Doing Everyone Else's Job

I've been at the top of the org chart. I hated it. I intentionally decided to go back to engineering.

"Appreciation" in this case means, promotions. I don't want them, and would actively change jobs if you forced it on me.

So I am more than happy to just do a great job at my job. I do not desire or want anyone to notice me in any particular way. I want to be paid a reasonable amount, and make sure everyone that uses anything I touch is happy with the experience.

That's a great life. I don't understand why anyone would think that caring about things matters at all.

There's a massive difference between your users, and peers appreciating you, and management appreciating you.

Management doesn't know anything. Why would I value their appreciation?

I care much more about my intelligent peers, or even commenters here, than what a non technical person thinks.

Well and this goes further. You will find that some people will only chose to do the visible work. And this will often get great feedback from superiors, although it is the metaphorical equivalent of running around with a fire extinguisher and waiting for fire to pop up in an environment littered with flammable garbage, instead of — you know — ensuring that a fire doesn't start to begin with. So being celebrated for leaving everything at the brink of collapse, they will just do that, while ensuring to be in the spotlight when the shit inevitably hits the fan.

This can become so perverted that the number of extinguished fires is treated as some sort of metric for success by management, instead of seeing it as the failure it is.

Feel free to replace this with "all nighters" in other jobs. Who is more dedicated to the job, the person that just does it all in time with plenty of room for mistakes and unforseen circumstances or the one who slacks around 90% of the duration and then squeezes in some all nighters in the last hours? If your project has to rely on all nighters without good reason¹ this just indicates bad planning to me.

¹: There are legit reasons why working through the night is needed, e.g. the work you do can only be done during the night or there are legit last minute problems that nobody could have planned for. But if you literally have those every time, they are to be expected and are to be scheduled for during normal working hours.

I agree that heroic effort can hide a resource allocation issue, but often the goals of those controlling resource allocation are not well aligned with the hero's goals. By no longer buying supplies for a student, a teacher is not going to get the school system to provide free supplies.

In terms of work in the job description, I could probably be replaced by 1.2 (1.1?) average competent workers. In terms of other benefits of my employment to coworkers and patrons, my impact is hard to estimate. Others bring in goodies for snacking, but I maintain a consistent but limited selection of snacks; others may spend as much or more money per year on snacks, but knowing that certain snacks will be available has significant value.

While I would have liked being promoted one level (from library page to library aide, from shelving only to shelving and check-in), higher positions have responsibilities I would have found extremely stressful. I was passed over twice for a promotion supported by my immediate supervisor (the decision was made by higher ups, the second time my supervisor was miffed that his input was not given more weight) and I had a meltdown at the interview for a third chance when technical issues (not working audio in an online interview) forced cancellation of the interview. I took my reaction as evidence that I was not ready for more responsibilities.

The first time I was not promoted, I was not especially bothered; the person getting the job was competent and went beyond minimal effort. The second time I was told that I would probably get the job (which I think was part of why my supervisor was not happy about my not even getting an interview) and the person getting the job seemed (after some observation) to be less competent and less enthusiatic than the previous transfer. (I think this estimate was not derived entirely from my disappointment: my first impression was "this is a library person" (glasses et al.). Perhaps seeing a library person not seeming enthusiastic about working at a library may have soured me more than if I had no hints of a kindred spirit.)

I like helping my coworkers (I like most of them and dislike none), but shelving books is not that team-oriented. I do not want to manage people (I am not good at it and do not enjoy it).