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Comment by lisasays | Hacker News Reader

My spin would be: "This is how companies kneecap employees, by forcing them to think this way."

"But how could this ever be possible, in a field with high salaries and a permanent shortage of skilled workers?", you ask.

By constantly punishing us for caring. By continually providing shitty office space, and bullshit-driven work cultures and interview rituals. And just plain lying, toxic managers and co-workers to deal with.

And then asking us to invest the best years of our livesin all of the above, and then to "care" ... in exchange for not-so-great compensation, a joke vacation allowance - and zero job security.

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I’m telling you from experience as a manager that this is wrong.

People who take ownership and initiative for the things they work on get quickly promoted. If they don’t, there is usually some other issue (difficultly to work with) explicitly holding them back.

I have seen many otherwise great engineers take the mindset of “I’m paid to do X so I don’t care about making sure X is the right thing” and they just sit at the senior level their whole career. It’s not bad with current comp levels by any means, but they never move beyond it because they constantly telegraph that they aren’t interested with that attitude.

Keep a clock puncher mindset and you’ll get treated like one.

In my opinion the problem is this: company wants you to "show you are performing at an higher level" before giving you higher pay or a promotion, but this can take years in a mid to big sized company, and even performing at 200% your peers doesn't guarantee you get what you deserve, since most of the promotions in structured companies are not tied to performance whatsoever, but to networking and being supporters of your superiors (scientifically proven), only for salespeople performance in sale has been shown to be directly tied to promotion, but then they are also shown to be bad managers when they actually get promoted (too tied to pursuing their own agenda).

So companies want you to have faith in them to recognize your value sooner or later, but they don't give you any faith back in return, it's never the case that some HR manager says "oh let's give this guy a quick promotion, let's have faith in him!".

Another point, if one is a professional is supposed to do his job for the agreed rate and nothing more, nothing less so i should be evaluated in what my regular 8 hours of work are, and within the boundaries of my job description, nothing more, nothing less.

When you go to the butcher and order a 1kg steak, you pay precisely it's weight, not more, not less. Let's stop normalizing this "go above and beyond thing", it's not working (most managers suck at their job, scientifically proven), just be fair with the employees and respect everybody's time.

Agreed - this idea that one gets "quickly" promoted, if it all; or even that management wants you to perform "at a higher level" (that is, to be sticking your nose in their beeswax) -- is at odds with widely observable reality.

And also many times one doesn't even want to get promoted, we just want more money and less hassle!

Managers don't fear, we don't want to steal your jobs, just make us get what we want and everybody will live an happy and long life XD. It's that simple.

What if I were to tell you performing at 200% is not a good way to get a promotion?

I will promote the person with regular output and an eye for outcomes, doing the right thing, improving process, etc over the one who just blindly runs at full steam all of the time.

If you think you’re at 200% and not getting recognized, step back and evaluate how much it’s really helping.

If you think it is, write out the argument you would make to get a 100% raise and try to negotiate it. You will likely receive candid feedback about how your grinding is not actually important for the team or the company. At that point you can cut back your push on doing X as fast as possible and start to focus on how and why you do X in the first place.

> I will promote the person with regular output and an eye for outcomes, doing the right thing, improving process, etc over the one who just blindly runs at full steam all of the time.

I would consider that to be impactful and part of performing at 200%, yet it still won't necessarily lead to promotions. Most managers don't care about the team or company, and definitely don't promote based on stuff like "improve process"

> Most managers don't care about the team or company, and definitely don't promote based on stuff like "improve process"

This does not match my experience at literally any software company (including multiple failing startups, a successful startup, and huge corporations).

I suspect your issue is that you’re not actually aware of what was providing value to the company you worked for and your managers were caring about seemingly inexplicable things.

Let's not be too picky about wording now, "performing at 200%" can easily incorporate what you are saying, and by the way all are still some valid points.

But still i can do all of what you are saying and not even being considered for promotion in 20 years, everybody knows this and there is no point in being delusional or forcing narratives, just strive to be the "best possible version of yourself" if you really want it, or just do what you're paid for and that's still ok!

People who take ownership and initiative for the things they work on get quickly promoted.

I can tell you from experience as a human being -- and having given many, many friends a shoulder to cry on over the years, in regard to this very issue: that this is of course what management always says in regard to how things work. But the reality on the ground (beneath the confident pronouncements, and fake glassdoor reviews) is often starkly different. And is ultimately what pushes people into the clock puncher mindset.

If they don’t, there is usually some other issue

Right, and it's always, always, always on the employee side -- is what you're basically saying.

>Right, and it's always, always, always on the employee side -- is what you're basically saying.

No it’s not. Jumping to negative conclusions and engaging in bad faith definitely is a way to get passed over though.

There are lots of reasons, both managerial issues and employee issues, for someone to get passed over despite having the right mindset. My point wasn’t that it’s a guaranteed path to getting promotions. My point is that “not giving a shit” is nearly a guaranteed path to being passed over.

> If they don’t, there is usually some other issue (difficultly to work with) explicitly holding them back.

> There are lots of reasons, both managerial issues and employee issues, for someone to get passed over despite having the right mindset.

You're contradicting yourself. Not surprising, lying is one way people get promoted and turn others into clock punchers.

I’m not, you’re suffering from the inability to logically reason about what I’m saying because of your “us vs them” mentality.

Managerial issues are “explicitly” holding someone back. I didn’t say the issues were with the employee.

> Not surprising, lying is one way people get promoted

Don’t be an asshole. That’s another “explicit” issue that will make it difficult for you to get promoted.

To be clear, my point is that being a clock puncher is an extremely effective way to limit your own career. Giving a shit is not a guarantee to get promotions, but it is requisite baring other very unlikely circumstances.

What Kortilla said matches my experience at a few companies. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there are different/worse ecosystems out there. Also just working harder doesn’t guarantee anything, which some employees misunderstand—communicate with your manager! You need to work on the right things and understand leveling expectations and promo cadences, and of course your manager is hugely important.

"leveling expectations" are mostly pure nonsense, you should know that. People are promoted for visibility in the eyes of management and delivering the final product, but not real ownership of the actual work that goes into advocating for and building the correct solution (which management is often clueless about, since it involves details which may seem minute but are essential to producing real value).

I don’t doubt that can be the case. But I’ve been promoted multiple times with work in my package that was purely maintenance and scalability work. Maybe I got lucky having management who appreciates these things. I’ve also seen people rejected from promo because they only focused on building and not on other leveling expectations like broader impact, anticipating problems, etc.

> but not real ownership of the actual work that goes into advocating for and building the correct solution

What you think is the correct solution is often not the correct appropriation of engineering resources for the business.

> which management is often clueless about

It is your job as an engineer to communicate this to management. If you are not capable of doing do so, you are incompetent as an engineer. Being an engineer isn’t being paid to just build whatever you want. That’s how you end up with Juicero.

My own experience tells me otherwise. Passionate workers get taken advantage of. Difficult coworkers still get promoted. And promotions can have far more to do with office politics than any form of merit. If your own experience is an honest exception, then you're either still naive or else profoundly lucky, in which case you have my envy.

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