It is rather interesting that this is on the front page with "Authenticity promotes well-being in life and at work" [1]. I don't believe they are opposite, but it is difficult to achieve both. However, publicizing individual work is absolutely crucial for promotion or even keeping one's job. My personal take is to build something concrete, something other people find useful.
Yes, And – How to be effective in the theatre of work
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Re: Yes, And – How to be effective in the theatre of work
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imho, if you're successful without working hard, you have "hacked" the system, and like any form of hacking this should be punishable, in this case e.g. by degradation. If only we had a system where (special) judges were able to determine who works hard and who doesn't and from there decide who gets what amount of pay, and who deserves a promotion. We could actually have a fair society.
> Imho, if you're successful without working hard, you have "hacked" the system, and like any form of hacking this should be punishable, in this case e.g. by degradation. > If only we had a system where (special) judges were able to determine who works hard and who doesn't and from there decide who gets what amount of pay, and who deserves a promotion. We could actually have a fair society. Why should pay be based on…
Well, if you like you can replace "works hard" by "is efficient". Or something in between, depending on what you think is fair.
Re: Yes, And – How to be effective in the theatre of work
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imho, if you're successful without working hard, you have "hacked" the system, and like any form of hacking this should be punishable, in this case e.g. by degradation. If only we had a system where (special) judges were able to determine who works hard and who doesn't and from there decide who gets what amount of pay, and who deserves a promotion. We could actually have a fair society.
Where to start... You know this site is called Hacker News, right?
Right :) except that hacking into people's minds is typically frowned upon here, which is partly the kind of hacking my comment refers to.
Re: Yes, And – How to be effective in the theatre of work
#34I think there's one case where saying a plan won't work is the right thing to do, and trying to "get to yes" will often be a mistake: when you understand what needs to be done, and the (time or money) budget is too small.
If you try to "get to yes", it will often happen that the person in the position of the client will respond by cutting scope, saying "well, we don't really need that part just now".
And then it will usually turn out that they really did want what they originally said they wanted, and maybe try to sneak the features back in in disguise, and the whole thing overruns or else you end up saying no in a position where everyone is worse off than if you'd said no to start with.
I think they should teach Bridge in management school. Often not being in a contract is the right answer!
Re: Yes, And – How to be effective in the theatre of work
#35I unfortunately recognize several of these as being true from my five years at BigCo. Is this advice true of a (tiny) startup as well? Work should speak for itself when the survival of a company depends on it, right? I'd like to know if it's the same on the other side.
The larger a company is, the higher its inertia. The more sales-heavy a company is, the longer it can stay alive by bullshitting. Both of these factors mean increased decoupling between doing the work and survival of the company. And if a company is large enough that it has multiple complex streams of revenue, inefficiencies in some parts get hidden by the overall success.
Re: Yes, And – How to be effective in the theatre of work
#36In my opinion just look around and see what the successful people are doing. Putting your head down and working is what I’d do for developing my own technical or something else skills. I.e. studying. Nobody I’ve met who gets high success in an office job does that. I wonder if there’s not something to read into this a bit beyond my current abilities. Many people work on things that they consider somewhat boring, or a…
Imho, if you're successful without working hard, you have "hacked" the system, and like any form of hacking this should be punishable, in this case e.g. by degradation. If only we had a system where (special) judges were able to determine who works hard and who doesn't and from there decide who gets what amount of pay, and who deserves a promotion. We could actually have a fair society.
This is the same impulse behind many disasters of history. It's a classic "who watches the watchmen?" problem. You can't perfect human society, and attempting to do so through the blunt centralization of power into the hands of a supposedly enlightened elite has rarely worked out the way it was intended.
Re: Yes, And – How to be effective in the theatre of work
#37A lesson I found helpful is with regards to the need to build a network of mentors, supporters and followers. This won’t apply to all fields but maybe some people will find it helpful. Mentors are people who you can go to when you’re stuck on a topic, regardless of what it is. They help you navigate through your org (politics, context behind decisions, etc). These people can be in your team/department or could just b…
Do you know of a good guide to building a single relationship with a mentor? It is something I have been trying to do for the past 8 years.
I suspect that the advice I need is “obvious”.
Re: Yes, And – How to be effective in the theatre of work
#38In my opinion just look around and see what the successful people are doing. Putting your head down and working is what I’d do for developing my own technical or something else skills. I.e. studying. Nobody I’ve met who gets high success in an office job does that. I wonder if there’s not something to read into this a bit beyond my current abilities. Many people work on things that they consider somewhat boring, or a…
Imho, if you're successful without working hard, you have "hacked" the system, and like any form of hacking this should be punishable, in this case e.g. by degradation. If only we had a system where (special) judges were able to determine who works hard and who doesn't and from there decide who gets what amount of pay, and who deserves a promotion. We could actually have a fair society.
Working out what constitutes "working hard" would produce all sorts of bizarre situations; a number of disabled or chronically ill people would be richly rewarded for simply showing up at all.
Then there's the arbitrage possibilities; are the judges globally uniform? (How are you going to achieve that?)
Then there's the classic Keynsian "usefulness" problem; you can have a whole load of people working hard digging holes and another group of people filling them in, and that constitutes hard work?
All of us would of course be out of jobs and toiling in the fields, as there is nothing so dangerous in this environment as a process improvement. Making the work easier would reduce compensation, so there's a really strong incentive not to improve the process and to sabotage anyone who attempts to do so.
No, I think we have to have the humility to understand as humans that we can't know the answers to this with any kind of precision, and to be more humble in the judgements that we must make,
Re: Yes, And – How to be effective in the theatre of work
#39Very interesting to see this at the top of HN literally just after reading "Human Capital: a Horror Story" https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/27/human-capital-a-horror-st...
Good lord, what a schlocky piece of propaganda this is.
The person responsible desperately needs to be happy, but is far more invested in their own supremacy to actually enjoy human contact.
Re: Yes, And – How to be effective in the theatre of work
#40Lots of comments here come off as very resistant to accepting the ideas presented here: that success at work is as much about the quality of your work as the effort made to connect with the humans in an organization evaluating the work. Improv is a perfect frame for this: entertaining but doing deep preparation for that entertainment.
What I'm really fascinated by is how this can be translated to remote working. I don't think water-cooler talk is possible in Slack. I would be really surprised to find anyone at the top of performance in any organization that isn't fully remote without resorting to Machiavellian tactics. I wonder if the stresses you saw at GitHub during their period of centralizing management in SF after really marketing themselves as remote first were evidence of this.