131–140 of 372 posts
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Isn't "not valued" at odds with "reasonable job security?"
If there's a grid of 4 types of people, the two boxes of "not useful" are usually let go first
The not valued column is let go first via the fact that the value function is what decides if their managers care or not
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.
Sometimes being able to demonstrate that itself can increase your value to your current company.
Companies should value useful people, and lay off the managers who can't.
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return TEST_SUCCESS
The domain of the email in your profile seems to be dead at the DNS level FYI.
If you were trying to contact me privately for some reason, I can provide a working email if you give me a brief idea of what you wanted to discuss in a comment.
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-...
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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 an…
...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).
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.
In capitalism everything is a function of scarcity. I wonder how long we are going to keep up that particular charade.
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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 broad…
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 200€ 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 an…
> 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.