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Sadly your pay has little to do with merit, and more to do with perception, connections, face time and ability to handle office issues better than your cohort.

Sadly your pay has little to do with merit, and more to do with perception, connections, face time and ability to handle office issues better than your cohort. It may well be, if not more likely to be, the other way round - you could be a GOOD performer, but since you can't or don't gork office politics, you are underpaid or even not at the level of challenge and seniority you should be.

caymanjim 6y ago
> Sadly your pay has little to do with merit, and more to do with perception, connections, face time and ability to handle office issues better than your cohort. These are merits. They mean you're easy to work with, people want to work with you, you know how to make and maintain important relationships. You'd make a good leader. You can recruit talented people. You can get preferential treatment from vendors. Your projects get noticed. If you can't play this game, it doesn't matter if your technical skills are better. You won't have a chance to put them into practice. You won't have allies. No one will want to work with you or listen to your opinions.
- asciident 6y ago
  All the things the OP listed are real merits. It's not even a game, but being a professional. Perception = you are good at communicating your work to others Connections = you have a strong network and stay informed and know who to talk to for different tasks Face time = you are easy to get along with Ability to handle office issues = you are a lubricant that make the group dynamic work If you don't do those things, then you could write fantastic code, but: no one will know about it, know to ask you about it, be aware you're doing it, and find you somewhat of a drag on the office atmosphere. Basically, your work is not useful to the company that is paying you, and you should be paid less because of this.
  - tluyben2 6y ago
    You have any actual backup for this? I know too many niche tech guys who do nothing of this but get work done (inc myself) and make sv money in the eu while the people who do do this make far far less as they are easy to replace by other ‘talkytalky’ people who talk and don’t get actual work done. I guess if you do both you are a winner but I have never met anyone like that; where do you find the time to network and write metric tons of code? Both take a lot of time but one of them can be done by a far greater % of people.
    - asciident 6y ago
      Not sure how anyone would back up this. I manage managers so see this first hand. I think you're creating a false dichotomy between talkytalky and coding. Good developers will code and be professional at the same time. How do you know that the niche tech guys that you know are "getting work done"? They're doing this. This is not about spending time chatting up people all around the office and networking. It's about responding clearly when people ask you questions, when you have your 1:1 with your manager, and in how you write your emails, etc.
      - tluyben2 6y ago
        In your experience; mine is different. That does not matter; you were explaining in the parent comment that if you ‘do not do this you should earn less’; I am saying and living through for the last 30 years that people who do not do that make more. So just giving a counter example that your rules might not be holy ones. We can both be right: could be a culture thing or different circles (I work with embedded devs who make the big bucks and do not generally communicate well (the ones I know!); it distracts from work).
  - vincnetas 6y ago
    Yes but if you can do all these things minus coding, and your product is software this means that someone has to do the coding, and you are paid to convince (organize) these coders to do it for less, because the rest goes to you. By coding i mean software development in general. And saying that if no one knows about you you should be paid less is so false. Because, everyone will know about you when you leave and things stop working. Im not talking about single point of failure. But say all non communicating developers are gone from software company one day, id say company would feel that.
  - danaris 6y ago
    It is certainly possible to achieve these things by the methods you name. I'm sure some good employees do. But it is also perfectly possible to achieve good perception, strong connections, lots of face time, and ability to handle office issues, while also being really bad at your actual job, and without any of the positives you mention (except for the fairly bland "easy to get along with"). The real problem, of course, is that what office politics optimize for is extraversion over performance, so anyone who's introverted (which a disproportionate number of programmers still are) is going to come in at a disadvantage. And, um...if you're writing the code that's required of you, by the people who require it, and you're writing it well and in a timely fashion, it doesn't matter if you brag about it to everyone around, it's plenty useful to the company. I don't know where you've worked where the primary work you've done has been code that you've come up with on your own, which you've then had to "sell" to your own bosses and coworkers, but that's definitely not the norm.
    - asciident 6y ago
      I think you're projecting your idea of "person who is bad at their job but good at selling / office politics" into what I wrote. Of course you need to be good at your job, but how do you even know what's useful to the company if people don't find it easy to discuss problems with you? How do you communicate how long something will take if there is a dependency on another team? Unless you're just writing rote plumbing code, these are all things you need to know.
      - danaris 6y ago
        Well, first of all, I've seen people firsthand who get promotions and raises due to schmoozing who are demonstrably bad at their jobs (in and out of tech). I didn't think the existence of such people was in question. Second of all, you seem to be looking at things in very black and white terms. Of course you need to be able to communicate project requirements and dependencies and whatnot, both within and between teams. That's nowhere near the same thing as "networking" or "making connections" in the commonly-understood sense, which is much more about going over to have a chat and a laugh with Steve or Patty down the hall...or, to take it a step further, going out for a game of golf and running into the CTO there, and just happening to have a chat about your upcoming review. So, in short: yes, of course "being good at your job" requires communication and people skills, as well as (in our case) coding skills. But there are many places where the skills required to advance—both financially and in your career—are exclusively the people skills, regardless of the fact that the skills that are primarily relevant to job performance are the coding skills. This creates perverse incentives, results in unqualified people getting managerial positions, and massively disadvantages those who genuinely care more about doing a good job than "selling themselves"—especially introverted people—in the workplace.
landryraccoon 6y ago
This is definitely not true at a small company (say less than 10 developers). If the CTO sits no more than 2 cubicles away from every engineer he better know who the top performers are. If employees are playing politics at a small company, that company is already doomed.
rosywoozlechan 6y ago
If someone isn't being paid what they want, they should work hard to achieve that pay by making goals that will lead to compensation they would be happy with, prioritizing those goals and figuring out a roadmap to achieving them. Yes some people have a huge upper-hand in life, but that doesn't mean we can't figure out a way to make our own life better. Maybe not as good as others, but better than it is, and that's something. You can blame office politics, you can blame your lack connections, or whatever hand you were dealt. It probably wasn't a fair hand, but it's on you to make the best that you can out of it. I don't cry about unfairness. I look at what I want, and I figure out how to get it.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  My uncle once explained the best, and often only, way to negotiate a raise is get another job offer. Without it an employee has no leverage. It would seem that most employers would rather bear the cost of replacing someone than increasing their compensation to align with the value provided.
bonestormii_ 6y ago
> "gork office politics" Hehe.
grahamburger 6y ago
> and more to do with perception, connections, face time and ability to handle office issues better than your cohort. These things are all extremely important pieces of keeping a company functioning well. To the extent that if you're good at these things and mediocre at whatever your main job is you are probably more valuable to the company (as in very literally adding more value) than someone who excels at their main job but can't cope with working in an office. If it's true that people who are good at those things are being rewarded more than people who aren't then we are actually doing pretty at basing pay on merit. Office politics are, obviously, something you need to be good at to achieve seniority in an office.
irrational 6y ago
Eh, anecdotal, but that hasn’t been true in my experience. I’m fairly certain I’m perceived negatively. I show up, do my work, but do not seek any sort of human communication beyond the bare minimum required. I certainly don’t create connections, seek face time, etc. I’ve been with my company for nearly 2 decades and only know about 10 people, and only 2 of those well. I worked with one person for five years on a daily basis before they learned I was married with a bunch of kids. My salary has gone up 84% in those 18+ years. I make way more money than I feel I deserve (though I’m not complaining). I’ve never asked for a raise or anything like that. They just keep giving me raises on their own. Just recently in the middle of the pandemic they gave me a 16% raise out of the blue. I don’t know for sure how much others make, but I’m fairly certain I’m one of the top earners. It frankly baffles me.
- ido 6y ago
  According to the first inflation calculator I found there's been about 48% inflation in 18 years (2001 to 2019). 84% raise doesn't sound like much if you've also increased in seniority in that duration.
- Kinrany 6y ago
  I'd say either you're still underpaid, or your employer/boss is a saint
  - irrational 6y ago
    I’m making an insane amount of money. I was way overpaid even before the most recent raise. I’ve been in the field long enough to be very familiar with going rates.
    - TheHegemon 6y ago
      I think you may be surprised what the current rates are though.
      - irrational 6y ago

caymanjim 6y ago

> Sadly your pay has little to do with merit, and more to do with perception, connections, face time and ability to handle office issues better than your cohort. These are merits. They mean you're easy to work with, people want to work with you, you know how to make and maintain important relationships. You'd make a good leader. You can recruit talented people. You can get preferential treatment from vendors. Your projects get noticed. If you can't play this game, it doesn't matter if your technical skills are better. You won't have a chance to put them into practice. You won't have allies. No one will want to work with you or listen to your opinions.

asciident 6y ago
All the things the OP listed are real merits. It's not even a game, but being a professional. Perception = you are good at communicating your work to others Connections = you have a strong network and stay informed and know who to talk to for different tasks Face time = you are easy to get along with Ability to handle office issues = you are a lubricant that make the group dynamic work If you don't do those things, then you could write fantastic code, but: no one will know about it, know to ask you about it, be aware you're doing it, and find you somewhat of a drag on the office atmosphere. Basically, your work is not useful to the company that is paying you, and you should be paid less because of this.
- tluyben2 6y ago
  You have any actual backup for this? I know too many niche tech guys who do nothing of this but get work done (inc myself) and make sv money in the eu while the people who do do this make far far less as they are easy to replace by other ‘talkytalky’ people who talk and don’t get actual work done. I guess if you do both you are a winner but I have never met anyone like that; where do you find the time to network and write metric tons of code? Both take a lot of time but one of them can be done by a far greater % of people.
  - asciident 6y ago
    Not sure how anyone would back up this. I manage managers so see this first hand. I think you're creating a false dichotomy between talkytalky and coding. Good developers will code and be professional at the same time. How do you know that the niche tech guys that you know are "getting work done"? They're doing this. This is not about spending time chatting up people all around the office and networking. It's about responding clearly when people ask you questions, when you have your 1:1 with your manager, and in how you write your emails, etc.
    - tluyben2 6y ago
      In your experience; mine is different. That does not matter; you were explaining in the parent comment that if you ‘do not do this you should earn less’; I am saying and living through for the last 30 years that people who do not do that make more. So just giving a counter example that your rules might not be holy ones. We can both be right: could be a culture thing or different circles (I work with embedded devs who make the big bucks and do not generally communicate well (the ones I know!); it distracts from work).
- vincnetas 6y ago
  Yes but if you can do all these things minus coding, and your product is software this means that someone has to do the coding, and you are paid to convince (organize) these coders to do it for less, because the rest goes to you. By coding i mean software development in general. And saying that if no one knows about you you should be paid less is so false. Because, everyone will know about you when you leave and things stop working. Im not talking about single point of failure. But say all non communicating developers are gone from software company one day, id say company would feel that.
- danaris 6y ago
  It is certainly possible to achieve these things by the methods you name. I'm sure some good employees do. But it is also perfectly possible to achieve good perception, strong connections, lots of face time, and ability to handle office issues, while also being really bad at your actual job, and without any of the positives you mention (except for the fairly bland "easy to get along with"). The real problem, of course, is that what office politics optimize for is extraversion over performance, so anyone who's introverted (which a disproportionate number of programmers still are) is going to come in at a disadvantage. And, um...if you're writing the code that's required of you, by the people who require it, and you're writing it well and in a timely fashion, it doesn't matter if you brag about it to everyone around, it's plenty useful to the company. I don't know where you've worked where the primary work you've done has been code that you've come up with on your own, which you've then had to "sell" to your own bosses and coworkers, but that's definitely not the norm.
  - asciident 6y ago
    I think you're projecting your idea of "person who is bad at their job but good at selling / office politics" into what I wrote. Of course you need to be good at your job, but how do you even know what's useful to the company if people don't find it easy to discuss problems with you? How do you communicate how long something will take if there is a dependency on another team? Unless you're just writing rote plumbing code, these are all things you need to know.
    - danaris 6y ago
      Well, first of all, I've seen people firsthand who get promotions and raises due to schmoozing who are demonstrably bad at their jobs (in and out of tech). I didn't think the existence of such people was in question. Second of all, you seem to be looking at things in very black and white terms. Of course you need to be able to communicate project requirements and dependencies and whatnot, both within and between teams. That's nowhere near the same thing as "networking" or "making connections" in the commonly-understood sense, which is much more about going over to have a chat and a laugh with Steve or Patty down the hall...or, to take it a step further, going out for a game of golf and running into the CTO there, and just happening to have a chat about your upcoming review. So, in short: yes, of course "being good at your job" requires communication and people skills, as well as (in our case) coding skills. But there are many places where the skills required to advance—both financially and in your career—are exclusively the people skills, regardless of the fact that the skills that are primarily relevant to job performance are the coding skills. This creates perverse incentives, results in unqualified people getting managerial positions, and massively disadvantages those who genuinely care more about doing a good job than "selling themselves"—especially introverted people—in the workplace.

landryraccoon 6y ago

This is definitely not true at a small company (say less than 10 developers). If the CTO sits no more than 2 cubicles away from every engineer he better know who the top performers are. If employees are playing politics at a small company, that company is already doomed.

rosywoozlechan 6y ago

If someone isn't being paid what they want, they should work hard to achieve that pay by making goals that will lead to compensation they would be happy with, prioritizing those goals and figuring out a roadmap to achieving them. Yes some people have a huge upper-hand in life, but that doesn't mean we can't figure out a way to make our own life better. Maybe not as good as others, but better than it is, and that's something. You can blame office politics, you can blame your lack connections, or whatever hand you were dealt. It probably wasn't a fair hand, but it's on you to make the best that you can out of it. I don't cry about unfairness. I look at what I want, and I figure out how to get it.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
My uncle once explained the best, and often only, way to negotiate a raise is get another job offer. Without it an employee has no leverage. It would seem that most employers would rather bear the cost of replacing someone than increasing their compensation to align with the value provided.

bonestormii_ 6y ago

> "gork office politics" Hehe.

grahamburger 6y ago

> and more to do with perception, connections, face time and ability to handle office issues better than your cohort. These things are all extremely important pieces of keeping a company functioning well. To the extent that if you're good at these things and mediocre at whatever your main job is you are probably more valuable to the company (as in very literally adding more value) than someone who excels at their main job but can't cope with working in an office. If it's true that people who are good at those things are being rewarded more than people who aren't then we are actually doing pretty at basing pay on merit. Office politics are, obviously, something you need to be good at to achieve seniority in an office.

irrational 6y ago

Eh, anecdotal, but that hasn’t been true in my experience. I’m fairly certain I’m perceived negatively. I show up, do my work, but do not seek any sort of human communication beyond the bare minimum required. I certainly don’t create connections, seek face time, etc. I’ve been with my company for nearly 2 decades and only know about 10 people, and only 2 of those well. I worked with one person for five years on a daily basis before they learned I was married with a bunch of kids. My salary has gone up 84% in those 18+ years. I make way more money than I feel I deserve (though I’m not complaining). I’ve never asked for a raise or anything like that. They just keep giving me raises on their own. Just recently in the middle of the pandemic they gave me a 16% raise out of the blue. I don’t know for sure how much others make, but I’m fairly certain I’m one of the top earners. It frankly baffles me.

ido 6y ago
According to the first inflation calculator I found there's been about 48% inflation in 18 years (2001 to 2019). 84% raise doesn't sound like much if you've also increased in seniority in that duration.
Kinrany 6y ago
I'd say either you're still underpaid, or your employer/boss is a saint
- irrational 6y ago
  I’m making an insane amount of money. I was way overpaid even before the most recent raise. I’ve been in the field long enough to be very familiar with going rates.
  - TheHegemon 6y ago
    I think you may be surprised what the current rates are though.
    - irrational 6y ago