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 spin on this that is unwarranted in my opinion.
If anything, in a business relationship, I think it's important to recognize that nearly everyone is just "useful". It may be the case that people think you'll be more useful in an expanded role, and thus will give you advancement opportunities. But even then, the business environment may change, and your skills may not longer be highly prioritized. Just look at lots of the recent tech layoffs that have snared well-respected, senior technologists. Apparently they were "valued", until they weren't.
I actually don't agree, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise. I posit that there's an employer expectation that every employee will be "useful", but utility is a fungible characteristic and the majority of managers and employers treat job descriptions of standardized roles just like that. Employees in those roles are susceptible to both replacement and career advancement, depending how "useful" they are, and how the company is doing.
That's an entirely different set of metrics than determining "value". Being valuable means being a trusted strategic voice to some portion of the leadership, and being recognized for contributions that go beyond (horizontally or diagonally) the employee's job description. In many cases, this value = trust relationship is evidenced by how frequently senior managers bring former employees with them when joining new firms, or how small & tight knit the community is for specialty roles/functions.
Lots of fresh grads and junior staff focus 99% on being useful, but career advancement beyond the first one or two promotions depends MUCH more on being valued.
> Lots of fresh grads and junior staff focus 99% on being useful, but career advancement beyond the first one or two promotions depends MUCH more on being valued.
Yeah. I've seen a lot of ICs get stuck at the "senior developer" level rather than progressing to team lead, staff/principal eng, etc because they were too focused on being useful, by cranking through Jira tickets and features, rather than thinking strategic and higher level. This is a totally fine career choice, but there's only so far that "coding better and faster" can take you.
The counterintuitive part is increasing your valuableness often reduces your usefulness. As a mundane example, in early stage startups there may be one engineer who handles production deployments, schema migrations, and on-call duties. This is extremely useful! For this engineer to increase their value, however, they'll want to automate production deployments, teach others how to run schema migrations, and set up on-call alerting and schedules. By doing this, they become less useful, since others can now do their work, but more valuable, since they've been able to delegate responsibilities.
> Lots of fresh grads and junior staff focus 99% on being useful, but career advancement beyond the first one or two promotions depends MUCH more on being valued.
“People don’t remember who went to grab drinks on a Tuesday, but they’ll remember who helped them close a million dollar deal and get a huge bonus”
Give your coworkers superpowers and opportunities will flow.
It seems the difference is just the degree of usefulness / value. Rather than being different terms, I think they're just different spots on the spectrum. What's the difference between someone being "useful" vs "valuable", one is 6/10 the other is 8+/10 (made up numbers).
A sales person that consistently hits quota is useful. A rainmaker that keeps bringing in million dollar deals is valuable.
I understand with what you're saying, and I agree for the most part. I just think describing this as "value" vs. "usefulness" is the wrong framing and unhelpful, and I can think of specific examples from my past that show this.
First, what you are describing in this comment sounds very much to me like following the adage "be loyal to people, not companies", and to that I totally agree. It's definitely critical in your career to build trust and relationships with folks you work with, and be dependable.
But for an example of why I think this "useful" vs. "valued" framing is wrong, I can think of a colleague at a previous company who I think was great at her role - she was a relatively junior (i.e. a couple years of experience) front end developer. She was responsive, implemented features well, and always demoed her work well and was extremely prepared. People also loved working with her - she was friendly, had very little ego, and had an almost disarming way of interacting with folks that would instantly defuse tensions on her team. I would work with her again in a heartbeat, and she was a great addition to her team.
At the same time, after working with her a while it became clear that her developer skills were limited. She was a great taskmaster, but the didn't have a great "systems-wide" way of thinking. She would implement features as requested, but when she would give demos I remember there were a bunch of times that there were semi-obvious questions ("Wait, how would the user get to screen A if they click button B first?") that she didn't bring up beforehand and did't consider in her implementations. I could trust her to implement individual components and screens, but I couldn't really say "Here's a description of the user problem, and the general direction we want to go in - how would you solve this?"
So if you asked me, I would say this person was a very valued person on her team. In her role, I think she was great. But I also don't think I'd expect her to perform well if she was asked to go in more "strategic and ambitious directions", as taken from the article.
Sometimes you're an investment, sometimes you're insurance, and other times you're a luxury or even an impulse buy.
I think this is a better framing because it explains some behaviours that are otherwise baffling: if I'm hurting for cash, I'm going to stop adding to my savings before I cancel all my insurance, even if the expected rate of return is higher.
I really like this comment and I think your framing is the correct way to think about it.
For example, when I look through the pattern of folks in my LinkedIn network who have been hit hard by layoffs, it's clear to me that a lot of roles were "luxuries" or "impulse buys" during the ZIRP era, and so many of those roles have vanished over the past 2 years or so.
Often, especially in large businesses, which of these categories you fall into (investment, insurance, luxury/impulse buy) is more a function of which of these buckets your business unit is in than you as an individual.
I've always tried to avoid working for cost centers, where the business's goal is to reduce cost as much as possible while continuing to provide the necessary utility (like on-premise IT). Cost centers are most prone to offshoring and automation; and this is where the "AI threat" is most likely to materialize.
But if your business unit is viewed as an investment center (like an R&D center), you're part of a strategic asset and you're also (by proxy) viewed as an investment. Luxury and impulse buys also happen here a lot more often.
"Just look at lots of the recent tech layoffs that have snared well-respected, senior technologists. Apparently they were "valued", until they weren't"
You are actually agreeing with the author here. Rephrase that to "Apparently they were useful, until they weren't"
I think the author is over indexing on the value that the company brings to its customers and the value that an employee beings to the company - as if there is just a kind of lossless value roll up going on here. In reality, there are many humans in the mix - various gatekeepers with all kinds of objective functions that are not necessarily aligned with the overall stated objective of the company. The better a company is, the more aligned it will be, but still good to keep in mind the gatekeeper layers in an org and what their actual objective functions are.
> layoffs that have snared well-respected, senior technologists. Apparently they were "valued", until they weren't"
See, I think it's more honest to say that 99% of employees are not valued at all, in that "the company" or top management actually care about what you think because you think it. People are kept around as long as the person 1-2 levels above them in management believe they have a positive short-term ROI, and everyone will be unceremoniously let go nearly instantly the moment they think they don't need you, whether you have just not distinguished yourself, or just basically at random when revenue misses dictate general cutbacks.
The author of the piece seems to place great personal significance specifically on his ideas mattering to the execs, but I think that may not be such an important thing to every personality type. I do mildly like being part of some 'strategic' conversations, but it's honestly more because I don't want the tech team to be blindsided by an impossible product requirement, and because I feel like I am good at identifying low-hanging fruit. But in terms of whether the company pursues one strategy or another at the highest level, that is hard, and you have to feel pretty bad when you make a bad bet. I don't think I need that at all to be happy.
I'll clarify, because, at least in my read of it, I am saying something very different than the author.
I was using "valued" in scare quotes that sentence you quoted - yes, I agree, the literal meaning of what I was saying is that they were useful until they weren't.
But, thus, I think it's important to understand that, at least from a business perspective, they were never "valued", and so I don't think it's helpful to think of things in those terms - again, I think that term implies a, well, value judgement that is inappropriate in the context.
By analogy, what I'm trying to say is similar to the difference between using the words "team" and "family" in a business context. I think using team is fine - teams want to win, and they cut people all the time if they don't have the right skills to help them win. Using the word "family" is simply bullshit, and it's just manipulation by business owners to try to get more work out of employees.
So my advice is to not ever think of yourself as "valued" in business. Remember that you are always just useful depending on the context of your role, your skills, and the current business environment.
You're not nearly jaded about about the modern media landscape. A boring and "correct" (whatever that means in context) writing about a subject like this will never make it to the top of a comment based platform because it needs to be wrong or at least loosely worded enough the low denominator reader can engage with it in the form of commentary, further people can bicker with them, etc, etc. It's basically the modern version of a playwright 500yr ago designing a play such that the audience of illiterate peasants can participate, only it's high brow instead of for the masses.
The choice of words here also didn't resonate with me.
I think the distinction the author is really getting at is whether the business views you as fungible.
My couch is useful and provides value. It would be hard to relax in my living room without it. But if I had to pack up and move across the country, I'd probably ditch the couch and buy a new one when I got there. It's useful and valuable, but also replaceable.
I don't play it much these days, so my bass guitar arguably isn't very useful or valuable. But I've had it 20 years and have a lot of important memories attached to it. If I have to move, I'm not selling it and buying a new one.
Maybe another way to state it is whether you have more value to the company than your replacement cost.
another way to look at it is: just because you're excellent in one role, does not mean there's an upgrade path at any given business to improve salary+expectations.
Some businesses structure this intentionally, to avoid the upward progression of salaries, and other businesses just arnt churning through projects and clients quick enough to expand to fit the upward momentum of their talent.
Recognizing the real constraints on your value to a business model is important to not get stuck in the backwash of business value.
The piece is good but I think the primary segmentation is not 'useful' vs 'valued', it is strategic vs. tactical.
The author actually realizes this but did not nail this idea to the church door as part of his manifesto.
>Being valued, on the other hand, means that you are brought into
>more conversations, not just to execute, but to help shape the
> direction. This comes with opportunities to grow and contribute
> in ways that are meaningful to you and the business.
The first part is not being 'valued'; this is being a 'useful strategically'.
The second part - "opportunities to grow and contribute in ways that are meaningful to you and the business." - that is being 'valued strategically'
> Being useful means that you are good at getting things done in a
> specific area, so that people above you can delegate that
> completely. You are reliable, efficient, maybe even
> indispensable in the short term. But you are seen primarily as a gap-filler,
> someone who delivers on tasks that have to be done but are not
> necessarily a core component of the company strategy. “Take care
> of that and don’t screw up” is your mission, and the fewer
> headaches you create for your leadership chain, the bigger the rewards.
The first is not being 'useful'; this is being a 'useful tactically'.
The second part, "Take care of that and don’t screw up” is your mission, and the fewer headaches you create for your leadership chain, the bigger the rewards." is being 'valued tactically'.
So, the theory is every member of staff is dropped BOTH a 'useful' and 'valued' bucket for tactical work and for strategic work.
ie:
- one can be useful or not useful for strategic or tactical work or both
- one can be valued or not valued for strategic or tactical work or both
A couple of counterpoints:
1. You can,unfortunately, be useful strategically and not be valued. Think about the hachet man every leader of a large organization has - the guy who does the layoffs. That slot is useful strategically but can be filled by almost anyone - it is not valued by the org.
2. You can, fortunately, be useful tactically, useless strategically, and be be very very valued in an organization. Best examples of this are folks who are very very good at running operations. Think about a good truck dispatcher, or a 911 operator or an air traffic controller. 90% of their job is effective tactical execution - dealing with this emerging situation right now effectively and efficiently. That is highly valuable to organizations.
Also note that every org needs strategy people and tactical people for long and short term.
One is not better than the other. They are just different.
And there are lots of very highly paid tactical roles, sometimes better paid, that are more challenging and more interesting than any strategy role.
These tend to be "do this or fix this thing right now efficiently and effectively" jobs.
For example, almost any practicing medial role is a tactical one - ER doctor (fix this sick person right now) or controllers for real time stuff - concert and live TV producers (make this thing look good right now), air traffic controllers (keep these planes safe right now) etc etc.
So, net net, pick you spot - tactical vs strategic or both, useful vs. valuable or both - get good at it and then may the odds always be in your favor.
I remember people I've worked with over the years that have resigned because they were never going to get onto another project and grow while they were so "useful" on the current project.
Sort of like holding people who were successful working on the OS from a decade ago, and not letting them work on the current OS.
It is the dumbest thing ever for a company to evaluate someone as not useful based on their perceived skill set. What makes someone not useful is their tendency to show up to get shit done or not, nothing else.
In a corporation, everyone is “useful” - that’s the bare minimum for staying on payroll. Even those doing meaningless work are sometimes kept just so competitors can’t poach them. Big tech overhires deliberately, parking talent in BS roles to block rivals.
The notion of being “useful” is ironically useless. The only real measure is your pay: if the company pays you well, they consider you important. If you think you’re useful but your compensation doesn’t reflect that, you’re being exploited - and all that talk of “belonging” and “usefulness” is just corporate mind games to keep you emotionally captive.
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.
The inherit friction means that some workers will sometimes be overworked and/or underpaid, but workers do not remain in overworked/underpaid situations for long. Given the real-world constraints, the exact right number of people are in that situation, not "too many".
> the answer isn't to give them more responsibilities (without a commensurate bump in pay). The answer is to pay your workers properly.
If the workers show up, you know you are paying them properly. That's not the issue here.
Trouble is, at some point you run out of things to buy. Those who continue to seek more money beyond that do so because they are able to leverage it to increase their social value. — But, in the case of the person in article, they were still failing to establish social value even with more money than they knew what to do with. Even more money than that wouldn't have helped them. They needed to find a new situation that was able to allow them to find the social value they were after.
> 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
I think this is very hard to measure, particularly from our outside perspective. I understand it may be more of a worldview axiom than a fact, and will get a chorus of nods in a group conversation, but I think it should be tested more like a fact than an axiom.
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 value you, you'll intervene earlier to correct for it and you'll have the skills to do that.
Did your parents respect your boundaries growing up? Were you able to erect strong boundaries and have people listen to you when they over stepped, or were you constantly put down and your wishes ignored? A lack of skills in erecting proper boundaries and then maintaining them by being in the goldilocks zone of not too soft and too hard can lead to issues in the workplace and personal life.
First step is bringing this in to awareness so you can look back with hindsight, next step (the hardest) is mid-sight, you know you are doing or not the doing the thing you need to do but can't do it or don't know how. There there is foresight, hey I normally do this thing that's not good for me here, I had better do the thing I need to do to keep this situation positive.
Keep this mantra in mind:
You are the only in charge of you and your emotions, no one makes you do anything, and you will protect yourself.
Awareness + skills = ability. Psychotherapy (not counselling) is what you need to look out for. Combine that with Transactional Analysis and it makes you very very effective.
The psychological basis is most probably one of the main forces.. your job is your survival, just like your parents were. Very often your refuse to challenge limit or keep boundaries because of the same fear of being ousted and out of options.
It's both very useful to get out of this pit, and also sad.. because our lives are not supposed to be fully transactional. We prefer to have a group with who we share more than notarial duties.
I'll add to the general consensus here that this is an extremely valuable comment. At least for me it closely resonates with things I am only now discovering, at an age close to 40; the (in)ability to set and guard boundaries is super dependent upon early life and upbringing.
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.
Incredible comment, thank you. I can't believe I read this for free. This is probably years of distilled behavior science applied to a workplace-specific environment.
This is interesting. I could imagine that it's not exactly that you are selecting for the same dysfunction. Maybe it's rather that you don't know what functional looks like, and therefore can't as easily find a place that fits or steer your current place in the right dirrection?
Our organism’s primary goal is survival. Unknown territory will feel unsafe and thus stressful, up to the point of unreal, even if on a rational level it may actually be safer. It takes courage to face and calm those fears without consciously or unconsciously returning to known survival strategies - and meta cognition skills to sufficiently distance yourself from those past emotional memories. After all, they allowed you to survive.
This is interesting and I've also seen this sort of psychoanalysis applied to relationships, but I'm skeptical and don't understand the evidence for these sorts of analyses.
What convinced you? Any particularly compelling resources re: the evidence and methodology for these theories?
I have traded within a quite tight comp band for my entire 30 year tech career. I am useful in general. I have been valued by being offered "promotions" and "strategic instead of tactical" positions, but I always chafe.
I enjoy the work. I enjoy solving specific problems in tech.
I do not enjoy the "business" of tech and have no interest in any of it.
I definitely have inadequate drive to grow a business and make others wealthy, even if I get a few crumbs.
For me, contracting is the perfect match. I don't need to get involved in your politics, I just need to eat jira tickets. Realiably and well. When there are none to eat, I can go do my own things.
I would need to care a LOT more about the business and dollars to excel at it, and lately I lean in the opposite direction. I see nothing wrong with simply being comfortable and useful. We have it good that we can make this choice.
If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend reading The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”. It's not that it maps to reality perfectly, but it's an interesting lens through which to look at work and your relation to it. It helped me soften my view on some of my coworkers by understanding their motivations better, and also helped me to accept a point of view much more similar to yours about the work I do. Also, if you're a fan of The Office, it's fun to revisit it and examine it in a new way.
That sounds fascinating, and I worry it will be "humor that is way more documentary than I am at all comfortable with", like, say, Office Space or Idiocracy. :)
Great timing, though, I've been in need of a new read and I'm a Ricky Gervais fan. Thanks!
Did my own stint as a contractor and it was one of the best jobs I ever had. My clients would often ask for something - I would give them my opinion on how it should be done and alternatives that may be cheaper and/or better. They would then choose not to do that and pay me all those extra hours that their poor choice resulted in.
Contrast this to working for an organization. Again I offer my opinion on how it might be done and alternatives that may be cheaper and/or better which results in the same poor choices. Except now I'm stuck supporting that turd of a decision with my own personal unpaid exempt status overtime.
The relationship between a contractor and a business is more honest: exchange labor time for cash.
Between an employee and employer, enter ideology: I do this because I love it/love helping clients/ working communally to improve the business. Or competition: my bonus is 50 percent of my salary and we're stack-ranked. Or fear: oh my god, I got only Meets Expectations in my review. Will my pay be flat?
And contractors get to not have constant meetings.
I had one job as a contractor where I got hired as a temp. After 6 months they wanted me to join as an employee, but I turned it down because it would have meant travel. They kept re-upping me for 6-month intervals, and it was a good feeling to know that they truly wanted me there. Also, I didn't get a year end review, so I just got to keep working while the other engineers got called in one at a time and then came out pissed off about their lower than expected raise. :-)
I've thought about this issue a lot. What's become clear to me later in life is that I have ADHD and probably autism. This has not only hindered social relationships, it's lethal to your career to.
Why? Because a bit of autism tends to make you good at your job but allistic people can always seemingly tell you're "off", no matter how well you (try and) mask.
And ultimately career progression is a social game. It's not about being good at your job. It's about whether people like you. Sure there are some outliers who get far on technical ability but they succeed in spite of this not because of it.
So when you say you don't enjoy the "business" of tech, it means you've reached your ceiling where it requires influencing other people as direct reports, as a tech leader or both.
If you're in this boat, and a lot of tech people are IME, then my advice is to make your bag while you can because you will be the first to be discarded and you will suffer at the dark, ugly side of tech, which is ageism.
Avoiding ageism is largely a social exercise. If the leadership at your company likes you, they'll keep you. If they don't, they won't. You'll find yourself randomly picked on a round of layoffs sooner or later.
Thanks. I already retired once at 39 with this exact view in mind. I'm frankly amazed I'm still overemployed at 48. But yes, I've been super bearish on the remaining chapters in my career. I've hedged by paying off a (argh, low-interest) mortgage, stacking the bank, and I have a very well developed and near-tech-money side hustle that is ageism resistant.
I keep waiting for this shoe to drop. It hasn't yet. Now the pendulum has swung far enough that I want to preserve my time more than I want to stack more bricks. Amusingly, it's a source of tension with my wife who plans to work for another 15 years and will not be excited to see me out playing without her. (her people live into 100 on the regular. My people die in their 40s and 50s with alarming frequency -- our horizon perspectives are very different :D )
All good problems. If I lose all my tech jobs tomorrow, I will be grateful for the run and not be going hungry. I half expect I'd be relieved.
Yeah tried that in office environment thinking it could work. Got slapped with a "fair" rating last minute. They want you to become one on their side or you are a risk for them.
that's pragmatic, I've launched and exited two things, and I can't bring myself to do it again to solidify my financial circumstances, so I stay employed instead and exclusively
its interesting how there are so many ways to be productive and compensated in this industry doing the same kind of work, but each gatekeeper is so strongly opinionated
like there is this perception that even just a 10 year developer is supposed to be this super soldier doing continual growth - more than just keeping up with frameworks but doing all these advanced other things - as opposed to simply doing the same job for 10 years. I like how the industry has matured for people with less years of experience to be compensated so highly, so I just keep truncating my resume to being at 8-10 years of experience, and plan on doing that forever.
I have always been useful not valued, worked at 8 or more places. Only people who value me are family. Businesses don't.
You find out pretty quick: suddenly on PIP, or get bullied thereafter because you phrased something slightly off in a Jira comment. If I can get paid and treated OK, I see that as good.
Don't put stock in business relationships. Try to have good ones but put stock in ... assets, family, health, etc.
Now I have seen valued people but they are rare. And if push come to shove I'm sure that bond could break.
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 harassment. I became valued the instant I gave my two weeks notice, but I still told them to go to hell.
> 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.
If this is your mentality, is it any wonder you aren't valued?
People post things like this and I'm not sure they have any emotional intelligence whatsoever. Sure, your work/job doesn't have to be your entire life. But what about a little pride in what you're doing? Working with smart people towards a goal to do something useful?
If your mentality is "just show up for work, do what they ask and go home" then it should be no surprise you're at the top of the list to get laid off. I wouldn't want to work with a person who "puts no stock in business relationships".
> If your mentality is "just show up for work, do what they ask and go home" then it should be no surprise you're at the top of the list to get laid off.
Conversely, if you think that devoting yourself to work will put you at the bottom of the list to get laid off, you are in for a big surprise eventually.
You made some assumptions. Don't put stock doesn't mean don't be nice, make friends, be helpful, work hard etc. It mean don't be naive. It means also invest in stocks, skills, other income streams, networking etc.
I'm not sure this is a reliable guide. I'm in academia, and the people who really can't be replaced are the administrative staff with hard-won institutional knowledge and connections--but they're valued far less than splashy big-name faculty with no institutional loyalty.
I used to recognize this at my last job, pay was good but left searching for other opportunities where I felt valued in a team.
Two years later and I've about burned through all my savings looking for any job at all. Seems like current market has decided my skills and connections are not enough. Fixing to just uber or something next month out of desperation. I used to make six figures.
Turns out I decided to quit at the absolute worst time. I may not have been valued socially at the last gig but I felt somewhat useful. Nowadays enough time has passed and I no longer feel valued nor useful. The distinction fails to make any difference when the threat of losing it all constantly looms over you.
If I could I would go back in time and berate my self to keep that job at all costs and remain valueless, instead of insist grass is greener for some nebulous quality of "valued". Some things like health insurance are just more important than some intangible ideas of being valued or not by higher ups I won't really understand.
Thought I had one, turned in my notice but they rescinded offer a week later for no obvious reason and went hiring freeze. Was about the exact point when the market started inclining couple of years ago. Still think if I had interviewed a month before I would have got the position Been jobless ever since.
I blame my self for it, for not having the insight. Consequences were severe
To quote Don Draper, “that’s what the money is for!” Find your meaning or value somewhere else not in your job and it will both be longer lasting and likely much deeper.
It would be nice, heck I would accept a 50% pay cut for a better team since I didn't even need all the money I was earning (except for my current survival I guess), money isn't what it's about to me so long as I can feed myself, but my job hunt now isn't really about team value anymore. It's not something I can afford to think about when any job has to do for the rent. I could go back to stocking shelves if the next data entry thing I feel over skilled for doesn't get back to me
I like my hobbies, just I can't pretend to enjoy them all day when my current lifestyle has been unsustainable for so long. It was easier start of the job drought and I could do whatever I wanted and it felt nice, picked up some (unmarketable but fun) skills. Now it's all caught up to me.
"At least the gig economy is an option" is a thought that appeared in my head recently
I like and appreciate the authors points but just wish they would have done more with the connection of the two.
You might be valued because you are many things. You might not be valued because of many things. If you are able to be useful and valued, while also being fulfilled and happy personally and professionally -- that's great.
But, there is normally not a direct and clear situation like this in organizations. If there is, enjoy it while you have it. Normally, it's not as direct and clear to assess and understand. You are also part of this equation. The dynamics in an organization are normally not consistent.
Dynamics in organizations can shift quickly. Culture can also mean you could be doing all you can but the situation is no longer good for you for a variety of reasons or good for the organization.
Informed re-evaluation of your own value in your situation, at reasonable points, is vital. You may be not as great as you think you are, you might not be able to feel valued or useful in a changed or toxic environment. You may not care about that stuff. The organization may be incapable of providing any of that validation but, ultimately, it's up to you to decide what you are able to live with and why. How the organization provides whatever for you to contemplate is part of the calculation that must rest on your shoulders -- and that effort is ongoing and important.
“ I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.“ - General and Commander-in-Chief Weimar Republic https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord
Some of these may also work in different life stages.
Want reasonable job security & compensation but currently pursuing a masters / raising an infant / dealing with elderly parental care - "useful¬ valued" may not be so bad for a few years.
I kinda feel called out. My work should speak for itself. It often does, but I will always forget it when it comes time to speak of myself nicely.
I simply do not care to self-promote. It feels vain and vanity is one of the most useless things possible to me. Donald Trump is about 98% vanity, if you want to see what vanity is.
Not being able to actually cite the things I’ve done to someone who already knows what those things are has cost me several promotions, though. I can do the work, I can forecast needs, be ready for them, and solve them before they arrive, but because I don’t self-promote, people who can’t shut up about themselves get promoted beyond me.
Now that I’ve typed all that out, I am remembering just how many times this has happened, and now twenty minutes into the week and I am 100% misanthropic. People suck.
Guess I fit the stupid and lazy category, interesting thoughts though. I act like I work half of the day and the other half I procrastinate and work simultaneously. Part of it may be ADHD but somehow it works out for me... Still getting my work done.
That kind of work avoidance sounds like a lot of work.
Advice would be to try to find a job or role doing something you’re interested it.
A lot of the subject matter of my work is not that interesting to me, and the politics and lack of any sort of vision or leadership at most organizations these days makes project work sometimes stressful. But (maybe as a survival mechanism?) I’ve found that focusing on improving how I do my work and taking pride in my output (even if no one else notices) is a way for me to have some control over my work day.
This way it’s about me and I’m not looking for external validation (which isn’t coming for a myriad of reasons that would be exhausting to list here).
My point is that we all (most of us anyway) have to work so my theory is that it’s best to try to find some balance of interesting, pays ok and you’re good enough at it that you can find some meaning in your work.
I had to double check that I wasn't sleep posting or something cause that's literally what 90% of my days are like.
Probably 5% of the time I'll get stuck completely and those days are immensely stressful but on the flip side, the 5% of the time I actually am able to silence the procrastination demon in my ear, those days are so satisfyingly productive.
Or you’re clever and lazy but haven’t found the right general to promote you to high leadership yet. I think of Sir Ken Robinson whenever I hear anyone say ADHD is synonymous with “stupid”
I worked as a small elite unit in a world leading airline, team of about 5 poeple that went down to basically 1 ( after I was finally labelled as "difficult to work with" - ( I actually was always quiet calm friendly used to working in critical teams and worked basically close to 12 hour days.
Eventually a deadline was missed and "someone had to be blamed".
Having worked in countless companies I was ready for this and calm, basically fine with it, just kept working hard.
But I always remember of this one "middle manager" product lead or something, was constantly interrupting people, sitting with them, walking through what they were doing, following them, and eventually made a private accusation that I was "insulting other members of the team". ( I was basically silo'd knew no one, and also knew better than to criticise anyone). Stay with me...
I got chewed out by a seemingly random , mild mannered usually polite manager who never had a problem with me, infront of a few people ( I didnt say anything - instinctively I just knew this mean I was about to be let go, nothing I would say would help, and tensions were high due to deadlines ), accused of being troublesome etc. I calmly said I didnt know what he was stating, he calmed down and left.
Then I was "released from my contract".
As a consultant I don't get upset by these things, I am fine with it, I work as hard as I can and when the contract is over I leave.
However I will never forget how the one man, who never actually did any work, who interrupted everyone, and who made these accusations, was basically doing everything he could do "seem like he had a job".
He was infact, not quite the "hardworking and stupid". My only amendment that perhaps he was a special version of this, the "hardworking and unethical".
Only ever saw that once in nearly 2 decades of working but Im sure there were many more I didnt pick up on,
He stayed on, causing trouble, disrupting etc, and I always realised its because he kept a close profile to his superior, who had no eyes on the ground, and blindly trusted him due to an overload of work.
EDIT > Sorry I want to emphasise the main take away in my rant, is that the polite quiet well meaning, happy, working, well adjusted polite english gentleman behind me who was in management was suddenly shouting at me in front of others because he felt shocked at the accusation that I was a bad person, obviously which mean I deserved a dressing down, stood up and just starting shouting at me. This was a calm, relatively intelligent person, with his things in order, not affiliated with my project. Yet he just assumed an email chain from management around him, possibly with a very accusatory snippet from the trouble maker, was enough to convince him to act unprofessional and give me the dressing down. If anyone would have got into trouble or sued, it would have been this well meaning "smart" individual. That was my other main point.
In the end, there were no moves I could have made, but it was incredibly surprising how many poeple were easily manipulated into being unprofessional etc because of false information coming from their tier / one tier up. Whole narratives painted. It was quite interesting. Eventually that individual must have been let go, but what a desperate, unethical way to live.
> However I will never forget how the one man, who never actually did any work, who interrupted everyone, and who made these accusations, was basically doing everything he could do "seem like he had a job".
Judging from your description, you could actually be a threat to his position. So that might be a preemptive strike.
...the polite quiet well meaning, happy, working, well adjusted polite English gentleman...
You need to watch out for those, speaking as one myself. We did run an empire once and not by being nice. Have a look at George Orwell's short pieces set in Burmah (now Myanmar).
I've noticed a strong trend that newly hired managers suffer from imposter syndrome more than anyone else. Rocking the boat, lighting fires, picking fights with their reports or people outside the team - these are common symptoms.
I am in my mid forties. I have always walked away the moment I have been yelled at any job. Each time I have done this I had zero dollars in the bank. That is a privilege I give to my family, and they don't even use it. If it is a big organization walk straight to HR or go home and call a lawyer.
Thank you for posting this. Someone had told me this and attributed it to Clausewitz - so I've never been able to track it down. I've used it to make the case that laziness is not always a bad thing - i.e. lazy people find it easier to delegate.
Love this quote and tell it to friends often. I strive to be the clever and lazy officer. It was also eye opening to meet the first hardworking+stupid individual of my career and see just how much damage they really could do.
Unfortunately I've found that big tech companies are stuffed with "stupid and hardworking", an inevitable consequence of perf eval cultures that value work output over anything else.
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 performance criteria.
Sometimes the employers will set you up for failure by limiting your value potential so that you are a commodity. In these cases value is not what you add but how well you play a game.
exactly. I've been a consultant for a large company for 7+ years. We had a very large conversion project and I am the subject matter expert on one of the internal systems involved. My effort during the launch was minimal, because I knew the system so well and any data needed, I had already built tools years ago for extracting/manipulating it.
My value (and effort), was seen as high from upper management. I also learned to schedule teams, slack, and email messages accordingly. Even if I get something done very fast, I can easily manipulate the perception around it.
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.
> Simple... Do what others cannot to deliver success to the internal goals of the business.
This is not simple at all:
1. The "things which others cannot" are, typically, not the tasks you are given. So you would be neglecting the work you've been actually given to work on other things which you believe are important.
2. Things which people can't do are typically considered as irrelevant-to-do, and thus not a goal. When you do those things, it is likely that their positive impact is not recognized by most people.
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If anything, in a business relationship, I think it's important to recognize that nearly everyone is just "useful". It may be the case that people think you'll be more useful in an expanded role, and thus will give you advancement opportunities. But even then, the business environment may change, and your skills may not longer be highly prioritized. Just look at lots of the recent tech layoffs that have snared well-respected, senior technologists. Apparently they were "valued", until they weren't.
That's an entirely different set of metrics than determining "value". Being valuable means being a trusted strategic voice to some portion of the leadership, and being recognized for contributions that go beyond (horizontally or diagonally) the employee's job description. In many cases, this value = trust relationship is evidenced by how frequently senior managers bring former employees with them when joining new firms, or how small & tight knit the community is for specialty roles/functions.
Lots of fresh grads and junior staff focus 99% on being useful, but career advancement beyond the first one or two promotions depends MUCH more on being valued.
Yeah. I've seen a lot of ICs get stuck at the "senior developer" level rather than progressing to team lead, staff/principal eng, etc because they were too focused on being useful, by cranking through Jira tickets and features, rather than thinking strategic and higher level. This is a totally fine career choice, but there's only so far that "coding better and faster" can take you.
The counterintuitive part is increasing your valuableness often reduces your usefulness. As a mundane example, in early stage startups there may be one engineer who handles production deployments, schema migrations, and on-call duties. This is extremely useful! For this engineer to increase their value, however, they'll want to automate production deployments, teach others how to run schema migrations, and set up on-call alerting and schedules. By doing this, they become less useful, since others can now do their work, but more valuable, since they've been able to delegate responsibilities.
“People don’t remember who went to grab drinks on a Tuesday, but they’ll remember who helped them close a million dollar deal and get a huge bonus”
Give your coworkers superpowers and opportunities will flow.
A sales person that consistently hits quota is useful. A rainmaker that keeps bringing in million dollar deals is valuable.
First, what you are describing in this comment sounds very much to me like following the adage "be loyal to people, not companies", and to that I totally agree. It's definitely critical in your career to build trust and relationships with folks you work with, and be dependable.
But for an example of why I think this "useful" vs. "valued" framing is wrong, I can think of a colleague at a previous company who I think was great at her role - she was a relatively junior (i.e. a couple years of experience) front end developer. She was responsive, implemented features well, and always demoed her work well and was extremely prepared. People also loved working with her - she was friendly, had very little ego, and had an almost disarming way of interacting with folks that would instantly defuse tensions on her team. I would work with her again in a heartbeat, and she was a great addition to her team.
At the same time, after working with her a while it became clear that her developer skills were limited. She was a great taskmaster, but the didn't have a great "systems-wide" way of thinking. She would implement features as requested, but when she would give demos I remember there were a bunch of times that there were semi-obvious questions ("Wait, how would the user get to screen A if they click button B first?") that she didn't bring up beforehand and did't consider in her implementations. I could trust her to implement individual components and screens, but I couldn't really say "Here's a description of the user problem, and the general direction we want to go in - how would you solve this?"
So if you asked me, I would say this person was a very valued person on her team. In her role, I think she was great. But I also don't think I'd expect her to perform well if she was asked to go in more "strategic and ambitious directions", as taken from the article.
I think this is a better framing because it explains some behaviours that are otherwise baffling: if I'm hurting for cash, I'm going to stop adding to my savings before I cancel all my insurance, even if the expected rate of return is higher.
For example, when I look through the pattern of folks in my LinkedIn network who have been hit hard by layoffs, it's clear to me that a lot of roles were "luxuries" or "impulse buys" during the ZIRP era, and so many of those roles have vanished over the past 2 years or so.
I've always tried to avoid working for cost centers, where the business's goal is to reduce cost as much as possible while continuing to provide the necessary utility (like on-premise IT). Cost centers are most prone to offshoring and automation; and this is where the "AI threat" is most likely to materialize.
But if your business unit is viewed as an investment center (like an R&D center), you're part of a strategic asset and you're also (by proxy) viewed as an investment. Luxury and impulse buys also happen here a lot more often.
You are actually agreeing with the author here. Rephrase that to "Apparently they were useful, until they weren't"
They weren't valued.
I think the author is apt in their observation.
See, I think it's more honest to say that 99% of employees are not valued at all, in that "the company" or top management actually care about what you think because you think it. People are kept around as long as the person 1-2 levels above them in management believe they have a positive short-term ROI, and everyone will be unceremoniously let go nearly instantly the moment they think they don't need you, whether you have just not distinguished yourself, or just basically at random when revenue misses dictate general cutbacks.
The author of the piece seems to place great personal significance specifically on his ideas mattering to the execs, but I think that may not be such an important thing to every personality type. I do mildly like being part of some 'strategic' conversations, but it's honestly more because I don't want the tech team to be blindsided by an impossible product requirement, and because I feel like I am good at identifying low-hanging fruit. But in terms of whether the company pursues one strategy or another at the highest level, that is hard, and you have to feel pretty bad when you make a bad bet. I don't think I need that at all to be happy.
I was using "valued" in scare quotes that sentence you quoted - yes, I agree, the literal meaning of what I was saying is that they were useful until they weren't.
But, thus, I think it's important to understand that, at least from a business perspective, they were never "valued", and so I don't think it's helpful to think of things in those terms - again, I think that term implies a, well, value judgement that is inappropriate in the context.
By analogy, what I'm trying to say is similar to the difference between using the words "team" and "family" in a business context. I think using team is fine - teams want to win, and they cut people all the time if they don't have the right skills to help them win. Using the word "family" is simply bullshit, and it's just manipulation by business owners to try to get more work out of employees.
So my advice is to not ever think of yourself as "valued" in business. Remember that you are always just useful depending on the context of your role, your skills, and the current business environment.
Key differentiator in all these cases was bad or missing communication.
Do good stuff and make sure enough people notice. If you don’t self-market yourself, others who are less useful to the company for sure will.
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I think the distinction the author is really getting at is whether the business views you as fungible.
My couch is useful and provides value. It would be hard to relax in my living room without it. But if I had to pack up and move across the country, I'd probably ditch the couch and buy a new one when I got there. It's useful and valuable, but also replaceable.
I don't play it much these days, so my bass guitar arguably isn't very useful or valuable. But I've had it 20 years and have a lot of important memories attached to it. If I have to move, I'm not selling it and buying a new one.
Maybe another way to state it is whether you have more value to the company than your replacement cost.
Some businesses structure this intentionally, to avoid the upward progression of salaries, and other businesses just arnt churning through projects and clients quick enough to expand to fit the upward momentum of their talent.
Recognizing the real constraints on your value to a business model is important to not get stuck in the backwash of business value.
The author actually realizes this but did not nail this idea to the church door as part of his manifesto.
The first part is not being 'valued'; this is being a 'useful strategically'.The second part - "opportunities to grow and contribute in ways that are meaningful to you and the business." - that is being 'valued strategically'
The first is not being 'useful'; this is being a 'useful tactically'.The second part, "Take care of that and don’t screw up” is your mission, and the fewer headaches you create for your leadership chain, the bigger the rewards." is being 'valued tactically'.
So, the theory is every member of staff is dropped BOTH a 'useful' and 'valued' bucket for tactical work and for strategic work.
ie: - one can be useful or not useful for strategic or tactical work or both - one can be valued or not valued for strategic or tactical work or both
A couple of counterpoints:
1. You can,unfortunately, be useful strategically and not be valued. Think about the hachet man every leader of a large organization has - the guy who does the layoffs. That slot is useful strategically but can be filled by almost anyone - it is not valued by the org.
2. You can, fortunately, be useful tactically, useless strategically, and be be very very valued in an organization. Best examples of this are folks who are very very good at running operations. Think about a good truck dispatcher, or a 911 operator or an air traffic controller. 90% of their job is effective tactical execution - dealing with this emerging situation right now effectively and efficiently. That is highly valuable to organizations.
Also note that every org needs strategy people and tactical people for long and short term.
One is not better than the other. They are just different.
And there are lots of very highly paid tactical roles, sometimes better paid, that are more challenging and more interesting than any strategy role.
These tend to be "do this or fix this thing right now efficiently and effectively" jobs.
For example, almost any practicing medial role is a tactical one - ER doctor (fix this sick person right now) or controllers for real time stuff - concert and live TV producers (make this thing look good right now), air traffic controllers (keep these planes safe right now) etc etc.
So, net net, pick you spot - tactical vs strategic or both, useful vs. valuable or both - get good at it and then may the odds always be in your favor.
Sort of like holding people who were successful working on the OS from a decade ago, and not letting them work on the current OS.
The notion of being “useful” is ironically useless. The only real measure is your pay: if the company pays you well, they consider you important. If you think you’re useful but your compensation doesn’t reflect that, you’re being exploited - and all that talk of “belonging” and “usefulness” is just corporate mind games to keep you emotionally captive.
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.
The inherit friction means that some workers will sometimes be overworked and/or underpaid, but workers do not remain in overworked/underpaid situations for long. Given the real-world constraints, the exact right number of people are in that situation, not "too many".
> the answer isn't to give them more responsibilities (without a commensurate bump in pay). The answer is to pay your workers properly.
If the workers show up, you know you are paying them properly. That's not the issue here.
Trouble is, at some point you run out of things to buy. Those who continue to seek more money beyond that do so because they are able to leverage it to increase their social value. — But, in the case of the person in article, they were still failing to establish social value even with more money than they knew what to do with. Even more money than that wouldn't have helped them. They needed to find a new situation that was able to allow them to find the social value they were after.
I think this is very hard to measure, particularly from our outside perspective. I understand it may be more of a worldview axiom than a fact, and will get a chorus of nods in a group conversation, but I think it should be tested more like a fact than an axiom.
Was your primary family spent being valued and appreciated? Then you'll select for that and when people start to not value you, you'll intervene earlier to correct for it and you'll have the skills to do that.
Did your parents respect your boundaries growing up? Were you able to erect strong boundaries and have people listen to you when they over stepped, or were you constantly put down and your wishes ignored? A lack of skills in erecting proper boundaries and then maintaining them by being in the goldilocks zone of not too soft and too hard can lead to issues in the workplace and personal life.
First step is bringing this in to awareness so you can look back with hindsight, next step (the hardest) is mid-sight, you know you are doing or not the doing the thing you need to do but can't do it or don't know how. There there is foresight, hey I normally do this thing that's not good for me here, I had better do the thing I need to do to keep this situation positive.
Keep this mantra in mind: You are the only in charge of you and your emotions, no one makes you do anything, and you will protect yourself.
Awareness + skills = ability. Psychotherapy (not counselling) is what you need to look out for. Combine that with Transactional Analysis and it makes you very very effective.
It's both very useful to get out of this pit, and also sad.. because our lives are not supposed to be fully transactional. We prefer to have a group with who we share more than notarial duties.
Thanks for articulating this so clearly.
If you lack the power to implement them they mean nothing.
Children can try and set the boundaries they want, but parents, family and society in general can just laugh and ignore them.
Is this research based or one of the things you believe to be true?
What convinced you? Any particularly compelling resources re: the evidence and methodology for these theories?
My therapist said one sentence to me that stuck „… you are marrying your parents“
Like you seek a partner that has similarities to your mother or father. I see that very often with friends.
I enjoy the work. I enjoy solving specific problems in tech.
I do not enjoy the "business" of tech and have no interest in any of it.
I definitely have inadequate drive to grow a business and make others wealthy, even if I get a few crumbs.
For me, contracting is the perfect match. I don't need to get involved in your politics, I just need to eat jira tickets. Realiably and well. When there are none to eat, I can go do my own things.
I would need to care a LOT more about the business and dollars to excel at it, and lately I lean in the opposite direction. I see nothing wrong with simply being comfortable and useful. We have it good that we can make this choice.
$0.02 :)
1: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
Great timing, though, I've been in need of a new read and I'm a Ricky Gervais fan. Thanks!
Contrast this to working for an organization. Again I offer my opinion on how it might be done and alternatives that may be cheaper and/or better which results in the same poor choices. Except now I'm stuck supporting that turd of a decision with my own personal unpaid exempt status overtime.
No need to feel apologetic about being smart.
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Between an employee and employer, enter ideology: I do this because I love it/love helping clients/ working communally to improve the business. Or competition: my bonus is 50 percent of my salary and we're stack-ranked. Or fear: oh my god, I got only Meets Expectations in my review. Will my pay be flat?
And contractors get to not have constant meetings.
(and middling performers a lot more)
I don’t think anyone (excluding the literally deranged) spends their day trying to maximize the number of lies directed at employees.
Why? Because a bit of autism tends to make you good at your job but allistic people can always seemingly tell you're "off", no matter how well you (try and) mask.
And ultimately career progression is a social game. It's not about being good at your job. It's about whether people like you. Sure there are some outliers who get far on technical ability but they succeed in spite of this not because of it.
So when you say you don't enjoy the "business" of tech, it means you've reached your ceiling where it requires influencing other people as direct reports, as a tech leader or both.
If you're in this boat, and a lot of tech people are IME, then my advice is to make your bag while you can because you will be the first to be discarded and you will suffer at the dark, ugly side of tech, which is ageism.
Avoiding ageism is largely a social exercise. If the leadership at your company likes you, they'll keep you. If they don't, they won't. You'll find yourself randomly picked on a round of layoffs sooner or later.
I keep waiting for this shoe to drop. It hasn't yet. Now the pendulum has swung far enough that I want to preserve my time more than I want to stack more bricks. Amusingly, it's a source of tension with my wife who plans to work for another 15 years and will not be excited to see me out playing without her. (her people live into 100 on the regular. My people die in their 40s and 50s with alarming frequency -- our horizon perspectives are very different :D )
All good problems. If I lose all my tech jobs tomorrow, I will be grateful for the run and not be going hungry. I half expect I'd be relieved.
its interesting how there are so many ways to be productive and compensated in this industry doing the same kind of work, but each gatekeeper is so strongly opinionated
like there is this perception that even just a 10 year developer is supposed to be this super soldier doing continual growth - more than just keeping up with frameworks but doing all these advanced other things - as opposed to simply doing the same job for 10 years. I like how the industry has matured for people with less years of experience to be compensated so highly, so I just keep truncating my resume to being at 8-10 years of experience, and plan on doing that forever.
You find out pretty quick: suddenly on PIP, or get bullied thereafter because you phrased something slightly off in a Jira comment. If I can get paid and treated OK, I see that as good.
Don't put stock in business relationships. Try to have good ones but put stock in ... assets, family, health, etc.
Now I have seen valued people but they are rare. And if push come to shove I'm sure that bond could break.
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 harassment. I became valued the instant I gave my two weeks notice, but I still told them to go to hell.
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.
If this is your mentality, is it any wonder you aren't valued?
People post things like this and I'm not sure they have any emotional intelligence whatsoever. Sure, your work/job doesn't have to be your entire life. But what about a little pride in what you're doing? Working with smart people towards a goal to do something useful?
If your mentality is "just show up for work, do what they ask and go home" then it should be no surprise you're at the top of the list to get laid off. I wouldn't want to work with a person who "puts no stock in business relationships".
Conversely, if you think that devoting yourself to work will put you at the bottom of the list to get laid off, you are in for a big surprise eventually.
He has this mentality because he has never been valued, not the other way around.
"If you want to know who truly values you, look for the people who would not be able to replace you with someone else."
That usually has us pointing to friends and family, with the odd exception.
if you bring even a tiny bit of your spunk, enthusiasm and passion to work you;d be labeled a problem immediately.
They want apathetic mindless drones.
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Two years later and I've about burned through all my savings looking for any job at all. Seems like current market has decided my skills and connections are not enough. Fixing to just uber or something next month out of desperation. I used to make six figures.
Turns out I decided to quit at the absolute worst time. I may not have been valued socially at the last gig but I felt somewhat useful. Nowadays enough time has passed and I no longer feel valued nor useful. The distinction fails to make any difference when the threat of losing it all constantly looms over you.
If I could I would go back in time and berate my self to keep that job at all costs and remain valueless, instead of insist grass is greener for some nebulous quality of "valued". Some things like health insurance are just more important than some intangible ideas of being valued or not by higher ups I won't really understand.
To other readers: don't quit your job until you have a new source of income locked in!
I blame my self for it, for not having the insight. Consequences were severe
By definition risks don't always go your way.
To quote Don Draper, “that’s what the money is for!” Find your meaning or value somewhere else not in your job and it will both be longer lasting and likely much deeper.
I like my hobbies, just I can't pretend to enjoy them all day when my current lifestyle has been unsustainable for so long. It was easier start of the job drought and I could do whatever I wanted and it felt nice, picked up some (unmarketable but fun) skills. Now it's all caught up to me.
"At least the gig economy is an option" is a thought that appeared in my head recently
One of the bad things about heiring is that it always seems that it's much easier to get a job if you have a job.
As a warning to others, get a new job before you quit your old one.
You might be valued because you are many things. You might not be valued because of many things. If you are able to be useful and valued, while also being fulfilled and happy personally and professionally -- that's great.
But, there is normally not a direct and clear situation like this in organizations. If there is, enjoy it while you have it. Normally, it's not as direct and clear to assess and understand. You are also part of this equation. The dynamics in an organization are normally not consistent.
Dynamics in organizations can shift quickly. Culture can also mean you could be doing all you can but the situation is no longer good for you for a variety of reasons or good for the organization.
Informed re-evaluation of your own value in your situation, at reasonable points, is vital. You may be not as great as you think you are, you might not be able to feel valued or useful in a changed or toxic environment. You may not care about that stuff. The organization may be incapable of providing any of that validation but, ultimately, it's up to you to decide what you are able to live with and why. How the organization provides whatever for you to contemplate is part of the calculation that must rest on your shoulders -- and that effort is ongoing and important.
- Not Useful, Not Valued: Get good or change jobs/industries.
- Not Useful, Valued: talks a good game (or is doing useful stuff that is not apparent)
-Useful, Not Valued: Could be useful at non-strategic stuff, or does good work without self-marketing, or has bad management and needs to leave.
- Useful, Valued: Ideal situation.
I kinda feel called out. My work should speak for itself. It often does, but I will always forget it when it comes time to speak of myself nicely.
I simply do not care to self-promote. It feels vain and vanity is one of the most useless things possible to me. Donald Trump is about 98% vanity, if you want to see what vanity is.
Not being able to actually cite the things I’ve done to someone who already knows what those things are has cost me several promotions, though. I can do the work, I can forecast needs, be ready for them, and solve them before they arrive, but because I don’t self-promote, people who can’t shut up about themselves get promoted beyond me.
Now that I’ve typed all that out, I am remembering just how many times this has happened, and now twenty minutes into the week and I am 100% misanthropic. People suck.
Advice would be to try to find a job or role doing something you’re interested it.
A lot of the subject matter of my work is not that interesting to me, and the politics and lack of any sort of vision or leadership at most organizations these days makes project work sometimes stressful. But (maybe as a survival mechanism?) I’ve found that focusing on improving how I do my work and taking pride in my output (even if no one else notices) is a way for me to have some control over my work day.
This way it’s about me and I’m not looking for external validation (which isn’t coming for a myriad of reasons that would be exhausting to list here).
My point is that we all (most of us anyway) have to work so my theory is that it’s best to try to find some balance of interesting, pays ok and you’re good enough at it that you can find some meaning in your work.
To me, work avoidance sounds mentally draining.
Probably 5% of the time I'll get stuck completely and those days are immensely stressful but on the flip side, the 5% of the time I actually am able to silence the procrastination demon in my ear, those days are so satisfyingly productive.
https://youtu.be/iG9CE55wbtY
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Eventually a deadline was missed and "someone had to be blamed".
Having worked in countless companies I was ready for this and calm, basically fine with it, just kept working hard.
But I always remember of this one "middle manager" product lead or something, was constantly interrupting people, sitting with them, walking through what they were doing, following them, and eventually made a private accusation that I was "insulting other members of the team". ( I was basically silo'd knew no one, and also knew better than to criticise anyone). Stay with me...
I got chewed out by a seemingly random , mild mannered usually polite manager who never had a problem with me, infront of a few people ( I didnt say anything - instinctively I just knew this mean I was about to be let go, nothing I would say would help, and tensions were high due to deadlines ), accused of being troublesome etc. I calmly said I didnt know what he was stating, he calmed down and left.
Then I was "released from my contract".
As a consultant I don't get upset by these things, I am fine with it, I work as hard as I can and when the contract is over I leave.
However I will never forget how the one man, who never actually did any work, who interrupted everyone, and who made these accusations, was basically doing everything he could do "seem like he had a job".
He was infact, not quite the "hardworking and stupid". My only amendment that perhaps he was a special version of this, the "hardworking and unethical".
Only ever saw that once in nearly 2 decades of working but Im sure there were many more I didnt pick up on,
He stayed on, causing trouble, disrupting etc, and I always realised its because he kept a close profile to his superior, who had no eyes on the ground, and blindly trusted him due to an overload of work.
EDIT > Sorry I want to emphasise the main take away in my rant, is that the polite quiet well meaning, happy, working, well adjusted polite english gentleman behind me who was in management was suddenly shouting at me in front of others because he felt shocked at the accusation that I was a bad person, obviously which mean I deserved a dressing down, stood up and just starting shouting at me. This was a calm, relatively intelligent person, with his things in order, not affiliated with my project. Yet he just assumed an email chain from management around him, possibly with a very accusatory snippet from the trouble maker, was enough to convince him to act unprofessional and give me the dressing down. If anyone would have got into trouble or sued, it would have been this well meaning "smart" individual. That was my other main point.
In the end, there were no moves I could have made, but it was incredibly surprising how many poeple were easily manipulated into being unprofessional etc because of false information coming from their tier / one tier up. Whole narratives painted. It was quite interesting. Eventually that individual must have been let go, but what a desperate, unethical way to live.
Judging from your description, you could actually be a threat to his position. So that might be a preemptive strike.
You need to watch out for those, speaking as one myself. We did run an empire once and not by being nice. Have a look at George Orwell's short pieces set in Burmah (now Myanmar).
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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 performance criteria.
Sometimes the employers will set you up for failure by limiting your value potential so that you are a commodity. In these cases value is not what you add but how well you play a game.
My value (and effort), was seen as high from upper management. I also learned to schedule teams, slack, and email messages accordingly. Even if I get something done very fast, I can easily manipulate the perception around it.
This is not simple at all:
1. The "things which others cannot" are, typically, not the tasks you are given. So you would be neglecting the work you've been actually given to work on other things which you believe are important.
2. Things which people can't do are typically considered as irrelevant-to-do, and thus not a goal. When you do those things, it is likely that their positive impact is not recognized by most people.
-3. Other people (mostly above you) will steal your glory and call it their own.