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You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

theregister.co.uk

1–10 of 115 posts

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#2
Very cynical view. If this is what's happening across companies, than the market system wasn't efficient enough or was impeded to make a change.

We all know that the local cable or telephone companies aren't trying their damn hardest and we are not pleased with the services we're getting. However, we can't do anything about it.

To me, it's incomprehensible that we can sit on our hand and not make things better. Instead of being a big bully in the market, why not aim to make our lives better? Why all the politicking when it's quite urgent that medical progress need to be made now?

After all, a million dollars or three won't make much a difference in respect to making a billion dollars on a monopoly. With the billion dollars in hand, the future of you, and everyone else is worse off, because you focused too much on marketing rather than on groundbreaking research.

Do pharmaceutical CEOs only care about their short term bottom line and not the future of their health, their family, and their friends?

Do AT & T corporate board really only care about what they made each day rather than the future of the internet? By expanding and making the infrastructure cheaper, they will benefit from the numerous services of future internet.

Expand pie, and don't focus too much on getting a larger portion of the pie. Don't compromise the size of the pie.

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#3
post #2

Very cynical view. If this is what's happening across companies, than the market system wasn't efficient enough or was impeded to make a change. We all know that the local cable or telephone companies aren't trying their damn hardest and we are not pleased with the services we're getting. However, we can't do anything about it. To me, it's incomprehensible that we can sit on our hand and not make things better. Inste…

Try reading the article, it might give you something else to write a banal rant about. Or should I say rants, each sentence seems to be about a different subject.

Your final exhortation about pies is just baffling, "don't compromise the size of the pie" is something I might just put on a T shirt.

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#4
You can also just communicate the benefits of your work to people. This works especially well if you do it beforehand...eg with the backup process, tell your boss that it saves X hours/month, and include that in your performance review (you should always be writing your own performance reviews, by the way). There's no need to restrict yourself to tasks with visible, obvious value...you just need to take on the work of communicating what it is you contribute.

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#6
post #2

Very cynical view. If this is what's happening across companies, than the market system wasn't efficient enough or was impeded to make a change. We all know that the local cable or telephone companies aren't trying their damn hardest and we are not pleased with the services we're getting. However, we can't do anything about it. To me, it's incomprehensible that we can sit on our hand and not make things better. Inste…

I didn't totally agree with the article but could explain your criticism a little; I wonder if we read the same article or maybe interpreted it in wildly different ways. The author is just using kind of this common sense pragmatism/cynical stuff many people probably hear from their bosses already.

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#7

You can also just communicate the benefits of your work to people. This works especially well if you do it beforehand...eg with the backup process, tell your boss that it saves X hours/month, and include that in your performance review (you should always be writing your own performance reviews, by the way). There's no need to restrict yourself to tasks with visible, obvious value...you just need to take on the work o…

Well, honestly, for many of the work environments the author refers to, which may not be ones you are I would want to work, the author is correct. The CEO of XYZ corp doesn't care and is not interested in your explanation about how optimizing the thermocouplers makes things better. Even if you tried to relate to how it does save the company, he won't think you know what you're talking about. This is more about playing a psychological, even childish, game with your boss. And I suspect, in fact I'm completely sure, that in these kinds of companies, this is probably the advice you can get. These are the kinds of CEOs for which you could just explain until you're blue in the face about how important backups are for customers and they will stare blankly and wonder why they hired you in the first place.

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#8
post #2

Very cynical view. If this is what's happening across companies, than the market system wasn't efficient enough or was impeded to make a change. We all know that the local cable or telephone companies aren't trying their damn hardest and we are not pleased with the services we're getting. However, we can't do anything about it. To me, it's incomprehensible that we can sit on our hand and not make things better. Inste…

The rest of your post doesn't really have anything to do with the article but...

Very cynical view. If this is what's happening across companies, than the market system wasn't efficient enough or was impeded to make a change.

It is a cynical view, but another way the author could have stated it would be to say that in order to have people know who you are, you should do projects that matter to people and make sure they know you are doing them.

The worst people I have worked with, on teams, as employees etc. are the ones who decide to do things like optimize the backup process by 50% when no one needs that done. They miss the big picture which is easy to see if you follow the author's (while I admit cynical) strategy.

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#9
post #2

Very cynical view. If this is what's happening across companies, than the market system wasn't efficient enough or was impeded to make a change. We all know that the local cable or telephone companies aren't trying their damn hardest and we are not pleased with the services we're getting. However, we can't do anything about it. To me, it's incomprehensible that we can sit on our hand and not make things better. Inste…

The rest of your post doesn't really have anything to do with the article but... Very cynical view. If this is what's happening across companies, than the market system wasn't efficient enough or was impeded to make a change. It is a cynical view, but another way the author could have stated it would be to say that in order to have people know who you are, you should do projects that matter to people and make sure th…

but another way the author could have stated it would be to say that in order to have people know who you are, you should do projects that matter to people and make sure they know you are doing them.

In my view, it is only about visible progress that they can see, but they cannot easily see invisible progress that actually matters.

The worst people I have worked with, on teams, as employees etc. are the ones who decide to do things like optimize the backup process by 50% when no one needs that done. They miss the big picture which is easy to see if you follow the author's (while I admit cynical) strategy.

The big picture includes having a backup plan and having a backup plan that works.

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#10
post #3
post #2

Very cynical view. If this is what's happening across companies, than the market system wasn't efficient enough or was impeded to make a change. We all know that the local cable or telephone companies aren't trying their damn hardest and we are not pleased with the services we're getting. However, we can't do anything about it. To me, it's incomprehensible that we can sit on our hand and not make things better. Inste…

Try reading the article, it might give you something else to write a banal rant about. Or should I say rants, each sentence seems to be about a different subject. Your final exhortation about pies is just baffling, "don't compromise the size of the pie" is something I might just put on a T shirt.

Well, I thought "expanding the pie" versus "taking a larger portion of the pie" are particularly common metaphor for growing economy versus taking advantage of the economy.
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