Hacker News Reader

Comment by over_bridge | Hacker News Reader

Many places I've worked didn't promote hard workers at all. Hard workers were hard to replace so they were kept where they were and even blocked from promotions at times. People floating about with few duties were easy to backfill so could move to new positions, including up.

This is mostly public sector and utilities

View on HN

Those people “floating about” were doing something: building relationships with others who could promote them. Something that’s very difficult for hard workers to do, because they’re busy actually…working.

Or something they are not willing to do. Genuinely, my career development plan is to be so good at a certain technical niche that people are still going to hire me even if I spit before them.

Of course reality hits hard so I’m now good with people. Not my taste but I can fake it easily.

I would recommend reconsidering that strategy; it’s not sustainable for your entire working lifetime. There WILL come a point where you cannot maintain the pace of being “so good” that the works speaks for itself. When you reach that point, the relationships you build NOW, will become very important to that future you.

It doesn’t mean you need to stop being technical now, but at least start allocating a few hours a month to relationships in a meaningful, intentional way.

Thanks. Actually I already reconsidered due to my difficulties to hop into the next more technical job.

> Many places I've worked didn't promote hard workers at all.

There's a type of hard worker who puts in a lot of effort and hopes it's noticed, but gets stuck being loyal to jobs like this.

If you work at one of those jobs, they're going to collect around you. You might be getting pulled into that type of work without knowing it.

The successful ones know that getting promoted is just 1 out of many potential career moves for them to consider at a given point. If they're not getting promoted, they get up and leave for another company where their hard work will be appreciated.

Some people get stuck at those companies, watch people working hard and getting nowhere, and go in the opposite direction: They stay put and stop trying hard. That can be fine for people whose goal is to have a stable job that isn't too demanding. However it gives a very wrong impression of the relationship between hard work and success when extrapolate over an entire career.

There are a lot of things about dysfunctional and broken companies that shouldn't be generalized. It's too easy to get trapped in cycles of cynicism and defeatism in a place like those.

I'm in this position! I chose to stay in the lackluster mobility because the money was too good. Now it's running dry and I'm ready for my next thing

Your thesis is that companies pay more (by promoting) to people they could easily backfill instead of just letting them go and replacing them?

I'm not American. It's hard to fire people. You have to recycle them into new positions. The author seems to be French so I imagine it's similar there

I do wish it were easier to fire people for poor performance though. Nothing kills morale like tolerating incompetence

If the unemployment benefits are strong then I have no problem with easier dismissal rules

Reply on news.ycombinator.com