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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

#271

Post by CooCooCaCha »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #135

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 l…

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.

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

#272

Post by IggleSniggle »

yibg wrote: post #265
eitally wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

An Ops contributor who saves the company millions in operating costs, however, might be extremely valuable, but may or may not be valued.

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

#275

Post by pixl97 »

dinetrimr wrote: post #50

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…

>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.

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

#276

Post by vitaflo »

Aurornis wrote: post #256

> 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 col…

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.

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

#277

Post by mjr00 »

eitally wrote: post #183
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #114

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…

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…

> 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.

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

#280

Post by schmookeeg »

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 :)

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