Hacker News Reader

Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

As a high performing IC, you should be able to identify new work and you think benefits the company. Send an email when an update on some of the cool things you done over the months and what you are planning.

Ask an action forcing question with your default path forward if he doesn’t respond. Send an update a month later on how that turned out.

View on HN

Fair point. That's exactly what I did. Implemented a few high impact POC's ( my own initiative). But to my surprise, they were not interested at all. (Not only my manager. But a few other senior guys). That's when I realized its not worth it.

Did you consider that if they weren't interested, that your evaluation of "high impact POC's" is likely incorrect?

Fair point. You could argue that. But the place is full of mediocre people. And almost everyone is in comfort zone. ( I am not saying, I am a genius though)

I think what’s hard is that you need to keep doing that over and over, don’t stop. Sometimes I think something is really good, but it doesn’t stick for one reason or another. What I try to do is timebox to a few weeks or months and then try something new. It’s hard to understand all the factors that affect interests, so if my stakeholders aren’t interested I try to work on something new.

I also try to share the metrics for why I think something is valuable. Specifically calling out the quantitative and narrative value to try to have the value be understood.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com