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>I thought that the value that I create will talk more than the nonsense of some people. Nope. Silence is always less noticeable than noise. Evil prevails wh
by clavalle 8y ago
>I thought that the value that I create will talk more than the nonsense of some people.
Nope. Silence is always less noticeable than noise.
Evil prevails when good men do nothing. Also, nonsense fluff prevails when good work isn't spoken of.
You have a professional duty to make sure nonsense is crowded out by important information. No one is going to do that for you.
Follow the rule of three...tell people what you are going to do and why it is important. Tell people what you are doing. Tell people what you've done. And not just anybody; decision makers.
It is no one else's job to tell people who influence your life of your good works.
No one has time to dig through everything you might have done to hold up the shining examples of your work. And now you have someone above you that might actually be interested in seeing it kept buried so it is even more critical that you do that interpersonal information transfer yourself.
You are a business, and like a business there is no worth in a product that the people who are in a position to buy don't know about. You're going to have to market and sell your value to the people that are buying. All of the time. Make it a habit. Your co-workers are competitors...don't expect them to sell your product for you. (though, keep in mind, part of your value-add is cooperating in your value-add chain so don't take this analogy too far).
Honestly, this is stuff that took me way too long to learn. They should teach it in engineering school. Hell, they should teach it in secondary school, for that matter, since there is really no one who is not running a business even if it is a business of one.
- La_Beffa 8y agoCannot agree more, this is a life lesson that should be taught in school. Especially in medium/large companies where you got rewards like promotions, bonuses and so on, then your colleagues are competitors. Pretty much like politics, the one over promising and under delivering wins over the quiet one that delivers.
- pitt1980 8y agoexactly how much to promise is an art form over promising and under delivering isn't a sustainable model under promising too much and you won't get the chance to deliver there's a sweet spot somewhere in there, which can be sometimes tricky to find
- dawidw 8y agoIs it a poem or you're just missing capital letters and punctuation?
- pitt1980 8y agojust missing capital letters and punctuation (maybe stream of consciousness posting isn't the way to go)
- Devils_Avocado 8y ago...if everyone is over-promising & you're confident in your delivery, all you need to do is "promise" something between what is expected & over-promised in order to "under-promise".../ ,,, ... ,,, ...
- mikehollinger 8y ago> Follow the rule of three...tell people what you are going to do and why it is important. Tell people what you are doing. Tell people what you've done. And not just anybody; decision makers. An interesting corollary: Find out what's bothering decision makers. What're their annual or quarterly (or whatever) goals? If you know what those are - not only can you say "Hey, by the way, I did what I'm being paid to do, but, by the way, it helps to address that thing that's been bugging you."
- allenu 8y agoThis is excellent advice. This is one thing I've found myself struggling with as (like the OP), I have had this naive idea that the work will speak for itself. Often, when you do good work and are good at what you do, it actually looks like your job is easy, even when you are busting your ass to get results! Some of the best engineers I remember working with did the over-communicating stuff you advise and I remember it was always very clear what they were working on versus other people. They also had a knack for communicating the work in the simplest terms for everyone to understand.
- glitchc 8y agoI find this prevailing mentality incredibly troubling and the one truly broken thing about North American culture. Taken to its logical end, it is the underpinning root cause of all that ails the U.S. In short: “I did it all myself” is always a lie. It could only ever be true if babes were left in woods since the time of birth to fend for themselves, and even then, debatable.
- thatcat 8y agoReally? It seems pretty easy to fall into a group dynamic where one person gets the technical debt dumped on them while the other handles the non technical aspects. This is because it is easier to not communicate and just do everything yourself than to explain to someone who is less technically motivated, for whatever reason. When you slow down and try to explain stuff over and over, until at a certain point as the gap increases it feels like the other person is either incompetent or taking advantage of the situation to reduce their own workload.