If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by geodel » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 5:22 PM UTC

munchler wrote: post #237

itsoktocry wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

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.

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

#292

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 5:24 PM UTC

mjr00 wrote: post #277

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…

> 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 strategi…

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".

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

#293

Post by chairmansteve » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 5:24 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #286

mancerayder wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

And also to be fair to employers. A decent amount of employees are not really "doers". Perhaps they contribute in other ways.

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

#294

Post by einpoklum » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 5:27 PM UTC

k3vinw wrote: post #110

einpoklum wrote: post #93

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.

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.

> "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."

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

#295

Post by deadbabe » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

ricardobayes wrote: post #172

mboto wrote: post #62

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 va…

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.

Keep in mind it’s not really accurate.

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

#296

Post by jaredklewis » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

mboto wrote: post #62

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 va…

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?

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

#297

Post by deadbabe » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

dakiol wrote: post #82

Disposal8433 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 har…

> 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.

Those are mostly incompetent companies. You might be the only one who knows something critical, but it’s not as fun as it seems.

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

#298

Post by 9rx » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

dfxm12 wrote: post #165

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 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 expe…

> 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.

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

#299

Post by munificent » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 5:37 PM UTC

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…

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.

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

#300

Post by munificent » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 5:40 PM UTC

77pt77 wrote: post #238

isoprophlex wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.