4 ms·

I feel like there is a middle ground. At a previous job, a common compliment during my quarterly review was that people thought I was very helpful and a joy to

I feel like there is a middle ground. At a previous job, a common compliment during my quarterly review was that people thought I was very helpful and a joy to have around the office. I am the type of person who is helpful to a fault though, and I sometimes end up neglecting myself and my responsibilities in order to help others and make sure they are happy. Later on in that job this tendency to always help others lead to burnout as I tried taking on too many responsibilities at once and spread myself too thin. Nowadays I still try to be as helpful as possible, but I make sure to not spread myself too thin and take into account my own responsibilities and mental health when deciding to help someone. Even then the answer wont always be a solid no, but sometimes just asking if the issue can wait until I'm at a point in my current work where I can stop and help out.

eldavido 6y ago
To some extent, you just need to look at the hard data: promotions and raises. See who's getting them. Whatever they're doing is what's actually rewarded. It sounds cynical but I learned too late that a company's success is only incidental to your own success as someone who works there. If you think this is too negative, I'll just say I've seen a lot of "executives" run companies into the ground, then get great, high-paying jobs at acquirers, because they managed the politics well. It sucks but it's life. Most tech management, especially young founders of VC-backed startups (vs. larger companies or owner-operated companies where the owners have a lot of skin in the game) is frankly pretty bad. It's just not celebrated or taken seriously the way it is in other industries, or fields (e.g. the military). I'm not saying this pessimistically, quite the opposite--I've seen a lot of bad management and I think there's better out there, but it does seem to be vanishingly rare.

eldavido 6y ago

To some extent, you just need to look at the hard data: promotions and raises. See who's getting them. Whatever they're doing is what's actually rewarded. It sounds cynical but I learned too late that a company's success is only incidental to your own success as someone who works there. If you think this is too negative, I'll just say I've seen a lot of "executives" run companies into the ground, then get great, high-paying jobs at acquirers, because they managed the politics well. It sucks but it's life. Most tech management, especially young founders of VC-backed startups (vs. larger companies or owner-operated companies where the owners have a lot of skin in the game) is frankly pretty bad. It's just not celebrated or taken seriously the way it is in other industries, or fields (e.g. the military). I'm not saying this pessimistically, quite the opposite--I've seen a lot of bad management and I think there's better out there, but it does seem to be vanishingly rare.