaviator42 wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear that, and hope you're able to figure out
| something sustainable soon.
|
| To other readers: don't quit your job until you have a new
| source of income locked in!
| dinetrimr wrote:
| Thought I had one, turned in my notice but they rescinded
| offer a week later for no obvious reason and went hiring
| freeze. Was about the exact point when the market started
| inclining couple of years ago. Still think if I had
| interviewed a month before I would have got the position Been
| jobless ever since.
|
| I blame my self for it, for not having the insight.
| Consequences were severe
| chokominto wrote:
| Wow, that's crazy. Hope you'll find something soon.
| darkwater wrote:
| No, you should blame the company that rescinded the offer!
| Now it's probably too late but, did you try talking again
| with your former manager to see if you could get back your
| old job, after the offer was rescinded?
| dinetrimr wrote:
| That was a while ago sadly, I just decided to learn my
| lesson and move on. Tough to square with the loss of my
| savings but is what it is
|
| Kept up my certs and all, still do tech stuff all them
| time, think I'll have a job even if it's minimum wage and
| underemployment at some point
| matwood wrote:
| > where I felt valued in a team.
|
| To quote Don Draper, "that's what the money is for!" Find your
| meaning or value somewhere else not in your job and it will
| both be longer lasting and likely much deeper.
| dinetrimr wrote:
| It would be nice, heck I would accept a 50% pay cut for a
| better team since I didn't even need all the money I was
| earning (except for my current survival I guess), money isn't
| what it's about to me so long as I can feed myself, but my
| job hunt now isn't really about team value anymore. It's not
| something I can afford to think about when any job has to do
| for the rent. I could go back to stocking shelves if the next
| data entry thing I feel over skilled for doesn't get back to
| me
|
| I like my hobbies, just I can't pretend to enjoy them all day
| when my current lifestyle has been unsustainable for so long.
| It was easier start of the job drought and I could do
| whatever I wanted and it felt nice, picked up some
| (unmarketable but fun) skills. Now it's all caught up to me.
|
| "At least the gig economy is an option" is a thought that
| appeared in my head recently
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Don't beat yourself up over what amounts to luck. You could
| just as easily have remained where you were and later been
| caught up in a layoff.
|
| By definition risks don't always go your way.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >pay was good but left searching for other opportunities where
| I felt valued in a team.
|
| One of the bad things about heiring is that it always seems
| that it's much easier to get a job if you have a job.
|
| As a warning to others, get a new job before you quit your old
| one.
| bawana wrote:
| I am a physician. I am useful because i can remove kidney stones
| and relieve the awful pain people find themselves in. My value
| however continues to decline as the monopolistic practices of
| insurers and hospital systems (who are now starting their own
| insurances) has reduced my reimbursement to less than that of a
| plumber. The money that used to go to workers now goes to the c
| suite. Ironically they were nonexistent 50 years ago when
| healthcare delivery was better in the US. This redistribution of
| 'value' has been facilitated by information systems that have
| allowed data to be centralized and aggregated. I cant wait for AI
| to replace the c suite so all the money goes to shareholders-
| maybe then people will wake up.
|
| Ultimately i see this whole trajectory as a communist plot-
| centralizing control and profit.
| thijson wrote:
| I think a lot of what middle management does may be replaced by
| AI, leading to flatter organizations. You probably have better
| insight into this than me, but I feel that the initial briefing
| with a patient may be done by an AI as well, saving the doctor
| time.
| mboto wrote:
| What is also useful to keep in mind is the tendency to recreate
| your primary family life in the workplace. So if you had critical
| controlling parents who never valued you and everything you ever
| did was worthless, then you'll tend to select for those places
| and it is often done outside of awareness.
|
| Was your primary family spent being valued and appreciated? Then
| you'll select for that and when people start to not value you,
| you'll intervene earlier to correct for it and you'll have the
| skills to do that.
|
| Did your parents respect your boundaries growing up? Were you
| able to erect strong boundaries and have people listen to you
| when they over stepped, or were you constantly put down and your
| wishes ignored? A lack of skills in erecting proper boundaries
| and then maintaining them by being in the goldilocks zone of not
| too soft and too hard can lead to issues in the workplace and
| personal life.
|
| First step is bringing this in to awareness so you can look back
| with hindsight, next step (the hardest) is mid-sight, you know
| you are doing or not the doing the thing you need to do but can't
| do it or don't know how. There there is foresight, hey I normally
| do this thing that's not good for me here, I had better do the
| thing I need to do to keep this situation positive.
|
| Keep this mantra in mind: You are the only in charge of you and
| your emotions, no one makes you do anything, and you will protect
| yourself.
|
| Awareness + skills = ability. Psychotherapy (not counselling) is
| what you need to look out for. Combine that with Transactional
| Analysis and it makes you very very effective.
| im3w1l wrote:
| This is interesting. I could imagine that it's not exactly that
| you are selecting for the same dysfunction. Maybe it's rather
| that you don't know what functional looks like, and therefore
| can't as easily find a place that fits or steer your current
| place in the right dirrection?
| 47282847 wrote:
| Our organism's primary goal is survival. Unknown territory
| will feel unsafe and thus stressful, up to the point of
| unreal, even if on a rational level it may actually be safer.
| It takes courage to face and calm those fears without
| consciously or unconsciously returning to known survival
| strategies - and meta cognition skills to sufficiently
| distance yourself from those past emotional memories. After
| all, they allowed you to survive.
| agumonkey wrote:
| The psychological basis is most probably one of the main
| forces.. your job is your survival, just like your parents
| were. Very often your refuse to challenge limit or keep
| boundaries because of the same fear of being ousted and out of
| options.
|
| It's both very useful to get out of this pit, and also sad..
| because our lives are not supposed to be fully transactional.
| We prefer to have a group with who we share more than notarial
| duties.
| anton-c wrote:
| Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I appreciate you posting that.
| I wonder if that's why I found myself at certain workplaces.
| larrled wrote:
| Good advice. Psychological transference is a closely related
| term. But it's easy to take that framework too far and
| eventually get to where you blame things like schizophrenia or
| ptsd on the mothers. People who grew up in shitty families
| probably have plenty of insight already. A lot of human
| behavior is determined rather than the result of free will. If
| you had a bad mom, it may be better to just lower expectations
| than try to "fix"yourself and become the CEO. And taking drugs
| like ssri or adderal helps many in their careers where
| psychotherapy might not. Freud loved cocaine.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Incredible comment, thank you. I can't believe I read this for
| free. This is probably years of distilled behavior science
| applied to a workplace-specific environment.
| joshmlewis wrote:
| It's called attachment theory and does show up in more than
| just romantic relationships.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Keep in mind it's not really accurate.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| I'll add to the general consensus here that this is an
| extremely valuable comment. At least for me it closely
| resonates with things I am only now discovering, at an age
| close to 40; the (in)ability to set and guard boundaries is
| super dependent upon early life and upbringing.
|
| Thanks for articulating this so clearly.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Setting boundaries is only a thing if you're able to
| implement them, just like in geopolitics.
|
| If you lack the power to implement them they mean nothing.
|
| Children can try and set the boundaries they want, but
| parents, family and society in general can just laugh and
| ignore them.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| You do need a certain degree of leverage. I think
| especially in the tech sector, people often do not realize
| how much leverage they have, and how a little pushback can
| go a long way. It is sometimes worth asking and testing:
| "Are they really going to fire me for this?"
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| A lot of us have jobs where the answer to that question
| is often "I don't know."
| munificent wrote:
| This is true, but it's worth taking a step up a meta level.
|
| People who don't believe they deserve to have their
| boundaries respected also don't tend to do things that will
| garner them the power that enables them to do so.
|
| The amount of power we have is not at all fixed. It can be
| changed by our choices and is meaningful mostly relative to
| the power of the people around us, and we also have a lot
| of choice around who those people are.
|
| In short, people who want their boundaries respected tend
| to work to avoid getting into situations where they aren't
| able to enforce them.
| robocat wrote:
| Setting boundaries implies conflict management. Most people
| have some power, but many fear to use their power because
| it risks conflict.
|
| Navigating conflict is hard.
|
| Many people are conflict avoiders, and they struggle to set
| boundaries. People pleasers or panderers in particular
| often cost themselves a lot to avoid conflict.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| Interesting, never thought of that that we even recreate family
| in our workplaces.
|
| My therapist said one sentence to me that stuck ,,... you are
| marrying your parents"
|
| Like you seek a partner that has similarities to your mother or
| father. I see that very often with friends.
| mawadev wrote:
| Thank you for your comment. Are there any books on this? I wish
| I could adapt this frame of mind :(
| jaredklewis wrote:
| This is interesting and I've also seen this sort of
| psychoanalysis applied to relationships, but I'm skeptical and
| don't understand the evidence for these sorts of analyses.
|
| What convinced you? Any particularly compelling resources re:
| the evidence and methodology for these theories?
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| If you earn some dough and are treated somewhat nice you have
| already hit the jackpot.
|
| Don't give up a perfectly good job just because you have power
| fantasy issues. You will always be a worker bee, that's just how
| the world is set up. Someone or something will own your ass
| regardless of your compensation structure.
| edg5000 wrote:
| Well said
| UK-AL wrote:
| I'm pretty sure people living off capital don't have that
| problem. It just won't be you.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| This is far more simple than it sounds. Do what others cannot to
| deliver success to the internal goals of the business. It is
| always more about capabilities and delivery and it's never really
| about hard work.
|
| These capabilities can include authoring new tools but most often
| are soft skills and better written communication. Many people
| will fail at this because they cannot perform or independently
| determine their own performance criteria.
|
| Sometimes the employers will set you up for failure by limiting
| your value potential so that you are a commodity. In these cases
| value is not what you add but how well you play a game.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes, its never actually about actual effort. Rewards are handed
| out based on outcomes, interpersonal skills and PERCEIVED
| effort.
| billy99k wrote:
| exactly. I've been a consultant for a large company for 7+
| years. We had a very large conversion project and I am the
| subject matter expert on one of the internal systems
| involved. My effort during the launch was minimal, because I
| knew the system so well and any data needed, I had already
| built tools years ago for extracting/manipulating it.
|
| My value (and effort), was seen as high from upper
| management. I also learned to schedule teams, slack, and
| email messages accordingly. Even if I get something done very
| fast, I can easily manipulate the perception around it.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I think perceived effort can be a positive or a negative.
| When you are starting you want to make it clear you are a
| hard worker. After that, no one cares and its better to look
| like you can easily handle what you are doing. No one
| promotes the person who is working really hard at the level
| below.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Well it's a goldilocks situation isn't it? No one promotes
| the person below who appears to be effortlessly coasting
| either.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > Simple... Do what others cannot to deliver success to the
| internal goals of the business.
|
| This is not simple at all:
|
| 1. The "things which others cannot" are, typically, not the
| tasks you are given. So you would be neglecting the work you've
| been actually given to work on other things which you believe
| are important.
|
| 2. Things which people can't do are typically considered as
| irrelevant-to-do, and thus not a goal. When you do those
| things, it is likely that their positive impact is not
| recognized by most people.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| It is astonishingly simple, but it isn't easy. Not everybody
| is willing to do the research and practice outside the job to
| make it easy.
| pixl97 wrote:
| And the big one...
|
| -3. Other people (mostly above you) will steal your glory and
| call it their own.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Simply be valuable. A child's game.
| eqmvii wrote:
| It's the difference between partnership track and various
| "counsel" type titles at law firms.
|
| The former grows (or at least maintains) a book of business and
| is valuable, the latter has key skills and is useful but clearly
| not to the same degree.
|
| And like many other contexts, the vast pipeline of people willing
| to dedicate their lives to trying to be useful mitigates the
| value of just being useful over time.
| palata wrote:
| Companies should value useful people, and lay off the managers
| who can't.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| You mean useless managers should put themselves out of the job
| and starve themselves when they have the choice to do neither?
| bloop0 wrote:
| Ah yes, the eternal quest for "feeling valued" at work -- as if
| we're all in a corporate therapy session instead of just here to
| solve problems, get paid, and go home. American companies love
| inventing emotional debt as a substitute for job security. Maybe
| next time I get laid off, they'll throw in a heartfelt Slack
| emoji to ease the blow.
| dakiol wrote:
| If we can't fantasize at something that's supposed to take a
| third of our day to day, man, that's depressing. I do
| understand that we need to be practical and do the job and get
| paid, but at some point one wakes up and wonders what the hell
| is one living for. Work is usually the last thing on my list,
| but I quickly wake up again and lick mister dollar's ass
| because I need money for food. You can manage to twist the
| meaning of the situation and feel good with yourself, but we
| are slaves, modern slaves.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I seems that there are different meanings to "valued".
|
| Here how the article defines it:
|
| > Being valued, on the other hand, means that you are brought
| into more conversations, not just to execute, but to help shape
| the direction. This comes with opportunities to grow and
| contribute in ways that are meaningful to you and the business.
|
| But I would say that in a business setting, the definition of
| being valued is usually much less abstract, it just means you are
| worth money, the value here is a dollar amount.
|
| Being valued this way doesn't mean that you will be given
| opportunities to grow, but it means that there is a good chance
| you won't be laid off, and that they will listen to your requests
| as an employee, because they consider that by losing you, they
| are going to lose money (that is, your value).
| npodbielski wrote:
| I think this is what auhtor meant by being usefull.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| You're right about the pay but I disagree about the layoff
| chances. Salary is rarely ever lowered, so if one is highly
| paid and suddenly not valued or useful or whatever then they
| will be more likely to be laid off for the business to get the
| salary budget back to offer to someone who is more whatever.
| k3vinw wrote:
| This hits close to home after recently being laid off.
|
| I believe in making yourself invaluable, but would caution
| against falling into a niche. Especially if you want to avoid
| getting caught up in a layoff. But as long as you have valuable
| skills you will be able to find other work. Some companies are
| better at hiring (talent acquisition) than others.
| api wrote:
| A lot of human status is based on primate signaling, not merit or
| usefulness, nor kindness or trustworthiness. It's based in the
| brain stem, not the neocortex.
|
| I have met useless, dumb or insane, but _charismatic_ people who
| can instantly be in charge of any room they walk into. It is not
| rational. It's monkey stuff. One of them is currently the
| President of the USA, and truth be told I think most presidents
| have these qualities to varying degrees. (The current one is just
| a very pure example.)
|
| That being said, it doesn't always work. It tends to work best on
| people who are inexperienced or who have some emotional need for
| a parent figure. But that's a lot of people.
| einpoklum wrote:
| There is another kind of useful-but-not-valued, and that's the
| person who does things that management ignores, or finds not
| worthy of investment of time, but inoculate against future
| trouble or enable other work, or make it considerably easier,
| down the line.
|
| If you engage in that kind of work, it's not just that you'll not
| be recognized/valued, but rather - be thought negatively of, for
| doing that.
| k3vinw wrote:
| I'm curious. What kind of work would management ignore or look
| at negatively? If the work needs done, shouldn't you be able to
| justify to management?
|
| For example, by doing X this will improve our efficiency in
| performing Y by 80% and help us achieve our goal by reducing
| time wasted on Z.
| VMtest wrote:
| can be hard to justify to the management because they don't
| value developer experience
| einpoklum wrote:
| > "this will improve our efficiency in performing Y by 80%"
|
| Even if we took your example: Suppose it will improve the
| efficiency based on other, additional, work that would take a
| long while, and it is not trivial to understand why.
|
| > "help us achieve our goal by reducing time wasted on Z."
|
| Manager may well tell you:
|
| * "I never allocate time for Z, only for concrete project
| goals. And nobody ever complains about wasting time on Z."
|
| * "I don't know if you guys waste time on Z or not, but I
| definitely know that if I approve your request you will be
| wasting time on it, rather than implementing a new feature or
| fixing a bug."
| k3vinw wrote:
| What you're describing is micro management and indicative
| of a toxic work environment.
| rs186 wrote:
| Great way to fool yourself.
|
| Sure you might get a surprise 50% bonus during a layoff. So you
| work even harder and put your heart in the company because you
| feel "grateful" for the appreciation -- the company apparently
| values you a lot. Guess what? You might be the perfect guy to lay
| off in the next round (as soon as within a few months), whether
| because of your role/performance of the quarter/relationship with
| new boss or just no reason.
|
| Good for you that it didn't happen like that. But plenty of
| people had such experience.
|
| Which is why I never put more effort or emotion than necessary
| for my job. When I think I need to work overtime, or when I get
| frustrated about something/someone at work and keep thinking
| about it after work, I ask myself, what if I get laid off
| tomorrow? Then the answer becomes apparent.
|
| It's funny that peasants tell each other the difference between
| "useful" and "valued". Capitalists can't get more of these.
| Executives are laughing in their chair reading this article.
| prmph wrote:
| > I had become the go-to person for making things run smoothly,
| for fixing urgent problems, for delivering. But every time I
| pushed toward more strategic and ambitious directions, there was
| a lot of can-kicking and "let's think about it" that went
| nowhere.
|
| If you are effective where you are, why would the organization
| want to promote you and lose the work you are doing now? Maybe
| the higher-ups were aware of the Peter Principle.
|
| More deeply, this hints at something we probably all need to
| internalize. Engineering and "management" should be separate
| tracks. Right now, management is mostly synonymous with people
| manage, lording it over people. Good engineers might aspire to
| rise higher into "management", which might be a poor fit for
| their skills, interests, and temperament. Engineers should be
| able to rise to the top as engineers.
|
| If you see management as your ideal destination, then go into
| that from the start. Become a management trainee, not an
| engineer. But overall I think (people) management should lose
| it's aura of prestige. It's just a skill like any other, and
| people in those positions are frequently ill suited to it.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I feel like "useful" and "valued" are very poor terms for the
| situations described in the article. I think a much better
| explanation is that just because you may excel in one role (and
| be recognized as such) does not necessarily mean you'll excel in
| another role. And heck, I think it's important to recognize these
| qualities and limitations _in yourself_. Calling this being
| "useful" or "valued" puts an emotional/moral spin on this that is
| unwarranted in my opinion.
|
| If anything, in a business relationship, I think it's important
| to recognize that nearly everyone is just "useful". It may be the
| case that people think you'll be more useful in an expanded role,
| and thus will give you advancement opportunities. But even then,
| the business environment may change, and your skills may not
| longer be highly prioritized. Just look at lots of the recent
| tech layoffs that have snared well-respected, senior
| technologists. Apparently they were "valued", until they weren't.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| another way to look at it is: just because you're excellent in
| one role, does not mean there's an upgrade path at any given
| business to improve salary+expectations.
|
| Some businesses structure this intentionally, to avoid the
| upward progression of salaries, and other businesses just arnt
| churning through projects and clients quick enough to expand to
| fit the upward momentum of their talent.
|
| Recognizing the real constraints on your value to a business
| model is important to not get stuck in the backwash of business
| value.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I agree that I think "value" might be the wrong term in the
| essay. I think there is an emotional/moral spin on "value"
| though. Too many workers are overworked and underpaid. If
| someone is undervalued, the answer isn't to give them _more_
| responsibilities (without a commensurate bump in pay). The
| answer is to pay your workers properly. The article touches on
| this, but doesn 't make the connection.
|
| Beyond that, in my experience, when trying to get a bigger
| role, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Some managers are not
| useful or just as overworked as we are, so they can't take the
| step back and properly evaluate who is ready for more
| responsibility. We have to advocate for ourselves.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Too many workers are overworked and underpaid. If someone
| is undervalued, the answer isn't to give them more
| responsibilities (without a commensurate bump in pay). The
| answer is to pay your workers properly
|
| I think this is very hard to measure, particularly from our
| outside perspective. I understand it may be more of a
| worldview axiom than a fact, and will get a chorus of nods in
| a group conversation, but I think it should be tested more
| like a fact than an axiom.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Too many workers are overworked and underpaid._
|
| The inherit friction means that some workers will sometimes
| be overworked and/or underpaid, but workers do not remain in
| overworked/underpaid situations for long. Given the real-
| world constraints, the exact right number of people are in
| that situation, not "too many".
|
| _> the answer isn 't to give them more responsibilities
| (without a commensurate bump in pay). The answer is to pay
| your workers properly._
|
| If the workers show up, you know you are paying them
| properly. That's not the issue here.
|
| Trouble is, at some point you run out of things to buy. Those
| who continue to seek more money beyond that do so because
| they are able to leverage it to increase their social value.
| -- But, in the case of the person in article, they were still
| failing to establish social value even with more money than
| they knew what to do with. Even more money than that wouldn't
| have helped them. They needed to find a new situation that
| was able to allow them to find the social value they were
| after.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| "Just look at lots of the recent tech layoffs that have snared
| well-respected, senior technologists. Apparently they were
| "valued", until they weren't"
|
| You are actually agreeing with the author here. Rephrase that
| to "Apparently they were useful, until they weren't"
|
| They weren't valued.
|
| I think the author is apt in their observation.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I think it could be the opposite: they were valued, but not
| useful.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I'll clarify, because, at least in my read of it, I am saying
| something very different than the author.
|
| I was using "valued" in scare quotes that sentence you quoted
| - yes, I agree, the literal meaning of what I was saying is
| that they were useful until they weren't.
|
| But, thus, I think it's important to understand that, at
| least from a business perspective, they were never "valued",
| and so I don't think it's helpful to think of things in those
| terms - again, I think that term implies a, well, value
| judgement that is inappropriate in the context.
|
| By analogy, what I'm trying to say is similar to the
| difference between using the words "team" and "family" in a
| business context. I think using team is fine - teams want to
| win, and they cut people all the time if they don't have the
| right skills to help them win. Using the word "family" is
| simply bullshit, and it's just manipulation by business
| owners to try to get more work out of employees.
|
| So my advice is to not _ever_ think of yourself as "valued"
| in business. Remember that you are always just useful
| depending on the context of your role, your skills, and the
| current business environment.
| phkahler wrote:
| There's a distinction the author was making. If we ignore
| the words used "useful" and "valuable", can you see the
| distinction in the way a company may view people? I'm not
| sure you even think beyond "useful" and "even more useful".
| I'm not sure you see it as more than a difference in
| degree, when the author is claiming it's a difference in
| kind.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| "Valued" != "valuable". "Valued" is emotional, "valuable"
| is transactional, as is "useful".
| osigurdson wrote:
| I think the author is over indexing on the value that the
| company brings to its customers and the value that an
| employee beings to the company - as if there is just a kind
| of lossless value roll up going on here. In reality, there
| are many humans in the mix - various gatekeepers with all
| kinds of objective functions that are not necessarily aligned
| with the overall stated objective of the company. The better
| a company is, the more aligned it will be, but still good to
| keep in mind the gatekeeper layers in an org and what their
| actual objective functions are.
| mathgeek wrote:
| I think it's worth differentiating between value (i.e.
| having value) and valued (i.e. the people who control your
| future at a company seeing value in your work, whether or
| not it reflects reality).
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Isn't that what the original author is doing by using
| "useful" to mean "adds value" vs "valued" which means
| what you're saying it means in this context?
| xp84 wrote:
| > layoffs that have snared well-respected, senior
| technologists. Apparently they were "valued", until they
| weren't"
|
| See, I think it's more honest to say that 99% of employees
| are not valued at all, in that "the company" or top
| management actually care about what you think _because you
| think it._ People are kept around as long as the person 1-2
| levels above them in management believe they have a positive
| short-term ROI, and everyone will be unceremoniously let go
| nearly instantly the moment they think they don 't need you,
| whether you have just not distinguished yourself, or just
| basically at random when revenue misses dictate general
| cutbacks.
|
| The author of the piece seems to place great personal
| significance specifically on his ideas mattering to the
| execs, but I think that may not be such an important thing to
| every personality type. I do mildly like being part of some
| 'strategic' conversations, but it's honestly more because I
| don't want the tech team to be blindsided by an impossible
| product requirement, and because I feel like I am good at
| identifying low-hanging fruit. But in terms of whether the
| company pursues one strategy or another at the highest level,
| that is hard, and you have to feel pretty bad when you make a
| bad bet. I don't think I need that at all to be happy.
| eitally wrote:
| I actually don't agree, but I'm open to being convinced
| otherwise. I posit that there's an employer expectation that
| every employee will be "useful", but utility is a fungible
| characteristic and the majority of managers and employers treat
| job descriptions of standardized roles just like that.
| Employees in those roles are susceptible to both replacement
| and career advancement, depending how "useful" they are, and
| how the company is doing.
|
| That's an entirely different set of metrics than determining
| "value". Being valuable means being a trusted strategic voice
| to some portion of the leadership, and being recognized for
| contributions that go beyond (horizontally or diagonally) the
| employee's job description. In many cases, this value = trust
| relationship is evidenced by how frequently senior managers
| bring former employees with them when joining new firms, or how
| small & tight knit the community is for specialty
| roles/functions.
|
| Lots of fresh grads and junior staff focus 99% on being useful,
| but career advancement beyond the first one or two promotions
| depends MUCH more on being valued.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Lots of fresh grads and junior staff focus 99% on being
| useful, but career advancement beyond the first one or two
| promotions depends MUCH more on being valued.
|
| "People don't remember who went to grab drinks on a Tuesday,
| but they'll remember who helped them close a million dollar
| deal and get a huge bonus"
|
| Give your coworkers superpowers and opportunities will flow.
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| I think both of these things can be true at the same time -
| the issue with a lot of utility-based value is that it
| often comes in the form of unsustainable heroism. My
| capacity to feed back interesting thoughts about product
| and strategy in domains I'm familiar with is probably
| greater than your capacity or desire to consume them, but
| my capacity to do various forms of high-precision grunt
| work (set up configurations for clients, misc. project
| work, ship XYZ feature into the product) is much easier to
| consume and ultimately overload.
|
| Closing that million dollar deal as a sprint might be
| memorable, but being the go-to configurator for Azure cloud
| services isn't, and the difference between heroic level
| systems management and mediocre button clicker requires
| hard squinting if you're non-technical. Hell, I'm technical
| and would struggle to tell the difference just because IT
| isn't usually my domain.
|
| And if the person you're working with has no appreciation
| of what an average performance is, any mistake will be seen
| as a defect even if what you're doing is otherwise heroic.
| asielen wrote:
| "People don't remember who went to grab drinks on a
| Tuesday, but they'll remember who helped them close a
| million dollar deal and get a huge bonus"
|
| Outside of sales and senior leadership I don't agree with
| this statement. Maybe it is just because I've reached a
| time in my life where I could care less about the hustle
| and just want a job where it can solve interesting problems
| for no more than 8 hours a day. And then get home to my
| family.
|
| For ladder climbers sure, but at some point relationships
| are more important than dollars. (As long as you have a
| enough to live of course).
|
| And if you are struggling to make ends meet and you get a
| pat on a back for deal support, that feels more exploitive
| than anything else. Yay, I helped make someone else money.
|
| Being a highly productive, easy to work with, solution
| oriented coworker is a super power in it's own right.
| Swizec wrote:
| > but at some point relationships are more important than
| dollars
|
| Sure. Who do you have a better relationship with: That
| engineer who drops everything they're doing to come help
| you with a gnarly bug when asked, or the dude who's
| always at happy hour but nowhere to be seen when you need
| something?
| fragmede wrote:
| but who are you gonna go to first when there's a gnarly
| bug? the guy you had drinks with last night, or anybody
| else?
| fragmede wrote:
| I think the point is going for drinks gets you a pat on
| the back at bonus time but deal support gets you a more
| sizable bump.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I understand with what you're saying, and I agree for the
| most part. I just think describing this as "value" vs.
| "usefulness" is the wrong framing and unhelpful, and I can
| think of specific examples from my past that show this.
|
| First, what you are describing in this comment sounds very
| much to me like following the adage "be loyal to people, not
| companies", and to that I totally agree. It's definitely
| critical in your career to build trust and relationships with
| folks you work with, and be dependable.
|
| But for an example of why I think this "useful" vs. "valued"
| framing is wrong, I can think of a colleague at a previous
| company who I think was great at her role - she was a
| relatively junior (i.e. a couple years of experience) front
| end developer. She was responsive, implemented features well,
| and always demoed her work well and was extremely prepared.
| People also loved working with her - she was friendly, had
| very little ego, and had an almost disarming way of
| interacting with folks that would instantly defuse tensions
| on her team. I would work with her again in a heartbeat, and
| she was a great addition to her team.
|
| At the same time, after working with her a while it became
| clear that her developer skills were limited. She was a great
| taskmaster, but the didn't have a great "systems-wide" way of
| thinking. She would implement features as requested, but when
| she would give demos I remember there were a bunch of times
| that there were semi-obvious questions ("Wait, how would the
| user get to screen A if they click button B first?") that she
| didn't bring up beforehand and did't consider in her
| implementations. I could trust her to implement individual
| components and screens, but I couldn't really say "Here's a
| description of the user problem, and the general direction we
| want to go in - how would you solve this?"
|
| So if you asked me, I would say this person was a very valued
| person on her team. In her role, I think she was great. But I
| also don't think I'd expect her to perform well if she was
| asked to go in more "strategic and ambitious directions", as
| taken from the article.
| yibg wrote:
| It seems the difference is just the degree of usefulness /
| value. Rather than being different terms, I think they're
| just different spots on the spectrum. What's the difference
| between someone being "useful" vs "valuable", one is 6/10 the
| other is 8+/10 (made up numbers).
|
| A sales person that consistently hits quota is useful. A
| rainmaker that keeps bringing in million dollar deals is
| valuable.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| An Ops contributor who saves the company millions in
| operating costs, however, might be extremely valuable, but
| may or may not be valued.
| drdec wrote:
| I think you have missed the subtle difference between
| "valuable" (which you introduced) and "valued" (which is
| the subject of the article)
| mjr00 wrote:
| > Lots of fresh grads and junior staff focus 99% on being
| useful, but career advancement beyond the first one or two
| promotions depends MUCH more on being valued.
|
| Yeah. I've seen a lot of ICs get stuck at the "senior
| developer" level rather than progressing to team lead,
| staff/principal eng, etc because they were too focused on
| being useful, by cranking through Jira tickets and features,
| rather than thinking strategic and higher level. This is a
| totally fine career choice, but there's only so far that
| "coding better and faster" can take you.
|
| The counterintuitive part is increasing your _valuableness_
| often reduces your _usefulness_. As a mundane example, in
| early stage startups there may be one engineer who handles
| production deployments, schema migrations, and on-call
| duties. This is extremely useful! For this engineer to
| increase their _value_ , however, they'll want to automate
| production deployments, teach others how to run schema
| migrations, and set up on-call alerting and schedules. By
| doing this, they become less useful, since others can now do
| their work, but more valuable, since they've been able to
| delegate responsibilities.
| kmoser wrote:
| I think you're twisting the original article's meaning of
| "useful" and "valuable." Useful means you are able to
| contribute meaningfully. Valuable means you are perceived
| as being able to provide value to the company (in this case
| by being useful), and are treated accordingly.
|
| An engineer who does their job so well that they reduce
| everyone's workload by automating things and showing others
| how to do some of their tasks doesn't become less useful;
| in fact just the opposite, since presumably they will
| continue to need to do this as the landscape changes and
| not everybody will have their advanced knowledge of how to
| efficiently organize things at a high level.
| mjr00 wrote:
| I didn't interpret the article that way.
|
| > Being useful means that you are good at getting things
| done in a specific area, so that people above you can
| delegate that completely. You are reliable, efficient,
| maybe even indispensable in the short term. But you are
| seen primarily as a gap-filler, someone who delivers on
| tasks that have to be done but are not necessarily a core
| component of the company strategy.
|
| I take this to mean "usefulness" is: you have a tactical
| role in the company, where you are able to perform
| necessary tasks. If you can perform them with little
| supervision, you are very useful.
|
| However, "value" is _eliminating those gaps entirely_.
| Instead of being the on-call person who fixes every
| issue, which is undeniably useful, you fix the root
| causes so those issues don 't happen. This _does_ make
| you less useful, by definition, because fewer on-call
| issues means there 's fewer reasons to keep you around.
| But assuming you also do an ok job of communicating what
| you've done, and your bosses aren't totally clueless,
| people will recognize this as _valuable_. The fact that
| you were able to identify a systemic issue and address it
| is what makes you valuable, and it will get you invited
| into broader technically strategic discussions. In
| theory, at least.
|
| Again these are just my interpretation of useful vs
| valuable as far as the article's definition. I don't
| agree with the terms in a broader sense.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| As another commenter mentioned, what you are describing is
| simply strategic vs tactical thinking, and IMO those are
| much more accurate, standardized, and less judgmental terms
| for the situation than "useful" vs "valued".
| mjr00 wrote:
| Yeah the article using "useful" and "valuable" isn't
| ideal, but I was sticking with those terms for
| discussion. I agree it's largely about strategic vs
| tactical thinking.
| 3acctforcom wrote:
| Perception is reality. In my experience, if you're a
| "useful" employee to your management you are boxed into
| tactical. If you're "valued" then you are invited into
| strategic decision making.
|
| It really doesn't matter how much strategic thinking you
| do if nobody cares.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| It is the _dumbest_ thing ever for a company to evaluate
| someone as not useful based on their perceived skill set. What
| makes someone not useful is their tendency to show up to get
| shit done or not, nothing else.
| strken wrote:
| Sometimes you're an investment, sometimes you're insurance, and
| other times you're a luxury or even an impulse buy.
|
| I think this is a better framing because it explains some
| behaviours that are otherwise baffling: if I'm hurting for
| cash, I'm going to stop adding to my savings before I cancel
| all my insurance, even if the expected rate of return is
| higher.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Often, especially in large businesses, which of these
| categories you fall into (investment, insurance,
| luxury/impulse buy) is more a function of which of these
| buckets your _business unit_ is in than you as an individual.
|
| I've always tried to avoid working for cost centers, where
| the business's goal is to reduce cost as much as possible
| while continuing to provide the necessary utility (like on-
| premise IT). Cost centers are most prone to offshoring and
| automation; and this is where the "AI threat" is most likely
| to materialize.
|
| But if your business unit is viewed as an _investment center_
| (like an R &D center), you're part of a strategic asset and
| you're also (by proxy) viewed as an investment. Luxury and
| impulse buys also happen here a lot more often.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I really like this comment and I think your framing is the
| correct way to think about it.
|
| For example, when I look through the pattern of folks in my
| LinkedIn network who have been hit hard by layoffs, it's
| clear to me that a lot of roles were "luxuries" or "impulse
| buys" during the ZIRP era, and so many of those roles have
| vanished over the past 2 years or so.
| throwaway201606 wrote:
| The piece is good but I think the primary segmentation is not
| 'useful' vs 'valued', it is strategic vs. tactical.
|
| The author actually realizes this but did not nail this idea to
| the church door as part of his manifesto.
| >Being valued, on the other hand, means that you are brought
| into >more conversations, not just to execute, but to
| help shape the > direction. This comes with
| opportunities to grow and contribute > in ways that
| are meaningful to you and the business.
|
| The first part is not being 'valued'; this is being a 'useful
| strategically'.
|
| The second part - "opportunities to grow and contribute in ways
| that are meaningful to you and the business." - that is being
| 'valued strategically' > Being useful means
| that you are good at getting things done in a >
| specific area, so that people above you can delegate that
| > completely. You are reliable, efficient, maybe even
| > indispensable in the short term. But you are seen primarily
| as a gap-filler, > someone who delivers on tasks that
| have to be done but are not > necessarily a core
| component of the company strategy. "Take care > of
| that and don't screw up" is your mission, and the fewer
| > headaches you create for your leadership chain, the bigger
| the rewards.
|
| The first is not being 'useful'; this is being a 'useful
| tactically'.
|
| The second part, "Take care of that and don't screw up" is your
| mission, and the fewer headaches you create for your leadership
| chain, the bigger the rewards." is being 'valued tactically'.
|
| So, the theory is every member of staff is dropped BOTH a
| 'useful' and 'valued' bucket for tactical work and for
| strategic work.
|
| ie: - one can be useful or not useful for strategic or tactical
| work or both - one can be valued or not valued for strategic or
| tactical work or both
|
| A couple of counterpoints:
|
| 1. You can,unfortunately, be useful strategically and not be
| valued. Think about the hachet man every leader of a large
| organization has - the guy who does the layoffs. That slot is
| useful strategically but can be filled by almost anyone - it is
| not valued by the org.
|
| 2. You can, fortunately, be useful tactically, useless
| strategically, and be be very very valued in an organization.
| Best examples of this are folks who are very very good at
| running operations. Think about a good truck dispatcher, or a
| 911 operator or an air traffic controller. 90% of their job is
| effective tactical execution - dealing with this emerging
| situation right now effectively and efficiently. That is highly
| valuable to organizations.
|
| Also note that every org needs strategy people and tactical
| people for long and short term.
|
| One is not better than the other. They are just different.
|
| And there are lots of very highly paid tactical roles,
| sometimes better paid, that are more challenging and more
| interesting than any strategy role.
|
| These tend to be "do this or fix this thing right now
| efficiently and effectively" jobs.
|
| For example, almost any practicing medial role is a tactical
| one - ER doctor (fix this sick person right now) or controllers
| for real time stuff - concert and live TV producers (make this
| thing look good right now), air traffic controllers (keep these
| planes safe right now) etc etc.
|
| So, net net, pick you spot - tactical vs strategic or both,
| useful vs. valuable or both - get good at it and then may the
| odds always be in your favor.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| You're not nearly jaded about about the modern media landscape.
| A boring and "correct" (whatever that means in context) writing
| about a subject like this will never make it to the top of a
| comment based platform because it needs to be wrong or at least
| loosely worded enough the low denominator reader can engage
| with it in the form of commentary, further people can bicker
| with them, etc, etc. It's basically the modern version of a
| playwright 500yr ago designing a play such that the audience of
| illiterate peasants can participate, only it's high brow
| instead of for the masses.
| varispeed wrote:
| In a corporation, everyone is "useful" - that's the bare
| minimum for staying on payroll. Even those doing meaningless
| work are sometimes kept just so competitors can't poach them.
| Big tech overhires deliberately, parking talent in BS roles to
| block rivals.
|
| The notion of being "useful" is ironically useless. The only
| real measure is your pay: if the company pays you well, they
| consider you important. If you think you're useful but your
| compensation doesn't reflect that, you're being exploited - and
| all that talk of "belonging" and "usefulness" is just corporate
| mind games to keep you emotionally captive.
| baxtr wrote:
| I think there is a difference though. I have seen people who
| are useful but not perceived as being valuable.
|
| Key differentiator in all these cases was bad or missing
| communication.
|
| Do good stuff and make sure enough people notice. If you don't
| self-market yourself, others who are less useful to the company
| for sure will.
| munificent wrote:
| The choice of words here also didn't resonate with me.
|
| I think the distinction the author is really getting at is
| whether the business views you as _fungible_.
|
| My couch is useful and provides value. It would be hard to
| relax in my living room without it. But if I had to pack up and
| move across the country, I'd probably ditch the couch and buy a
| new one when I got there. It's useful and valuable, but also
| replaceable.
|
| I don't play it much these days, so my bass guitar arguably
| isn't very useful or valuable. But I've had it 20 years and
| have a lot of important memories attached to it. If I have to
| move, I'm not selling it and buying a new one.
|
| Maybe another way to state it is whether you have more value to
| the company than your replacement cost.
| jongjong wrote:
| What I hate about office politics is that it feels like all the
| planets have to align to get what you want. It's not reliable.
|
| I'm way too clumsy and unpredictable for this 'one shot to make
| an impression' approach. During critical times, I tend to put
| forward my worst self, I can't help it. I tend to pathologically
| undersell myself and my work. Like my brain wants me to do
| everything on hard mode, just for entertainment value and so that
| I have stuff to talk/complain about. It's like I self-sabotage to
| ensure that my success rate stays below 10%.
|
| When bad stuff happens, I don't even feel anything anymore. I
| expect failure. Though I still feel really great in those rare
| times when good stuff happens.
| agumonkey wrote:
| What surprises me, is that software engineering is not immune to
| that. I thought a domain where applied math and precision is
| normal would lead to a place where speed and quality would be
| praised, but human dynamics overshadow all of this and you end up
| swimming in politics just as in most jobs (some manual labour
| jobs are more easily quantifiable and high performers are praised
| though).
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| There is an enormous, invisible river of wealth flowing all
| around us. An individual can contribute to it, and draw some off
| from it as it flows by. In an ideal world, each would withdraw in
| direct proportion to the amount they contribute: A salesman goes
| out and shares a solution to a problem that a customer didn't
| know could be solved, and takes a commission for this information
| distribution, an executive turns a large problem into small ones
| which can be solved by individual engineers and gets compensation
| in proportion to the managerial activities involved, and those
| individual engineers create the solution and receive a salary in
| proportion to their skill and effort and share in creating that
| value. Right?
|
| No, this is too often completely wrong. Having utility is only
| half the battle, you also need leverage to withdraw in proportion
| to that utility. If the customers all know about the problem and
| your product, but your company has a near monopoly, the salesmen
| can position themselves as middlemen where the entire transaction
| flows past them, and they'll siphon off some nice round number -
| say 10% - completely disconnected from the minimal or even
| negative value they contributed to the process. Conversely, the
| engineers can find themselves completely powerless to negotiate
| compensation, producing value to the company 10x or 20x their
| salary, out of view of the customers and with no leverage to
| extract any more or less from the process.
|
| > _'Go where the rich and powerful are,' I'd tell him, 'and learn
| their ways. They can be flattered and they can be scared. Please
| them enormously or scare them enormously, and one moonless night
| they will put their fingers to their lips, warning you not to
| make a sound. And they will lead you through the dark to the
| widest, deepest river of wealth ever known to man. You'll be
| shown your place on the riverbank, and handed a bucket all your
| own. Slurp as much as you want, but try to keep the racket of
| your slurping down. A poor man might hear.'_
|
| Kurt Vonnegut, "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater"
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/4076-god-bless-you-mr-...
| edg5000 wrote:
| Beautiful
| CooCooCaCha wrote:
| This is related to Marx's concept of surplus value. That
| capitalism is based on most people being under-compensated for
| the full value of their labor so that someone else can be
| overcompensated for their labor.
| Simulacra wrote:
| Those are interchangeable.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| The best advice is to keep applying for new opportunities
| continuously. At minimum, one per month. Never stop, even when
| things are going great. Your employer doesn't care about your
| career as much as you will.
| Havoc wrote:
| Also found being the person with historical knowledge and insight
| into details is quite dangerous. Means regardless of what's going
| wrong you're the first one being pulled in.
| bko wrote:
| > If you're valued, you'll likely see a clear path for
| advancement and development, you might get more strategic roles
| and involvement in key decisions. If you are just useful, your
| role might feel more stagnant.
|
| I think it might just be the organization or people. I know a lot
| of engineers that don't want to progress to management or other
| "strategic" roles. They're happy doing what they're doing and
| they often complain about a culture that expects them to grow in
| these very narrowly defined bands that eschews technical ability.
|
| Framing it this way as though to truly "value" an employee you
| have to expand the scope and nature of his work does more harm
| that good. I think it's more about having an honest conversation
| with management and set expectations. Management often doesn't
| want to mess up something if it's going well so may not take
| initiative.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I think this is missing the point. I have been at the same
| level in organizations where people really cared what you
| thought. They ask, invite you to councils, show you future
| plans. And I have had similar roles where I was shut out. The
| point is not whether you want to advance or not. Are you
| valued?
| jstummbillig wrote:
| From the perspective of an employer, this is mostly nonsense.
|
| > But you are seen primarily as a gap-filler
|
| You are, if the org works, seen as a person fulfilling an
| important enough function (because... otherwise you would not be
| hired) and if you then do that, that is fantastic. When anything
| doesn't work, that sucks, and that is something that every
| employer understands.
|
| However if you are not okay with the role that you are occupying
| in that apparatus, or no longer okay, that's not on your employer
| (unless, of course, you have been mislead about your role or
| trajectory). Some people are looking to do a specific thing for a
| long time and getting really good at that, and it makes me sad to
| see when people try to cast shadow on that. I certainly wouldn't,
| but I would caution against projecting your own value judgements
| onto other people. It says more about how you look at the world,
| and what kind of place you would create, than it says about the
| company you work for.
| ednite wrote:
| Reading this thread, and having been around a while, I agree with
| most of what's being said. If I could go back and coach my
| younger self through the mess of work life (promotions, burnout,
| undervaluation), I'd hand over three books that ended up being
| practical maps more than just philosophy.
|
| Some valuable insights from thee books are:
|
| Sun Tzu: The Art of War Success often comes from preparation and
| positioning, not effort alone. Promotions tend to go to people
| who made themselves hard to ignore before opportunities opened
| up. Don't fight every battle, pick the ones that matter.
|
| Marcus Aurelius: Meditations Focus on what you can control. Most
| stress comes from chasing recognition or reacting to things you
| can't change.
|
| Dale Carnegie: How to Win Friends and Influence People Being
| technically strong isn't enough. Careers are shaped by
| relationships. Listening, being likable, and helping others shine
| often creates more traction than pushing your own brilliance.
|
| If I had started with these mindsets earlier, I probably would've
| saved a few years of frustration. Good luck to everyone dealing
| with these issues.
| CapitalTntcls wrote:
| At the end of the day, as an engineer, you will always be as
| replaceable as any factory worker. If the market wants cheaper
| worker, they will just layoff a bunch and hire again with lower
| salaries.
|
| There is life outside your job, you only live once.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I don't feel like this post has any cohesive thesis. It seems to
| have been written mainly to brag.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| If you are useful but not valued all that creates is extreme
| resentment.
|
| Competence, especially when objective and irrefutable but not
| accompanied by what are assumed to be mandatory associated traits
| (see halo effect) is seen as an affront to nature and creates a
| very intense sense of dissonance and injustice that prompts
| corrective measures, usually in the form of scapegoating.
| bwfan123 wrote:
| > valued, on the other hand, means that you are brought into more
| conversations, not just to execute, but to help shape the
| direction
|
| This article is heavy on emotional persuation, but rationally, it
| is not even operationally defining the terms. It posits the
| existence of 2 categories of employees, when, it is hard to know
| if they even exist.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| I guess the point is that the ~slaves~ paid laborers that built
| the pyramids were "useful", but the people that told them what
| shape to build were "valued"?
|
| Tools are useful but ultimately can be thrown in the trash.
| Valuable things must be preserved and treated with respect.
| Strategic thinkers and VCs are treasured, but workers and ICs are
| dispensable.
|
| This is just a lot of words to imply a moral hierarchy around
| social class.
| meepmorp wrote:
| > I guess the point is that the slaves that built the pyramids
| were "useful"
|
| just to nitpick - the consensus among historians now is that
| the pyramids were built by paid laborers, not slaves
| hermannj314 wrote:
| I appreciate this correction.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I completely understand the allure of this line of thinking,
| but a better way to quantify this is people who are collecting
| a paycheck vs. people who are taking on risk.
|
| I have noticed as I got older that many paycheck collectors are
| totally unaware of risk (as I was), likely because it plays no
| part in there day to day life. They are hyper-focused on the
| minority whose bets paid off and got obscenely wealthy, and
| totally unaware of the massive graveyard of those who
| incinerated their life savings. Hell it's not uncommon for a
| business to collapse because of honest mistakes made by the
| paycheck collectors, who upon the business closing just went
| and got another job, maybe after being on unemployment for a
| bit. For the risk takers, I can tell you that unemployment
| checks don't cover lost equity.
|
| The rub here is that the paycheck collectors _also highly value
| the "good" risk takers_. Most people, given the opportunity,
| would put their money into a fund managed by someone with an
| excellent track record.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| perceived usefulness becomes value
| Caelus9 wrote:
| I'm not sure "useful" or "valued" really captures how things work
| at most jobs. In my experience, whether you get promoted or paid
| well has more to do with things like: how much money you help the
| company make whether your role is hard to replace and honestly,
| how well you get along with others But there's another layer too.
| The people who really stand out often: think ahead of their
| manager and get things done before being asked know how to make
| the right call in stressful moments and are just genuinely good
| to work with That last one is underrated. In a crisis, the person
| everyone quietly turns to that's usually the real MVP, no matter
| their title.
| CaffeineLD50 wrote:
| The use of passive voice and vagueness hides the actors involved:
| namely management.
|
| But they always have a spreadsheet where they calculate how they
| can convert your former salary into their bonus.
|
| "Never underestimate (management) greed" - to paraphrase
| Scarface.
| afiodorov wrote:
| The article's 'useful vs. valued' distinction is spot on, and for
| me, it largely hinges on perceived replaceability.
|
| Being a diligent workhorse makes you 'useful' - you're reliably
| closing tickets. But 'valued' often means bringing innovation or
| strategic foresight that's harder to replicate.
|
| Sometimes, too much visible grind on routine tasks can almost cap
| your perceived value. It reminds me of the senior dev whose Jira
| updates might be terse -- like 'Continuing research on core
| problem' -- for days. They're not judged on daily ticket volume,
| but on the eventual breakthrough or critical insight that
| unblocks everyone or defines the next big thing. That signals a
| different kind of leverage and indispensability than just high
| output.
| evilduck wrote:
| > like 'Continuing research on core problem' -- for days
|
| I've seen these tickets a bunch.
|
| They have two types of authors, the first is the person
| flailing to accomplish anything and hoping that they can
| recruit someone else to figure it out or to take it over before
| they're found out. The second is the person who is failing to
| communicate what strategies they're using to solve the problem.
| Neither person is all that valuable, though the second type
| will at least be useful to someone who will eventually take
| credit for their work.
| chasd00 wrote:
| "useful" and "valued" are kind of in the eye of the beholder. As
| long as my paycheck is on time and doesn't bounce then i feel
| perfectly valued per the deal I made with my employer. As for
| useful, i don't really care as long as i'm valued per my
| definition above.
| temp0826 wrote:
| value = usefulness / wages
| willtemperley wrote:
| If you're employed, you're probably valued and useful in some
| respect.
|
| I think a much more important question is: what are you being
| valued for and does that fit with your goals?
|
| A person who wants to build skills to take on the world's most
| challenging problems probably doesn't want to be valued for their
| ability to grind on the tedious tasks or because they look good
| in marketing materials, for example.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have been both.
|
| I worked for a Japanese company, for most of my career. My non-
| Japanese status, often meant that folks with clout would not look
| to me, for input, when making strategies.
|
| Personally, I think that it was OK, for a lot of stuff, as I
| really wasn't a "native," when it came to corporate culture, but
| E.L.E. disastrous, in a couple of instances; namely, where they
| were dealing with American companies. They made critical
| mistakes, by not understanding the culture.
|
| But they did value me, and my team. They gave us work that was
| "corporate DNA" stuff. So secret, even our CEO didn't know about
| it. We had a _very_ high level of trust, with Japan. Not sure the
| names the author gave to the two different approaches are ones
| that I would use.
| havblue wrote:
| I unfortunately still have to revert to the "customer is always
| right" level of understanding, the customer being either external
| or management or... whoever can get you booted. A lot of the time
| it doesn't matter what you fixed on the way to attempting to
| complete your behind schedule widget. If it's late they may
| ultimately blame you for it and ignore the positive effects. ...
| Because someone might have to fall on their sword.
| autobodie wrote:
| > _any drudge can do it if they're prepared to sit in front of
| the computer for a few days_
|
| It still remains a fact that most working people don't have a few
| days to sit in front of a computer making art. Especially not
| uninterrupted.
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| I feel like everyone is going to think they are useful. Not sure
| how meaningful this is.
| gxs wrote:
| I have tools in my garage that are quite useful - I'll likely end
| up selling some of them for cheap because while they are fine
| tools, they aren't especially...valuable to me
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Leadership made it clear that they saw me as critical to the
| company's future, not just because of what I had delivered in the
| past, but to help shape what came next.
|
| The more useful, though more crude, metric I use in my career is
| to estimate how replaceable or disposable I am.
|
| This is extraordinarily hard to evaluate at first because we all
| tend to look at our little domains of the code and imagine how
| they'd collapse without us. You have to have some humility and
| some business sense to start recognizing how critical you and
| your inputs are to the company's mission.
|
| Nothing brings this in focus quite like being in a meeting where
| a company is forced to cut budgets and lay people off. I know
| that's not helpful because most people won't get to see that
| directly, but you can start to imagine how that looks if you do
| the thought exercise enough times. Imagine the company _had to_
| cut some percentage of headcount to avoid bankruptcy. Would you
| be cut at the 10% threshold? The 50% threshold? 80%? I guarantee
| your first estimates are going to be too optimistic, but it's a
| helpful thought exercise.
|
| From the mentorship side, I frequently see people confuse being
| good at their job with being irreplaceable. When push comes to
| shove, a lot of companies can cut deeply, hire some entry-level
| people to put out fires, and coast for a year or two until
| budgets are good again. This leads to a lot of great but generic
| front-end, mobile app, devops, or other generic positions getting
| cut. The company will suffer a bit, but rarely does complete
| collapse occur (despite what we like to imagine).
|
| On the other hand, there are roles where companies cannot cut
| without immediate and long lasting pain. Cutting lead developers
| of core products or kicking out the sales team isn't an option.
| It's always the people working on generic problems, side quests,
| pet projects, or acting as clean up crews for the main teams who
| are _normally_ too valuable to put on the generic work who get
| cut.
|
| It's possible for work to be _valuable_ but also be eminently
| replaceable, offshore-able, or be a top candidate for being
| paused or cancelled when the budgets suddenly get tight.
|
| Yeah the company needs a website and needs front-end developers
| for it, but does it need to be you? Or even in-house at all?
| vitaflo wrote:
| Most important thing I learned in my career is that everyone is
| replaceable. Once you realize that and accept it work becomes a
| lot more freeing.
| i_love_retros wrote:
| Be useful enough and someone will always pay you.
|
| Want to sell your soul and climb the corporate ladder so that you
| are "valued", go for it. You won't be so valued when the company
| gets bought and they don't need two vice presidents of blah.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I thought this would be about what you actually do versus what
| you're perceived as doing.
|
| That's how I'd interpret these words. "Useful" means you do
| something that's beneficial to the company (or at least your
| management). "Valued" means that the company (or at least your
| management) _believes_ you do something that 's beneficial to
| them. In a well-run company, these match well. In many companies,
| they don't.
|
| Being valued is a big part of what drives advancement. If you're
| seen as beneficial then the company (or management) will usually
| try to keep you, and offer you opportunities to expand that
| benefit. If management sees and understands what you do, then
| being useful can suffice here. Otherwise, the gap between these
| things means you need to be political and ensure that your
| usefulness is seen and understood.
|
| The article seems to be talking about leverage, collaboration,
| and reach. Your usefulness on your own is limited. Beyond a
| certain point, the only way to become more useful is to start
| acting as a multiplier to other people's efforts. That's what it
| describes as "valued," but that really doesn't seem like the
| right word at all.
|
| I'd put it like this: success on the job depends on how you're
| seen, not just what you do. Be mindful of how those are connected
| at your particular position. And your impact, both in terms of
| practical outcomes and visibility, can only grow so much on your
| own. If you want to go beyond that, you need to work with others
| and multiply their work.
| trey34627 wrote:
| Guessing most women fall into the useful category then, as
| they're kept out of conversations a lot.
| notjes wrote:
| My experience is: If you are good at something, you will do it
| for ever. Be good - or get good - at things that you value.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| It's just your measure of value va theirs is different.
| revskill wrote:
| No, it depends who's valuing you.
| schmookeeg wrote:
| I have traded within a quite tight comp band for my entire 30
| year tech career. I am useful in general. I have been valued by
| being offered "promotions" and "strategic instead of tactical"
| positions, but I always chafe.
|
| I enjoy the work. I enjoy solving specific problems in tech.
|
| I do not enjoy the "business" of tech and have no interest in any
| of it.
|
| I definitely have inadequate drive to grow a business and make
| others wealthy, even if I get a few crumbs.
|
| For me, contracting is the perfect match. I don't need to get
| involved in your politics, I just need to eat jira tickets.
| Realiably and well. When there are none to eat, I can go do my
| own things.
|
| I would need to care a LOT more about the business and dollars to
| excel at it, and lately I lean in the opposite direction. I see
| nothing wrong with simply being comfortable and useful. We have
| it good that we can make this choice.
|
| $0.02 :)
| mancerayder wrote:
| The relationship between a contractor and a business is more
| honest: exchange labor time for cash.
|
| Between an employee and employer, enter ideology: I do this
| because I love it/love helping clients/ working communally to
| improve the business. Or competition: my bonus is 50 percent of
| my salary and we're stack-ranked. Or fear: oh my god, I got
| only Meets Expectations in my review. Will my pay be flat?
|
| And contractors get to not have constant meetings.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| To be fair to employers... even high performers need
| comforting lies some of the time.
|
| (and middling performers a lot more)
|
| I don't think anyone (excluding the literally deranged)
| spends their day trying to maximize the number of lies
| directed at employees.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| And also to be fair to employers. A decent amount of
| employees are not really "doers". Perhaps they contribute
| in other ways.
| schmookeeg wrote:
| Sadly my experience has been that "Perhaps" there is
| doing more work than it can bear :)
| PantaloonFlames wrote:
| I'm curious / what other ways do people contribute ? This
| is obviously a blind spot for me.
|
| Like, contributing a sense of fun? Being cheerful?
| pydry wrote:
| Which comforting lies do you believe high performers need
| exactly?
| jimmydddd wrote:
| I had one job as a contractor where I got hired as a temp.
| After 6 months they wanted me to join as an employee, but I
| turned it down because it would have meant travel. They kept
| re-upping me for 6-month intervals, and it was a good feeling
| to know that they truly wanted me there. Also, I didn't get a
| year end review, so I just got to keep working while the
| other engineers got called in one at a time and then came out
| pissed off about their lower than expected raise. :-)
| kbenson wrote:
| If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend reading _The
| Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to "The Office"_. It
| 's not that it maps to reality perfectly, but it's an
| interesting lens through which to look at work and your
| relation to it. It helped me soften my view on some of my
| coworkers by understanding their motivations better, and also
| helped me to accept a point of view much more similar to yours
| about the work I do. Also, if you're a fan of The Office, it's
| fun to revisit it and examine it in a new way.
|
| 1: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
| principle-...
| schmookeeg wrote:
| That sounds fascinating, and I worry it will be "humor that
| is way more documentary than I am at all comfortable with",
| like, say, Office Space or Idiocracy. :)
|
| Great timing, though, I've been in need of a new read and I'm
| a Ricky Gervais fan. Thanks!
| yieldcrv wrote:
| that's pragmatic, I've launched and exited two things, and I
| can't bring myself to do it again to solidify my financial
| circumstances, so I stay employed instead and exclusively
|
| its interesting how there are so many ways to be productive and
| compensated in this industry doing the same kind of work, but
| each gatekeeper is so strongly opinionated
|
| like there is this perception that even just a 10 year
| developer is supposed to be this super soldier doing continual
| growth - more than just keeping up with frameworks but doing
| all these advanced other things - as opposed to simply doing
| the same job for 10 years. I like how the industry has matured
| for people with less years of experience to be compensated so
| highly, so I just keep truncating my resume to being at 8-10
| years of experience, and plan on doing that forever.
| ilteris wrote:
| Yeah tried that in office environment thinking it could work.
| Got slapped with a "fair" rating last minute. They want you to
| become one on their side or you are a risk for them.
| strangattractor wrote:
| Did my own stint as a contractor and it was one of the best
| jobs I ever had. My clients would often ask for something - I
| would give them my opinion on how it should be done and
| alternatives that may be cheaper and/or better. They would then
| choose not to do that and pay me all those extra hours that
| their poor choice resulted in.
|
| Contrast this to working for an organization. Again I offer my
| opinion on how it might be done and alternatives that may be
| cheaper and/or better which results in the same poor choices.
| Except now I'm stuck supporting that turd of a decision with my
| own personal unpaid exempt status overtime.
|
| No need to feel apologetic about being smart.
| Tokumei-no-hito wrote:
| did you stop contracting? what brought you back to the FTE
| side?
| hiatus wrote:
| An employee is just a contractor with one client.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I've thought about this issue a lot. What's become clear to me
| later in life is that I have ADHD and probably autism. This has
| not only hindered social relationships, it's lethal to your
| career to.
|
| Why? Because a bit of autism tends to make you good at your job
| but allistic people can always seemingly tell you're "off", no
| matter how well you (try and) mask.
|
| And ultimately career progression is a social game. It's not
| about being good at your job. It's about whether people like
| you. Sure there are some outliers who get far on technical
| ability but they succeed in spite of this not because of it.
|
| So when you say you don't enjoy the "business" of tech, it
| means you've reached your ceiling where it requires influencing
| other people as direct reports, as a tech leader or both.
|
| If you're in this boat, and a lot of tech people are IME, then
| my advice is to make your bag while you can because you will be
| the first to be discarded and you will suffer at the dark, ugly
| side of tech, which is ageism.
|
| Avoiding ageism is largely a social exercise. If the leadership
| at your company likes you, they'll keep you. If they don't,
| they won't. You'll find yourself randomly picked on a round of
| layoffs sooner or later.
| schmookeeg wrote:
| Thanks. I already retired once at 39 with this exact view in
| mind. I'm frankly amazed I'm still overemployed at 48. But
| yes, I've been super bearish on the remaining chapters in my
| career. I've hedged by paying off a (argh, low-interest)
| mortgage, stacking the bank, and I have a very well developed
| and near-tech-money side hustle that is ageism resistant.
|
| I keep waiting for this shoe to drop. It hasn't yet. Now the
| pendulum has swung far enough that I want to preserve my time
| more than I want to stack more bricks. Amusingly, it's a
| source of tension with my wife who plans to work for another
| 15 years and will not be excited to see me out playing
| without her. (her people live into 100 on the regular. My
| people die in their 40s and 50s with alarming frequency --
| our horizon perspectives are very different :D )
|
| All good problems. If I lose all my tech jobs tomorrow, I
| will be grateful for the run and not be going hungry. I half
| expect I'd be relieved.
| w10-1 wrote:
| Ouch!
| phibz wrote:
| I think a lot of this distinction comes down to individual vs
| group focus.
|
| Being good at your own work makes you useful.
|
| However being strategic, thinking about the bigger picture, AND
| being able to effectively communicate that while navigating the
| complex social interactions of your leadership team, that makes
| you valued and will lead to a path to leadership (managerial or
| technical).
|
| So many of is have poor social skills. It pays to focus on them
| and not just the skills relevant to your tasks at hand.
| danans wrote:
| It's interesting to consider the partial inverse of the
| aspiration behind the article: striving for the combination of
| non-usefulness and also high-valued. That's kind of what
| traditional (and probably contemporary) aristocrats are.
|
| As the dowager countess in Downton Abbey said: trying to be
| useful is so "middle class". She didn't mean it as a compliment.
| 0x20cowboy wrote:
| Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
| pym4n wrote:
| Great writing, makes perfect sense!
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