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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

#161

Post by georgeecollins »

steveBK123 wrote: post #79
austin-cheney wrote: post #66

This is far more simple than it sounds. Do what others cannot to deliver success to the internal goals of the business. It is always more about capabilities and delivery and it’s never really about hard work. These capabilities can include authoring new tools but most often are soft skills and better written communication. Many people will fail at this because they cannot perform or independently determine their own…

Yes, its never actually about actual effort. Rewards are handed out based on outcomes, interpersonal skills and PERCEIVED effort.

I think perceived effort can be a positive or a negative. When you are starting you want to make it clear you are a hard worker. After that, no one cares and its better to look like you can easily handle what you are doing. No one promotes the person who is working really hard at the level below.

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

#162

Post by hegstal »

kypro wrote: post #55
lnsru wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The anti-social 10x developer is more often than not the anti-social 1x developer that makes everyone else move at 0.1x or worse. Not that I directly blame them for it - there is far too much focus on the individual here. It's not so common they are bad people, but more that their own management doesn't provide them with the incentives to behave any other way. It's all about incentives. If the incentives are there, the parties involved will inevitably find a way to compromise in a way that works for them, but if the incentives are fundamentally misaligned, there is no way this gets resolved. The only option is to run.

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

#164

Post by ednite »

Reading this thread, and having been around a while, I agree with most of what’s being said. If I could go back and coach my younger self through the mess of work life (promotions, burnout, undervaluation), I’d hand over three books that ended up being practical maps more than just philosophy.

Some valuable insights from thee books are:

Sun Tzu: The Art of War Success often comes from preparation and positioning, not effort alone. Promotions tend to go to people who made themselves hard to ignore before opportunities opened up. Don’t fight every battle, pick the ones that matter.

Marcus Aurelius: Meditations Focus on what you can control. Most stress comes from chasing recognition or reacting to things you can’t change.

Dale Carnegie: How to Win Friends and Influence People Being technically strong isn’t enough. Careers are shaped by relationships. Listening, being likable, and helping others shine often creates more traction than pushing your own brilliance.

If I had started with these mindsets earlier, I probably would’ve saved a few years of frustration. Good luck to everyone dealing with these issues.

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

#165

Post by dfxm12 »

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 experience, when trying to get a bigger role, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Some managers are not useful or just as overworked as we are, so they can't take the step back and properly evaluate who is ready for more responsibility. We have to advocate for ourselves.

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

#166

Post by zwnow »

theoreticalmal wrote: post #80
zwnow wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah actual work is mentally draining. While I avoid work I do private projects that are actually interesting to me. I work, just not on company stuff that I don't care about.

What personal projects are you working on these days? Or do you have multiple?

I am a quitter, I start projects for 2 weeks until I find the next shiny thing. I have a tendency to quit once projects go from learning to tedious repetitive work.

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

#167

Post by larrled »

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…

Good advice. Psychological transference is a closely related term. But it’s easy to take that framework too far and eventually get to where you blame things like schizophrenia or ptsd on the mothers. People who grew up in shitty families probably have plenty of insight already. A lot of human behavior is determined rather than the result of free will. If you had a bad mom, it may be better to just lower expectations than try to “fix”yourself and become the CEO. And taking drugs like ssri or adderal helps many in their careers where psychotherapy might not. Freud loved cocaine.

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

#169

Post by coldpie »

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.

Sounds like you want systems programming? Some areas to look in could be open source companies and embedded software.

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

#170

Post by aaronbaugher »

dedicate wrote: post #13

Isn't being incredibly useful actually a pretty solid way to be valued, especially in the trenches? Maybe 'useful' is just 'valued' in work boots instead of a fancy suit.

People can get used to a certain level of usefulness from a person, and start to take it for granted. The first time you swoop in and do something in an hour that had been holding others up for weeks, they're astounded by your usefulness. The tenth time, it's just what you do, so it's expected.

And yes, that does seem to happen more if you're wearing work boots, probably because people who never wear work boots assume that, if it can be done in work boots, it can't be as astounding and valuable as it appeared at first, or you would have moved beyond work boots by now.

Usefulness may hold its value in the trenches, but the people ultimately deciding everyone's salary generally aren't in the trenches.

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