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Comment by lovedaddy | Hacker News Reader

This...

And tell you what, the posts on linkedin and the blogs like this, where the take away is 'I got fired and next time I'll work LESS'. Really?

Errr, might want to reconsider that strategy, unless you think that you are going to get binned no matter what, and just cruising until that happens is the solution. Just seems like a massively negative outcome.

That, or they are going for the spiteful 'hopefully I convince everyone else to lower the standard, so others get sacked, or so I look good again'.

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The point of the article isn't to just "work less", but rather that working above and beyond what you're contracted for in a large organization in the long run ultimately won't matter. The takeaway is that your "extra" efforts can be better spent elsewhere: family, personal projects, interviews for next gig, etc.

The article makes it very clear that they're talking about large, 100+ staff companies; when you're just another interchangeable cog in the machine. Today it's seldom that the person doing the layoffs is also part of the day to day operations, hence the you're "just another row in an excel spreadsheet" call out. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves by thinking at the boots-on-the-ground level (known individual/quantity, appreciated) instead of the macro COO/CFO costs tracking level (unknown individual/quantity, interchangeable.)

Nah, its just them playing the victim. You can totally get noticed in a big company. Or overlooked in a small.

Throwing in the towel and saying I'm not going to bother in the future... yeah I'd never be hiring you in the first place.

I don't think the original post is advocating for just "throwing in the towel" here. Instead they're simply stating that working what you're specifically contracted for is a more reasonable and sustainable model than always going "above and beyond" for little to no gain to your work life and at great cost to your personal life.

Corporations by design don't "care" about you, they only care about maximizing profits and returns for their shareholders. Sure you can get "noticed" by higher ups, but those individuals have no obligations to you in the day to day operations unless you're getting cozy with the (increasingly externally conteacted) deciders/architects of the next upcoming re-org.

It's not explicitly stated in the article, but their call-out of the behavior of large companies speaks to the missing piece of the puzzle here: the "stage" of the company's lifecycle plays a crutial role in how much your "above and beyond" contributions matter. 10 person start-up? Matters significantly. 1000+ person org? Drop in the bucket.

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