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Comment by borroka | Hacker News Reader

I work for a company that employs 100k people.

The effects of my work strategy and behavior on the company's revenue, profit, vision, products are zero.

On the contrary, the effects of my work strategy and behavior on my salary and position can be quite pronounced.

My company can fire me tomorrow, they will forget my name in 5 days. To "fire" my company, I need to find another job, maybe in another city, working with colleagues I don't know who may eat food at lunch break I don't like the smell of.

It is not hard to guess where I spend most of my efforts and thinking.

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> My company can fire me tomorrow, they will forget my name in 5 days. To "fire" my company, I need to find another job, maybe in another city, working with colleagues I don't know who may eat food at lunch break I don't like the smell of.

I don't think is very good comparison, generally. Some other company could offer you a job and you can leave any time. Depending on your tasks, the company might have very difficult time finding replacement personnel. This could be very significant (relative) cost for the company.

Personally I have always lived in countries where employee protection laws are very employee-friendly. Companies can't just fire people at will, they need good reasons. There might be significant fines for misfiring for wrong reasons.

It is a very good comparison (I work in California, at-will contracts).

The effect of me leaving my company and the effect of my company leaving me, for the one who is getting dropped, are not even remotely comparable.

The negative effects of my leaving or being laid off/fired on the company of 100k people are, more often than not, not distinguishable from zero. Many folks left my group and other groups I worked in and, invariably, the escapees were barely remembered a few weeks after leaving. The cemetery is full of indispensable people, and I was never told that I was indispensable.

The negative effects of my dismissal by the company on me range from almost zero (I wanted to leave anyway, I have ten other jobs lined up, they offer me more money) to very substantial (I didn't want to leave, I can't pay my mortgage, my partner sees me as a failure).

I respect the company I work for and my colleagues. But if I have to choose between advancing my cause and advancing the cause of the company (assuming the two causes are somewhat misaligned and assuming I am not doing anything considered "wrong"), I choose myself every day of the week and twice on Sunday

> The negative effects of my leaving or being laid off/fired on the company of 100k people are, more often than not, not distinguishable from zero. Many folks left my group and other groups I worked in and, invariably, the escapees were barely remembered a few weeks after leaving. The cemetery is full of indispensable people, and I was never told that I was indispensable.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that having "indispensable people" at all is a management failure. Large corporations that have been around for decades have survived because they don't have indispensable people.

This is why you don't get more money even if you outcode everyone on your team. The company doesn't want a rockstar developer, it much prefers having 4 average devs (where "average" obviously varies a lot based on the company and how much they pay etc.) It's simple risk management: the company knows it can recruit another average dev if it needs to.

You are right that it makes perfect business sense to not have indispensable people. At the same time, trying to make everyone inter-replaceable has never worked and never will.

It is important to recognize that some people are heavier hitters than others.

Their risk management goes too far is what I am saying. They should relax it a little bit and they'll get better results.

I respect that you probably have loved ones to take care of, and that what you are doing is probably a responsible choice.

Don't hate the player, etc.

But damn, if it isn't depressing to go to work every day and not caring about impact, just impression.

It is not black and white, both morally and in terms of the way I work.

Let's say that certain choices, strongly supported by my boss, who is ultimately responsible for my career in the short term (and the short term career consequences of my actions then inform my career even further down the line), are seen by me as not particularly brilliant, maybe even "dumb." If I say nothing and nothing happens, the product we are developing may not work as well as it could, perhaps the company's revenue will drop by a 50th of a percent. But should I risk my career to tell my boss that their ideas are not brilliant?

Years ago, when I was younger and more idealistic, I would have expressed my opinion on the choices made, even forcefully so. After I got fired at one of my previous jobs, I tend to side with the boss, strategically.

And before anyone, legitimately, thinks I am a coward or a "bloodsucker," let me make it clear that I was not the one who put my boss in the position they are in, the company is not mine, and the company can fire me tomorrow for any reason, even for no reason. Then, maybe at some point it will be too much to handle and I will decide to leave, but as I wrote, it is not black and white.

I think you just gave words to something I'd noticed about myself but had never been able to articulate, which is the reason I can't operate in large companies. Every time a company gets past its first thousand employees, I have to find another job, because it starts to become as you describe and it feels like it grinds my soul to dust.

I'm convinced there do need to be big companies, therefore I'm glad so many people can work in them and I appreciate the difficulty of it. This is not meant as a criticism in any way.

It just helped me understand why my career has consisted largely of startup-hopping every couple years as the companies finally reach a point where I have more than three layers of management, a majority of whom have no idea how to do my job effectively, but have to prove they're "doing something" by telling me what to do.

It's not that I'm "flaky" or "have commitment issues." It's that there's something that happens to companies when they get large that turns a work environment I enjoyed into one that's really (intolerably) unpleasant for me.

If I were interested in doing the work I am able to do, and if my life satisfaction depended on this fulfillment, I would never work where I work. That would be intolerably frustrating.

But I see my work as a means to other ends, and I am fine with my current situation.

This actually corresponds to another thing I've only recently admitted to myself, namely that I put a lot more pressure on my job for meaning and satisfaction because I'm compensating for perceived deficits in other areas of my life, like not having a spouse or children, even though those are important to me (not just a societal pressure).

I do have friends and activities that are important to me, but nothing within an order of magnitude the time devoted to my job.

If I had another important full-time role that applied whether or not I was working, I think I would have an easier time seeing my job as a means to that end, and I have a lot of respect for people whose lives are ordered that way.

Years ago, when I was doing academic research, I was working for more than 60 hours a week, often on weekends. On the whole it was enjoyable, but then I realized that I was spending an enormous amount of time writing papers that ten people, if I was lucky, would cite, for a far-from-guaranteed professional future in academia, setting aside my romantic and social life because, in the end, overcoming the inertia there seemed more challenging and tiresome than simply occupying my time trying to develop a fairly useless but potentially-perceived-as-novel algorithm.

Then, gradually at first, and then suddenly, my life made a critical and abrupt transition, and now my professional life has to fit into my life full of interests, occasional romance, family, sports, and all the other things that can make life more interesting.

And I make very good money.

> I put a lot more pressure on my job for meaning and satisfaction because I'm compensating for perceived deficits in other areas of my life

Yeah, I did that for a long time before I understood I was doing the same.

That's how the employers get you. :(

> Years ago, when I was younger and more idealistic, I would have expressed my opinion on the choices made, even forcefully so. After I got fired at one of my previous jobs, I tend to side with the boss, strategically.

Perhaps I'm a natural-born sycophant, but I always understood that my primary role in the company is to serve/help my boss, and, most notably, making him look good in from of his boss.

Incidentally, I'm already financially independent and retired at 42 yo.

It is mostly a matter of personality. I consider myself very competent, after decades of study, and brilliant, and silencing my competence in order to achieve "labor peace" has been a tough sandwich to swallow.

Today, I see my competence as a tool that has allowed me to be in the position I am in, which is enough.

The endless search of The Meaning and the general futility of it with never ending doubts are depressing too.

Or you just do some work that you enjoy and don’t worry too much about meaning.

Thinking about how I look to my boss is not work that I enjoy.

easy peasy, similar vibes like "just don't be poor"

I fully understand if you have no other choice or prioritise providing for others.

It is very rarely a "black or white" decision.

The choice is not between licking the boots of your boss or instead doing meaningful work; it is not between earning a lot of money and doing boring work or instead earning not as much and doing entertaining work; not between eating like a pig or maniacally counting calories and macros.

Most of the time, the choice is between not saying something to your team or boss that will probably not be in your favor when you submit your promo package, or being one of those heroes who metaphorically dies in a battle that no one actually cares about.

It is between skipping the pack of Oreos for today in favor of some chicken and rice, not between being full or starving.

>It is not hard to guess where I spend most of my efforts and thinking.

Hope it's in a savings buffer. Everyone should have "fuck you" money[1] for this exact reason, but the next best thing is 3-6 months in immediate savings for rainy days. coporate shutting you down shouldn't be the immediate end of the world, especially not at the salaries tech is paid at.

[1] https://www.steveglaveski.com/blog/you-dont-need-f-ck-you-mo...

Yes, I have plenty of savings. But in any case, having a lot of savings does not make me lean toward starting crusades at work to use Julia instead of Python or a random forest instead of a neural network. When you see the corporate world for what it is, there is no turning back.

I am a professional well aware that I am the most important person in my life and a cog in the machine when I have my badge around my neck or on my belt like the gunslingers once carried their Colts.

Sure. It's more to protect you against when work wants to cut your pay, force you back into office, or you simply fall into office politics by someone climbing the corporate ladder. 6 months savings isn't "fuck you" money, and I'm guessing me and you both wouldn't be working for BigCo if. We had that money.

> the effects of my work strategy and behavior on my salary and position can be quite pronounced

I think you vastly overestimate the impact you can have on your career at a company of that size.

After a few decades of life, I dare say I am reasonably calibrated.

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