10 ms·

Give me a life altering kickback as a fat cheque each April or get the minimum possible work I can do to keep my job whilst management tries to figure out what

Give me a life altering kickback as a fat cheque each April or get the minimum possible work I can do to keep my job whilst management tries to figure out what that is and if I am viable. I do maybe 20% a week of my total. To be clear, I have been through the stress. ESPECIALLY in the games industry where a specific corner/corner collision had me crying and wished I was dead coz it was on me. I solved it, I got nothing.

rektide 3y ago
> I solved it, I got nothing. Alas one of the most defining aspects of business seems to be an entire lack of rewards for being the Johnny On The Spot, for tackling shit. It's absurd how little benefit there is to being good or caring or taking on the hard shit.
- thelastgallon 3y ago
  I heard Google has a peer bonus. Maybe for situations like this?
- esafak 3y ago
  Move to greener pastures and let the competition eat their lunch. Voting with your feet is how we have nice things.
  - 93po 3y ago
    Yep. I just quit my last job because I bust my ass with zero recognition or credit. Annual pay raise was less than inflation. I'm out.
    - esafak 3y ago
      I used that very line about the inflation when I left too! And my last manager was nice, but the company was rudderless and mismanaged. I believed I could do better.
      - 93po 3y ago
        My employer interestingly didn't ask anything about compensation during my exit interview, and I wasn't about to say anything that was negative or not prompted. Benefits me not at all to be honest. I don't think it's "wrong" for employers to not at least match inflation. Ultimately I accepted the job for a set salary. If I want to negotiate higher, that's on me. If they want to do a better job retaining me, they need to offer it without me prompting it. After a promotion I got while there, I was getting paid $110k for a job that averages $190k in my city. Didn't make any sense and the raise was 4%, so I left.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  I don't know if this is even solvable in principle. There's just little to no correlation between the tough parts of this job, and the outcomes visible to stakeholders (even technical managers). Spent two days dealing with memory corruption caused by a badly-written third-party library (proprietary, binary-only distributed)? I may have felt like I own the universe when I finally found the problem, but what does my manager see? Me having promised the feature today, and now saying it'll be next week.
  - Bellend 3y ago
    I'd personally solve it asap but I would never declare it until it was absolutely critical and then look like a superstar at day0 to offset all of the time I spent doing nothing for weeks. "Oh THAT is why we keep Bellend"
  - jdbernard 3y ago
    One of the many ways management benefits from having hands-on experience prior.
  - esafak 3y ago
    Options including selling your accomplishment, not doing thankless work, moving to a better-run company, and starting your own. I made my choice.
    - AH4oFVbPT4f8 3y ago
      Which option did you decide?
      - esafak 3y ago
        Started my own company. If you want something done right...
        AH4oFVbPT4f8 3y ago
        Congrats on taking that step, I've often debated on doing the same but can't seem to make the leap. I checked out your company and am very impressed. While the site says "Sorry, we don't currently have any open positions." I'll take this opportunity to ask: Could there be a need for someone with two decades of diverse technology expertise, or a role that specifically requires skills in C#, SQL, or AWS, which hasn't yet been filled within your company?
- tennisflyi 3y ago
  There was an article about these very people working at Google.
- alex_lav 3y ago
  > Alas one of the most defining aspects of business seems to be an entire lack of rewards for being the Johnny On The Spot, for tackling shit. Rewarding this behavior incentivizes the creation of unnecessary problems only Johnny knows how to solve.
- amelius 3y ago
  They look at you as a process. Paying you more is like disturbing the process. Better keep the process running without touching it. They can always offer you more if you decide to look for a job elsewhere.
- agumonkey 3y ago
  It's sadly very true. Yes-men, doing their best to handle everything without asking .. get nothing[0]. I think it should be taught that any favor in a professional context should start with a negotiation until you trust these people to respect your engagement and involvement into caring for the project. [0] it can go even worse, I was thrown under the bus while doing everything.. i have no proof but i assume the other people were too happy to see me burn so they can go back to pretend working without someone showing what's the normal output is
analog31 3y ago
Maybe there's a Laffer Curve of programming. The 100% programmers are doing 0% per week due to lack of life altering kickback or equivalent, and the 0% programmers are doing 100% per week but deliver no value. Somewhere in between, the 50% programmers are the ones who are actually delivering the most value. Your 20% puts you somewhere on the curve, perhaps to the right of the optimum, which might also explain the lack of life altering kickback. It's a feedback loop. Management wants workers at the top of the curve, not at the interchangeable edges. It may very well be that the mediocre programmers, who feel lucky to be employed at all, are carrying the industry on their shoulders. Oddly enough this gibes with the widespread management attitude that they'd rather reward a mediocre person who works hard, than a brilliant worker who appears to be taking it easy.
- Bellend 3y ago
  There might very well be! But your last sentence for me only makes sense if the mediocre person is rewarded which is honestly not a thing. Since if the mediocre developer was rewarded they wouldn't end up being like me.
- ElFitz 3y ago
  I remember a former manager, telling me that being the only software engineer they had ever worked with, I had been my own benchmark. And that it was only when I was gone, and they started working with other software engineers, that they realised how effective I was, even when I wasn’t as productive as usual, and how they had failed to appreciate it. It truly was an enlightening moment for me. But years later I still don’t have a clue as to what I should take away from it.
  - flappyeagle 3y ago
    When working with a manager ask them who the most productive engineers they worked with were and how you rank
PragmaticPulp 3y ago
There is a lot of middle ground between game industry 80 hour crunch mode and doing “maybe 20% a week of my total” Honestly, working on a team where people refuse to do anything more than the bare minimum to fool management each week kind of sucks for everyone else. Everyone else eventually leaves for teams that have a healthier work balance. Extremes are bad in both directions. > I have been through the stress. ESPECIALLY in the games industry where a specific corner/corner collision had me crying and wished I was dead coz it was on me. I solved it, I got nothing. I get it. You went through an abusive work relationship. That doesn’t mean you now need to become bitter about every job. (Same applies to relationships, FWIW, some people to though an abusive personal relationship and then proceed to sabotage all of their future relationships so they can avoid the feeling of being taken advantage of. It’s not healthy)
- r00fus 3y ago
  Something to keep in mind… people change. Capacities of an individual worker may suddenly shift for better or worse through what is essentially happenstance (family emergency, burnout, unlocking motivation, etc) Corporations and management simply don’t have any tools to predict or control those things so they simply reward work and replace people who can’t work at a given base level. Adding a bit/lot of political machination and basic stimulus response for economic conditions and you explain most of “performance management“
jdlshore 3y ago
In other words, you're extrinsically motivated. Possibly an excess of rewards and punishments in the past has burned you out and destroyed your intrinsic motivation, as extrinsic motivators are known to do. Your final paragraph makes it sound that way. For knowledge work, though, the best work is done by people who are intrinsically motivated. Rewards (like a life-altering kickback) don't actually elevate performance that much. Instead, they become the new baseline, and performance falls once again. Alfie Kohn talks about a study in his book, "Punished by Rewards," where kindergartners who received a reward for coloring—something they normally intrinsically enjoyed!—spent less time coloring than those who didn't. I guess what I'm saying is that you sound burned out, and you might be happier if you chased work you loved rather than a fat cheque. As for me, I'd rather hire people who are intrinsically motivated and pay them fairly. People can tell when their coworkers aren't engaged. It spoils the culture of the whole team.
- nerdponx 3y ago
  This sounds highly entitled on your part. Employment is a transactional business relationship. I care a lot about my work and my profession in general, but at the end of the day I'm being paid to care about whatever it is that I'm being paid to care about.
  - BenjiWiebe 3y ago
    I want to be paid for my work, but you can't buy my care. Or maybe it would be possible but no job has offered enough to buy my care yet. It's just that I do care about my job regardless of the pay.
    - nerdponx 3y ago
      I care about my job and the industry I work in, otherwise I wouldn't have the job in the first place. But if I wasn't being paid, I wouldn't do the work. You can't buy my basic personal interest, but you can absolutely buy my ongoing care and attention.
- davesque 3y ago
projektfu 3y ago
That's probably hard for a company to manage appropriately, and determine if they're getting 20% or 100% effort. Do you negotiate with them, "I'll deliver x by February and you pay me $Y,000,000 but if I'm not on target, I'm happy with $Z,000 per month"? After all, how can they read your mind? Honestly curious. Personally I'm not very extrinsically motivated. But I can be extrinsically demotivated by things like a colleague making much more than me while doing much less. These stressors are what keep me out of the job market and in my own company.

rektide 3y ago

> I solved it, I got nothing. Alas one of the most defining aspects of business seems to be an entire lack of rewards for being the Johnny On The Spot, for tackling shit. It's absurd how little benefit there is to being good or caring or taking on the hard shit.

thelastgallon 3y ago
I heard Google has a peer bonus. Maybe for situations like this?
esafak 3y ago
Move to greener pastures and let the competition eat their lunch. Voting with your feet is how we have nice things.
- 93po 3y ago
  Yep. I just quit my last job because I bust my ass with zero recognition or credit. Annual pay raise was less than inflation. I'm out.
  - esafak 3y ago
    I used that very line about the inflation when I left too! And my last manager was nice, but the company was rudderless and mismanaged. I believed I could do better.
    - 93po 3y ago
      My employer interestingly didn't ask anything about compensation during my exit interview, and I wasn't about to say anything that was negative or not prompted. Benefits me not at all to be honest. I don't think it's "wrong" for employers to not at least match inflation. Ultimately I accepted the job for a set salary. If I want to negotiate higher, that's on me. If they want to do a better job retaining me, they need to offer it without me prompting it. After a promotion I got while there, I was getting paid $110k for a job that averages $190k in my city. Didn't make any sense and the raise was 4%, so I left.
TeMPOraL 3y ago
I don't know if this is even solvable in principle. There's just little to no correlation between the tough parts of this job, and the outcomes visible to stakeholders (even technical managers). Spent two days dealing with memory corruption caused by a badly-written third-party library (proprietary, binary-only distributed)? I may have felt like I own the universe when I finally found the problem, but what does my manager see? Me having promised the feature today, and now saying it'll be next week.
- Bellend 3y ago
  I'd personally solve it asap but I would never declare it until it was absolutely critical and then look like a superstar at day0 to offset all of the time I spent doing nothing for weeks. "Oh THAT is why we keep Bellend"
- jdbernard 3y ago
  One of the many ways management benefits from having hands-on experience prior.
- esafak 3y ago
  Options including selling your accomplishment, not doing thankless work, moving to a better-run company, and starting your own. I made my choice.
  - AH4oFVbPT4f8 3y ago
    Which option did you decide?
    - esafak 3y ago
      Started my own company. If you want something done right...
      - AH4oFVbPT4f8 3y ago
        Congrats on taking that step, I've often debated on doing the same but can't seem to make the leap. I checked out your company and am very impressed. While the site says "Sorry, we don't currently have any open positions." I'll take this opportunity to ask: Could there be a need for someone with two decades of diverse technology expertise, or a role that specifically requires skills in C#, SQL, or AWS, which hasn't yet been filled within your company?
tennisflyi 3y ago
There was an article about these very people working at Google.
alex_lav 3y ago
> Alas one of the most defining aspects of business seems to be an entire lack of rewards for being the Johnny On The Spot, for tackling shit. Rewarding this behavior incentivizes the creation of unnecessary problems only Johnny knows how to solve.
amelius 3y ago
They look at you as a process. Paying you more is like disturbing the process. Better keep the process running without touching it. They can always offer you more if you decide to look for a job elsewhere.
agumonkey 3y ago
It's sadly very true. Yes-men, doing their best to handle everything without asking .. get nothing[0]. I think it should be taught that any favor in a professional context should start with a negotiation until you trust these people to respect your engagement and involvement into caring for the project. [0] it can go even worse, I was thrown under the bus while doing everything.. i have no proof but i assume the other people were too happy to see me burn so they can go back to pretend working without someone showing what's the normal output is

analog31 3y ago

Maybe there's a Laffer Curve of programming. The 100% programmers are doing 0% per week due to lack of life altering kickback or equivalent, and the 0% programmers are doing 100% per week but deliver no value. Somewhere in between, the 50% programmers are the ones who are actually delivering the most value. Your 20% puts you somewhere on the curve, perhaps to the right of the optimum, which might also explain the lack of life altering kickback. It's a feedback loop. Management wants workers at the top of the curve, not at the interchangeable edges. It may very well be that the mediocre programmers, who feel lucky to be employed at all, are carrying the industry on their shoulders. Oddly enough this gibes with the widespread management attitude that they'd rather reward a mediocre person who works hard, than a brilliant worker who appears to be taking it easy.

Bellend 3y ago
There might very well be! But your last sentence for me only makes sense if the mediocre person is rewarded which is honestly not a thing. Since if the mediocre developer was rewarded they wouldn't end up being like me.
ElFitz 3y ago
I remember a former manager, telling me that being the only software engineer they had ever worked with, I had been my own benchmark. And that it was only when I was gone, and they started working with other software engineers, that they realised how effective I was, even when I wasn’t as productive as usual, and how they had failed to appreciate it. It truly was an enlightening moment for me. But years later I still don’t have a clue as to what I should take away from it.
- flappyeagle 3y ago
  When working with a manager ask them who the most productive engineers they worked with were and how you rank

PragmaticPulp 3y ago

There is a lot of middle ground between game industry 80 hour crunch mode and doing “maybe 20% a week of my total” Honestly, working on a team where people refuse to do anything more than the bare minimum to fool management each week kind of sucks for everyone else. Everyone else eventually leaves for teams that have a healthier work balance. Extremes are bad in both directions. > I have been through the stress. ESPECIALLY in the games industry where a specific corner/corner collision had me crying and wished I was dead coz it was on me. I solved it, I got nothing. I get it. You went through an abusive work relationship. That doesn’t mean you now need to become bitter about every job. (Same applies to relationships, FWIW, some people to though an abusive personal relationship and then proceed to sabotage all of their future relationships so they can avoid the feeling of being taken advantage of. It’s not healthy)

r00fus 3y ago
Something to keep in mind… people change. Capacities of an individual worker may suddenly shift for better or worse through what is essentially happenstance (family emergency, burnout, unlocking motivation, etc) Corporations and management simply don’t have any tools to predict or control those things so they simply reward work and replace people who can’t work at a given base level. Adding a bit/lot of political machination and basic stimulus response for economic conditions and you explain most of “performance management“

jdlshore 3y ago

In other words, you're extrinsically motivated. Possibly an excess of rewards and punishments in the past has burned you out and destroyed your intrinsic motivation, as extrinsic motivators are known to do. Your final paragraph makes it sound that way. For knowledge work, though, the best work is done by people who are intrinsically motivated. Rewards (like a life-altering kickback) don't actually elevate performance that much. Instead, they become the new baseline, and performance falls once again. Alfie Kohn talks about a study in his book, "Punished by Rewards," where kindergartners who received a reward for coloring—something they normally intrinsically enjoyed!—spent less time coloring than those who didn't. I guess what I'm saying is that you sound burned out, and you might be happier if you chased work you loved rather than a fat cheque. As for me, I'd rather hire people who are intrinsically motivated and pay them fairly. People can tell when their coworkers aren't engaged. It spoils the culture of the whole team.

nerdponx 3y ago
This sounds highly entitled on your part. Employment is a transactional business relationship. I care a lot about my work and my profession in general, but at the end of the day I'm being paid to care about whatever it is that I'm being paid to care about.
- BenjiWiebe 3y ago
  I want to be paid for my work, but you can't buy my care. Or maybe it would be possible but no job has offered enough to buy my care yet. It's just that I do care about my job regardless of the pay.
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    I care about my job and the industry I work in, otherwise I wouldn't have the job in the first place. But if I wasn't being paid, I wouldn't do the work. You can't buy my basic personal interest, but you can absolutely buy my ongoing care and attention.
davesque 3y ago

projektfu 3y ago

That's probably hard for a company to manage appropriately, and determine if they're getting 20% or 100% effort. Do you negotiate with them, "I'll deliver x by February and you pay me $Y,000,000 but if I'm not on target, I'm happy with $Z,000 per month"? After all, how can they read your mind? Honestly curious. Personally I'm not very extrinsically motivated. But I can be extrinsically demotivated by things like a colleague making much more than me while doing much less. These stressors are what keep me out of the job market and in my own company.