> 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.
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.
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.
AndyNemmity · · focus · HN ↗
"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.