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Comment by dakiol | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one who doesn’t care about OKRs or whatever companies are following nowadays? I tend to work around 2-3 years per company. Get a salary bump when switching. My first year is rather slow/smooth because “I’ve been here for less than a year!”. My second year is more interesting and I do take it as “real” work. My third year I couldn’t care less since I’m already looking for something else.

I couldn’t care less about goals or OKRs. I get paid, I solve whatever problems the business has (whether they make sense or not) and then I just leave.

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This is the right approach. As an individual engineer, you are not paid enough to care about business problems and propose your own solutions and timelines. You are also not given organizational authority, budgets, or agency beyond your line of work.

You literally haven't been given the tools to own metrics and OKRs. And moving those metrics and OKRs doesn't get you more money.

So why would you care? You sound rational to me.

And even if/when you are paid well, you probably aren't given any meaningful ability to do the things necessary for those business problems. Corporate inertia is strong.

> And moving those metrics and OKRs doesn't get you more money.

Because you are already being paid to move those metrics and OKRs. Not doing so means you're not actually doing your job and, in a well managed company (which are admittedly few and far between), will be rightfully fired and replaced by someone who does.

That's why I don't hire people with resumes like yours :)

exactly - resumes like this are immediately discarded... you would REALLY want to get a job where I am at, REALLY :)

because you want someone who won't ask for a raise.

huh? that is EXACTLY who he wants, not someone who will abandon the team to go elsewhere. if you look at the resume and you see someone jumping from job to job like a hooker why on Earth would anyone hire them???! absolute stupidity to even interview such a person

Because the best talent jump jobs for raises and promotion if the current company is not offering that. You are really limiting your options.

No, because I want someone who stays around to build up enough knowledge of the tech and domain to make significant contributions. Someone who is completely uninterested and uninvested is rarely worth the time investment of a relationship with them.

Ah, but do you increase the pay of said veterans as they gain more experience with your stuff? If there's no incentive like that why would they want to stick around if they could make more money elsewhere?

Yes, I work hard to grow my reports and get them promoted. I promoted >50% of my reports in the last 2 years.

I don't want to waste my time and effort on people who don't give a fuck.

This is completely logical from a compensation/effort maximization perspective. But I find it deeply unfulfilling and could never work like this. If I'm spending 1/3 of my conscious hours on something, I want to feel like it matters.

This is the way. But I’m unlucky to have been locked into a small job market, so I’m stuck in a local maximum. Won’t be moving to the US anytime soon with Trump’s immigration policies.

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