Doing Everyone Else's Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job

#31

Post by entropy47 » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 9:17 AM UTC

saqued wrote: post #13

As long as you keep getting the performance review brownie points, because if you don't you are out and it doesn't matter.

No matter how dire things are, the people who can get something done that nobody else can (or on timelines they couldn't) tend to do okay in performance reviews. At least in my experience.

There are easier ways to get a false positive though, if you're open to lying, hogging credit, bus chucks etc. I sometimes wonder if I'm the crazy one for Doing Things Right when I could be spending time with my family instead.

Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job

#32

Post by tomaskafka » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 9:27 AM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #27

I worked for a Japanese corporation, and a big part of their HR policy, was to move staff around the company. It was usually in 1- or 2-year stints (people would spend their entire careers at the company, so they could do this). Eventually, they would end up doing longer stints, where they would specialize. They would couple this with things like standardized coding and documentation styles, common tools, etc. Traini…

This is what doctors do in Czech Republic - mandatory journey through hospital departments taking about 2.5 years.

Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job

#33

Post by curtisblaine » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 9:31 AM UTC

I'm always wary of colleagues like that. They start doing everybody's job (worse) and immediately management expects everybody to do the same ("there are no excuses..."), with terrible consequences. From experience, they need to be recognized and isolated soon.

Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job

#34

Post by groestl » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 9:45 AM UTC

tomaskafka wrote: post #32

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #27

I worked for a Japanese corporation, and a big part of their HR policy, was to move staff around the company. It was usually in 1- or 2-year stints (people would spend their entire careers at the company, so they could do this). Eventually, they would end up doing longer stints, where they would specialize. They would couple this with things like standardized coding and documentation styles, common tools, etc. Traini…

This is what doctors do in Czech Republic - mandatory journey through hospital departments taking about 2.5 years.

In Austria as well, it's called "Turnus".

Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job

#35

Post by dmurray » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 9:46 AM UTC

One of the things I hate about my current job is that it's impossible to do this.

Everything is locked behind multiple layers of permissions. It takes weeks to get the correct permissions set up even for my actual job (which I see any time changing roles here, or when onboarding new hires). Getting the permissions to jump in and improve some other part of the system that I don't officially own - even though I might get granted them if I ask nicely, because nobody knows who is actually meant to have what permissions - is so much higher friction than asking the "right" person.

Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job

#36

Post by mitxela » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 9:54 AM UTC

tomaskafka wrote: post #32

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #27

I worked for a Japanese corporation, and a big part of their HR policy, was to move staff around the company. It was usually in 1- or 2-year stints (people would spend their entire careers at the company, so they could do this). Eventually, they would end up doing longer stints, where they would specialize. They would couple this with things like standardized coding and documentation styles, common tools, etc. Traini…

This is what doctors do in Czech Republic - mandatory journey through hospital departments taking about 2.5 years.

I think this is done in the USA too.

Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job

#37

Post by nkapias » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 9:55 AM UTC

cik wrote: post #17

I tend to apply this to myself, within an organization (as opposed to those who like to generically try it all - fair enough). I've always been an enormous fan of touring the organization. Whether I join as a dev, or an exec, I always make it a point to spend some time with product, with support, and with marketing. It ends up providing me a unique vantage point. I encourage others to do the same, and when I 'control…

I've experienced that being knowledgeable of the inner workings is a risk of getting dragged into every projects.

When scheduling onboarding, I try to enable touring without those drawbacks.

Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job

#38

Post by iugtmkbdfil834 » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 9:56 AM UTC

RevEng wrote: post #18

I disagree with the centralization thought. I'm working on a project to create a central AI platform for a very large corporation. As you can imagine, such a large company already has several different platforms made by different branches within it. Each branch has something they are relatively happy with. But corporate sees this redundancy as waste, so they want to consolidate it into one. The problem with one is th…

As end user of one such platform, thank you giving me hope that at least some people are at least putting in an effort to make decent. We currently have a very weird mix of features applied to everyone and we are not all quite the same almost by definition.

Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job

#39

Post by RugnirViking » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 9:56 AM UTC

cik wrote: post #17

I tend to apply this to myself, within an organization (as opposed to those who like to generically try it all - fair enough). I've always been an enormous fan of touring the organization. Whether I join as a dev, or an exec, I always make it a point to spend some time with product, with support, and with marketing. It ends up providing me a unique vantage point. I encourage others to do the same, and when I 'control…

any tips on how to go about such things? its occasionally hard to find excuses to go hang out at the other end of the building and talk to another team I dont know much about as a regular developer

Re: Doing Everyone Else's Job

#40

Post by RugnirViking » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 9:58 AM UTC

proc0 wrote: post #2

Just work a lot more for the same pay. Great idea.

it seems clear to me that one can slack off at certain times, and work hard at the important times, and overall come out about the same (or with less overall work). IMO as a developer in a large corp, if you know the right team to talk to, it can save you MONTHS of work yourself