> and most managers fail to punish at least some of these slow learners of theirs
False, they punish by not crediting that work as work.
Glue work, keeping things tidy, dealing with that annoyance that everyone else has been able to get away with suffering through (and ignoring), all of this will be worth approximately 0 at performance review time because your time is a zerosum game that is traded off with highly visible, political, and otherwise rewardable work.
It's been my experience that in larger companies you generally have to play in the framework.(I'd roughly draw the line at 1000+ employees), at quite small companies (or as a self employed / entrepreneur, roughly <200 employees) you should follow the path of highest EROI on your efforts regardless of who's job it is. In the gap you have to read the culture and management.
I can think of at least two people in my career who were, ahem, load bearing for the company. They did all of the BS, non-sexy work required to keep the place running. Never wasted time on vanity projects, just showed up day after day doing the actual necessary things.
They were criminally under appreciated by management. Their career trajectory significantly worse than those who engaged in the highly visible projects.
Some people have the primary goal of making things work for everyone. Other people have the primary goal of personally benefitting. These are often in conflict. The better a company or team can align these goals, the more effective it is, and the more everyone tends to benefit, but in many organizations the folks looking for personal advantage are most likely to end up in charge.
maerF0x0 · · focus · HN ↗
False, they punish by not crediting that work as work.
Glue work, keeping things tidy, dealing with that annoyance that everyone else has been able to get away with suffering through (and ignoring), all of this will be worth approximately 0 at performance review time because your time is a zerosum game that is traded off with highly visible, political, and otherwise rewardable work.
It's been my experience that in larger companies you generally have to play in the framework.(I'd roughly draw the line at 1000+ employees), at quite small companies (or as a self employed / entrepreneur, roughly <200 employees) you should follow the path of highest EROI on your efforts regardless of who's job it is. In the gap you have to read the culture and management.
3eb7988a1663 · · focus · HN ↗
They were criminally under appreciated by management. Their career trajectory significantly worse than those who engaged in the highly visible projects.
dust-jacket · · focus · HN ↗
But I've also never worked at a large company.
jacobolus · · focus · HN ↗