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If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued

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Re: If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued

#51

Post by apwell23 »

msgodel wrote: post #37
bravesoul2 wrote: post #11

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…

The only way to have a pleasant relationship with a corporation is to approach it with as much apathy is they do.

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.

Re: If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued

#52

Post by apwell23 »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #43

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'l…

> It takes some guts to be in management

> And if you don't have it, you don't have it.

hope this is parody

Re: If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued

#53

Post by simianwords »

red_admiral wrote: post #44
simianwords wrote: post #35

Why does this not create an arbitrage opportunity to pick the useful ones who are not valued if you are a CEO or manager?

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 ju…

If they are not risk taking they are not valuable.

Re: If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued

#54

Post by bawana »

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.

Re: If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued

#55

Post by kypro »

lnsru wrote: post #18
elric wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 :-)

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.

Re: If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued

#56

Post by suyash »

ndand wrote: post #49
alganet wrote: post #28

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 ri…

> 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.

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

Re: If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued

#57

Post by zwnow »

47282847 wrote: post #46

“ 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 cla…

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.

Re: If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued

#58

Post by ZephyrBlu »

brabel wrote: post #26
dotdi wrote: post #19

> 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 act…

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 setu…

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.

Re: If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued

#59

Post by zwnow »

apwell23 wrote: post #51
msgodel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to have a pleasant relationship with a corporation is to approach it with as much apathy is they do.

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.

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.

Re: If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued

#60

Post by ionwake »

47282847 wrote: post #46

“ 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 cla…

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.

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