10 ms·

Pretty much. Honestly if I can get a 20% pay raise by switching jobs, my job is to do the absolute minimum amount I can do to stay under the radar, why would I

Pretty much. Honestly if I can get a 20% pay raise by switching jobs, my job is to do the absolute minimum amount I can do to stay under the radar, why would I try? If I wanted to try I would go work somewhere else. There's just a complete mismatch in how much the company I work for values the experience and skill I gain over time and how much everyone else values it. Over time recruiters come to me with opportunities to make more money, they try to convince me to leave. It's such an obvious disparity I can't help but stop caring about the job I'm doing when it's only real utility to me is that I don't have to put in any effort to keep having it.

jollybean 5y ago
"my job is to do the absolute minimum amount I can do to stay under the radar, why would I try?" Because it's a form of systematic corruption, maybe the biggest kind of corruption in the White Collar world. The objective is to 'do a good job' , not the minimum, in every endeavour. Doing the 'bare minimum' to keep a job is actually generally far under-performing, as most companies won't generally let people go. It's how entire industries stagnate and sink. When internal participants spend most of their time fighting over the surpluses, it's over. This applies to companies as whole as well of course, i.e. the $1B government contracts that should only be $500M etc. etc.. Do a good job. If there's a better fit elsewhere, that's fine too.
- beiller 5y ago
  You have errors in you measurement, mostly in assuming employees only add a positive ROI when in fact their value can go negative. Thus doing the bare minimum is worth more than you think as long as the employee stays in the positive ROI (which I assume is the measure of bare minimum).
- handrous 5y ago
  I have a really hard time distinguishing between the idea that companies are entitled to some maximum of an employee's work-quality and effort and the notion that an employee is entitled to compensation amounting to most or all of the marginal value they add to a company through their labor, not just what they can convince the company to give them. Like, I don't get how one can argue for the former and reject the latter, not regarding it also as a form of "corruption", as you put it. (I'm making an assumption here that you're not big on Marxism, I guess—maybe you do agree with both propositions)
  - errantspark 5y ago
    This is the all-important point. It would be insane for me to try my best to make money for a company when the effort reward curve is so non linear. The only reason the idea of "doing the best job you can" is propagated is because it allows one to abuse workers. I could see myself working hard at a company with a flat-ish compensation structure tied directly to the revenue of the company. "If I make a penny my boss makes a dime, that's why I shit on company time."
    - handrous 5y ago
      Right—I don't get how not putting in something resembling full effort can be corruption, but a company not paying you as much as they could, rather than what they must, isn't corruption.
      - actually_a_dog 5y ago
        What's going on here is that, in theory, both sides of the employer/employee relationship are supposed to have equal or approximately equal negotiating power when it comes to things like wages, hours, and working conditions. But, that's in theory. You know, theory: the place where markets are never supposed to be irrational and there aren't any information asymmetries to exploit. And, pretty much all of those deviations from theory end up going against workers and in favor of employers. Labor markets aren't truly free because most people can't afford to just quit their job one day, then walk across the street to their former employer's competitor and negotiate a more suitable contract. Health insurance is so expensive that most people probably couldn't afford the amount of coverage they need without the subsidy their employer provides. Meanwhile, employers get away with stuff like union busting, just like Amazon is accused of doing, because "punishable by fine" really means "perfectly legal, as long as you have enough money," so that regulatory fines get treated like just another "cost of doing business." Is it any wonder the only narrative about the employer/employee relationship we ever hear is the one that's favorable to the more powerful side?
      - jollybean 5y ago
        First - 'Doing A Good Job' is not 'Maximal Effort'. Second - professionals have incredible power and market wages are what they are. Most corporations do not profit in some exceptionally linear way beyond employees. The 'Giant Lie' is that corporations are some magical entities that collect magic surpluses and shareholders and owners run off or private jets. The vast majority of companies are not hugely profitable, and most small and mid-sized one's are not. Especially not in some disproportionately 'non linear' way. Stock prices may be crazy - and those who trade stocks may or may not be making bank - but that's a very odd historical situation we have where shares are trading at absurd levesl relative to profits. That's a market 'dysfunction that may or may not be around for a while that some people managed to make money from, like Bitcoin, it's just a Ponzi-ish thing that has happened. Corporations are not drowning in profits, and White Collar employees soak up the vast majority of corporate spending. FYI everything I'm saying applies to mostly white collar professionals, for unskilled labour it's a different story.
- throwawaysleep 5y ago
  > The objective is to 'do a good job' Nobody has that objective except the very passionate. A company will happily do a shitty job if it will still get paid. See IBM. See Facebook and Google on customer support. > Doing the 'bare minimum' to keep a job is actually generally far under-performing My manager hasn’t seemed to notice that I work a 1/3 of what I used to now.
  - cyb_ 5y ago
    Or perhaps they have and that is why your performance ratings are flat, you get a lousy annual raise/bonus (if any), and your career is stalled?
    - Retric 5y ago
      Performance ratings are meaningless if you’re jumping ship every 2-4 years and the difference is between working twice as hard is a 2% raise vs a 4% one. What companies forget is new employees see the legacy of how you treated old employees over time. The basic structure of small consistent pay bumps was extremely effective when people stayed at companies for decades. Work twice as hard and make 2 percent more for the next 30 years, that’s a big bump. Pensions pushed that out so even people nearing retirement still had reason to care. I am not recommending people do the minimum, just acknowledging how people respond to incentives.
      - dr-detroit 5y ago
        sorry due to covid your 2% was cancelled so your performance is worthless have a nice day.
      - captainredbeard 5y ago
        The gap at big tech companies between okay and "doing well" (i.e. twice the effort) is not a 4% raise, it's a 40% raise.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  How come in your mind there's an onus on the employee to work as hard as they can but not on the company to pay that effort what it's actually worth? Unless there's a genuine emotional reason that transcends your salary (such as in community/nonprofit work) the relationship between an employer and company should be transactional in my opinion.
  - simonh 5y ago
    Sure that’s fair, but I’ve been very fortunate to have worked reasonably or very well paid jobs most of my career. Those jobs also enabled me to develop valuable skills. I think it’s only fair I put in a good effort in return. Yes if business priorities change I could end up out the door, and that happened once, but no hard feelings. I quit all my other jobs anyway and there was nothing malicious either way. The clothes on my back, and those if my children, the house we live in, the car we drive all were paid for by my employers. Yes it was a transaction, but a beneficial one on both sides. It’s all good.
    - pnutjam 5y ago
      What if my low effort is better then the other guys on my teams "good effort"? You're also selling yourself short. You paid for all that stuff. Your employer paid for the work you did, and probably took more whenever they could; through on-call, off hours work, etc... I try to comp my time, but I know I put in more then I'm compensated for, even when I was technically "hourly". I'm fine with that, but I expect to take back when I need it.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - BackBlast 5y ago
        Putting in low effort during your billable hours is a personal character weakness that you are cultivating. You should avoid it because it's bad for you, not just being unfair to your employer. Regardless of your relative effectiveness.
- ren_engineer 5y ago
  in a world of at-will employment, why would anybody go the extra mile for an employer? Trust and loyalty are 2 way streets, the social contract has been broken by corporations
  - simonh 5y ago
    I work, they pay me. As long as they hold up their end, I’ll hold up mine. What’s the alternative, against their will employment? That sounds like it would suck all around.
    - quanticle 5y ago
      The alternative is having formal employment contracts. I work for the employer for a fixed term. If I choose to leave before that term is up, I have to pay a penalty to the employer. If the employer chooses to fire me they have to pay me a penalty. The exact amount conditions of the penalty are specified in the buy-out clause of the contract. This is universally how people with actual leverage (i.e. high performing athletes, Fortune 500 C-level execs, etc) get paid.
- satellite2 5y ago
  The only honest and sincere answer gets downvoted to hell. The world is really burning. I just hope it doesn't mean HN is transforming into Reddit, with all the zero sum game people scaring and demotivating each other.
  - omgwtfbbq 5y ago
    This is a braindead opinion. Why would anyone work as hard as possible when there are 0 incentives to do so? When at any moment you could be fired without warning in a mass layoff and when even the highest performers only get 5-10% raises per year when jumping ship gives you 20%+ . You want good work then create the incentives for it, currently there are none.
    - satellite2 5y ago
      It's a game where you can do the minimum or more and if you do more your boss can pay the minimum or more. If you do the minimumy your boss pays the minimum, it's a zero sum game, if you do more and your boss the minimum, again zero sum because you lost energy and he won more from you but if you both do more then it's a net positive. So the optimal strategy is to do more. Then like the cops in the prisoners game you are tricking yourself at playing the zero sum game because of trust issues.
      - abrokenpipe 5y ago
        It seems like the optimal strategy would be to do the minimum and then job hop since the pay increase is greater and getting a raise for working hard is not certain. I personally have not seen much correlation between pay working hard and getting pay raises, it seems about as likely as getting one for doing the minimum, and the effort to dollars ratio is usually not worth while. I don't want to put in 50% more effort only to get a 5-10% raise. Plus, as stated before, switching jobs results in much bigger pay increases making the raises irrelevant.
        tayo42 5y ago
- tikhonj 5y ago
  The problem is that "doing a good job" is rarely the objective at most organizations! People naturally want to do a good job; it's just more interesting and satisfying. But then we have layers of management and process and culture that push back on that in favor of control: follow directions, don't rock the boat, don't take any risks, always look like you're busy... In a world like that, the people who just "do a good job" are characterized by some level of stubbornness coupled with an ability to navigate this kind of environment. Should that really be the key skill that matters? Is not being sufficiently stubborn "a form of systematic corruption"? That seems like a fundamentally uncharitable perspective that also provides no real solution. When that's how you see the situation, what can you do about it? My experience has been that changing environment and process to actively trust people and, crucially, clearly signal that trust improves things far more than blaming people. If you expect people to phone it in, they probably will; if you can establish real trust instead, they'll go out of their way to make something work.
- notapenny 5y ago
  I personally want to do a good job, but some companies make that hard to employees, albeit sometimes inadvertently. Whether it's by tying people up in politics, having them do busywork, or just failing to reward them. To give an example, at one of my previous jobs, for several years in a row I was noted by my managers as being a high performer and someone who would be ready for leadership. Despite this, I got an average (you did good but that's it) performance rating, because only a few people could get the higher rating. The first year I had just joined so I was excluded by default, the second/third year other people ranked higher and because that rating only went to about 2 people, I missed out. When after this my manager approached me about a lead role, which was extra responsibility but no extra pay, I was pretty much done. When I was in my 20s-30s I hated people who seemed like they checked out, but I understand that a lot more now. Again, I'll do a good job regardless and if I don't get rewarded for that, I'll find the door and go elsewhere, but I completely understand why people who don't have that luxury or drive would rather keep their heads down and just go through the motions.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    You may want to take some time to reflect on the issue you articulated in your second paragraph. So you 'did a good job' and the company maybe indicated there was a future for you, but they couldn't fulfill it. That's not hugely nice. But can you fathom for a minute that it seems your peers were doing 'An Even Better Job' and perhaps better suited for advancement? At least in the eyes of the company? Put on your 'Management Hat' for a moment and understand that maybe it's unfortunate you thought there was an opportunity where there was not, but that those kinds of indications are fleeting anyhow. Someone thought they were going to Lead the League in Scoring until it turns out they didn't. At very least, despite the companies misrepresentation, a lack of professional maturity for young devs. to assume that 'hope' is a guarantee of anything. When you're a manager, you're a manager, before that, it's all talk. This scenario isn't even a 2 out of 10 in terms of the mistreatment or misappropriation of employees - it's just a mostly normal thing that happens in noisy channels. Maybe they were thinking of advancing you - someone else came along. That's life. I'm glad you seem to want to 'Do A Good Job' regardless, but it should be noted that you're not comped for future prospects of advancement. So in this situation just 'Doing A Good Job' would be an expectation of the job. Not some thing you do on the condition of some future event. If you are mistreated, obviously, that's not good, and it's the company leadership 'Not Doing a Good Job' but I don't see a strong indication of anything other than normal operations here.
- AllegedAlec 5y ago
  Then they should pay me for results, not for showing up. Then I'd have an incentive to actually try to do the best job I can.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  Doing a good job, and doing the minimum job, are not mutually exclusive. You can do a good job with the minimum amount of work required to stay employed. There's no reason to do more, unless you're compensated for doing more.
- mmarq 5y ago
  Actually working more than the bare minimum in an environment where hard work is not rewarded, is the second most sensible thing to do, after leaving. Should you work hard so some shareholders can buy a yacht? It is the job of management to reward and incentivise hard work, and not the job of individual contributors. Fighting over surpluses is a very healthy dynamic, it’s a mechanism for individuals and organisations to understand the importance of each other’s contribution, produce price signals and improve the efficiency of the system. Instead pretending that a salary negotiated 10 years ago still matches the value of my contribution produces all sorts of distortions (eg productive employees being blocked in less productive organisations).
- salt-thrower 5y ago
  If a company can make twice the profit for half the effort, they will. Why should I behave differently?
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >Because it's a form of systematic corruption, maybe the biggest kind of corruption in the White Collar world. There is generally surplus value in any exchange of goods or services that benefits both parties. Some people insist that if the employer captures it, they have stolen it from the employee, and others think that if the employee captures it, they have stolen it from the employer. The fact is, it's up for grabs, and what I think is salient morally, is that neither party created it alone.
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  > Doing the 'bare minimum' to keep a job is actually generally far under-performing, as most companies won't generally let people go. Isn’t doing the minimum exactly the same as the company paying workers the least amount they can get away with?
x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
>...I can't help but stop caring about the job I'm doing when it's only real utility to me is that I don't have to put in any effort to keep having it. Yikes! That's my current situation in a nutshell. My biggest concern is that I don't want to risk jumping ship and landing at a toxic company/team, or landing in a bad work culture. Don't get me wrong, I've got a nice vision about what I want to do where I am, but I can't get the money to carry it out, so I'm in that "no to low effort" stage.
- Nursie 5y ago
  If you land somewhere toxic, you can always move again. In my experience there’s almost always something toxic about a workplace, it’s finding one you can live with for a few months or years that’s the trick.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
    It's all relative. I left an absolute clusterfuck of an engineering org (leads would scream at each other in meetings when things went wrong) a few years back. I landed somewhere much better, but now find myself complaining about much less severe problems.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

jollybean 5y ago

"my job is to do the absolute minimum amount I can do to stay under the radar, why would I try?" Because it's a form of systematic corruption, maybe the biggest kind of corruption in the White Collar world. The objective is to 'do a good job' , not the minimum, in every endeavour. Doing the 'bare minimum' to keep a job is actually generally far under-performing, as most companies won't generally let people go. It's how entire industries stagnate and sink. When internal participants spend most of their time fighting over the surpluses, it's over. This applies to companies as whole as well of course, i.e. the $1B government contracts that should only be $500M etc. etc.. Do a good job. If there's a better fit elsewhere, that's fine too.

beiller 5y ago
You have errors in you measurement, mostly in assuming employees only add a positive ROI when in fact their value can go negative. Thus doing the bare minimum is worth more than you think as long as the employee stays in the positive ROI (which I assume is the measure of bare minimum).
handrous 5y ago
I have a really hard time distinguishing between the idea that companies are entitled to some maximum of an employee's work-quality and effort and the notion that an employee is entitled to compensation amounting to most or all of the marginal value they add to a company through their labor, not just what they can convince the company to give them. Like, I don't get how one can argue for the former and reject the latter, not regarding it also as a form of "corruption", as you put it. (I'm making an assumption here that you're not big on Marxism, I guess—maybe you do agree with both propositions)
- errantspark 5y ago
  This is the all-important point. It would be insane for me to try my best to make money for a company when the effort reward curve is so non linear. The only reason the idea of "doing the best job you can" is propagated is because it allows one to abuse workers. I could see myself working hard at a company with a flat-ish compensation structure tied directly to the revenue of the company. "If I make a penny my boss makes a dime, that's why I shit on company time."
  - handrous 5y ago
    Right—I don't get how not putting in something resembling full effort can be corruption, but a company not paying you as much as they could, rather than what they must, isn't corruption.
    - actually_a_dog 5y ago
      What's going on here is that, in theory, both sides of the employer/employee relationship are supposed to have equal or approximately equal negotiating power when it comes to things like wages, hours, and working conditions. But, that's in theory. You know, theory: the place where markets are never supposed to be irrational and there aren't any information asymmetries to exploit. And, pretty much all of those deviations from theory end up going against workers and in favor of employers. Labor markets aren't truly free because most people can't afford to just quit their job one day, then walk across the street to their former employer's competitor and negotiate a more suitable contract. Health insurance is so expensive that most people probably couldn't afford the amount of coverage they need without the subsidy their employer provides. Meanwhile, employers get away with stuff like union busting, just like Amazon is accused of doing, because "punishable by fine" really means "perfectly legal, as long as you have enough money," so that regulatory fines get treated like just another "cost of doing business." Is it any wonder the only narrative about the employer/employee relationship we ever hear is the one that's favorable to the more powerful side?
    - jollybean 5y ago
      First - 'Doing A Good Job' is not 'Maximal Effort'. Second - professionals have incredible power and market wages are what they are. Most corporations do not profit in some exceptionally linear way beyond employees. The 'Giant Lie' is that corporations are some magical entities that collect magic surpluses and shareholders and owners run off or private jets. The vast majority of companies are not hugely profitable, and most small and mid-sized one's are not. Especially not in some disproportionately 'non linear' way. Stock prices may be crazy - and those who trade stocks may or may not be making bank - but that's a very odd historical situation we have where shares are trading at absurd levesl relative to profits. That's a market 'dysfunction that may or may not be around for a while that some people managed to make money from, like Bitcoin, it's just a Ponzi-ish thing that has happened. Corporations are not drowning in profits, and White Collar employees soak up the vast majority of corporate spending. FYI everything I'm saying applies to mostly white collar professionals, for unskilled labour it's a different story.
throwawaysleep 5y ago
> The objective is to 'do a good job' Nobody has that objective except the very passionate. A company will happily do a shitty job if it will still get paid. See IBM. See Facebook and Google on customer support. > Doing the 'bare minimum' to keep a job is actually generally far under-performing My manager hasn’t seemed to notice that I work a 1/3 of what I used to now.
- cyb_ 5y ago
  Or perhaps they have and that is why your performance ratings are flat, you get a lousy annual raise/bonus (if any), and your career is stalled?
  - Retric 5y ago
    Performance ratings are meaningless if you’re jumping ship every 2-4 years and the difference is between working twice as hard is a 2% raise vs a 4% one. What companies forget is new employees see the legacy of how you treated old employees over time. The basic structure of small consistent pay bumps was extremely effective when people stayed at companies for decades. Work twice as hard and make 2 percent more for the next 30 years, that’s a big bump. Pensions pushed that out so even people nearing retirement still had reason to care. I am not recommending people do the minimum, just acknowledging how people respond to incentives.
    - dr-detroit 5y ago
      sorry due to covid your 2% was cancelled so your performance is worthless have a nice day.
    - captainredbeard 5y ago
      The gap at big tech companies between okay and "doing well" (i.e. twice the effort) is not a 4% raise, it's a 40% raise.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
BoxOfRain 5y ago
How come in your mind there's an onus on the employee to work as hard as they can but not on the company to pay that effort what it's actually worth? Unless there's a genuine emotional reason that transcends your salary (such as in community/nonprofit work) the relationship between an employer and company should be transactional in my opinion.
- simonh 5y ago
  Sure that’s fair, but I’ve been very fortunate to have worked reasonably or very well paid jobs most of my career. Those jobs also enabled me to develop valuable skills. I think it’s only fair I put in a good effort in return. Yes if business priorities change I could end up out the door, and that happened once, but no hard feelings. I quit all my other jobs anyway and there was nothing malicious either way. The clothes on my back, and those if my children, the house we live in, the car we drive all were paid for by my employers. Yes it was a transaction, but a beneficial one on both sides. It’s all good.
  - pnutjam 5y ago
    What if my low effort is better then the other guys on my teams "good effort"? You're also selling yourself short. You paid for all that stuff. Your employer paid for the work you did, and probably took more whenever they could; through on-call, off hours work, etc... I try to comp my time, but I know I put in more then I'm compensated for, even when I was technically "hourly". I'm fine with that, but I expect to take back when I need it.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - BackBlast 5y ago
      Putting in low effort during your billable hours is a personal character weakness that you are cultivating. You should avoid it because it's bad for you, not just being unfair to your employer. Regardless of your relative effectiveness.
ren_engineer 5y ago
in a world of at-will employment, why would anybody go the extra mile for an employer? Trust and loyalty are 2 way streets, the social contract has been broken by corporations
- simonh 5y ago
  I work, they pay me. As long as they hold up their end, I’ll hold up mine. What’s the alternative, against their will employment? That sounds like it would suck all around.
  - quanticle 5y ago
    The alternative is having formal employment contracts. I work for the employer for a fixed term. If I choose to leave before that term is up, I have to pay a penalty to the employer. If the employer chooses to fire me they have to pay me a penalty. The exact amount conditions of the penalty are specified in the buy-out clause of the contract. This is universally how people with actual leverage (i.e. high performing athletes, Fortune 500 C-level execs, etc) get paid.
satellite2 5y ago
The only honest and sincere answer gets downvoted to hell. The world is really burning. I just hope it doesn't mean HN is transforming into Reddit, with all the zero sum game people scaring and demotivating each other.
- omgwtfbbq 5y ago
  This is a braindead opinion. Why would anyone work as hard as possible when there are 0 incentives to do so? When at any moment you could be fired without warning in a mass layoff and when even the highest performers only get 5-10% raises per year when jumping ship gives you 20%+ . You want good work then create the incentives for it, currently there are none.
  - satellite2 5y ago
    It's a game where you can do the minimum or more and if you do more your boss can pay the minimum or more. If you do the minimumy your boss pays the minimum, it's a zero sum game, if you do more and your boss the minimum, again zero sum because you lost energy and he won more from you but if you both do more then it's a net positive. So the optimal strategy is to do more. Then like the cops in the prisoners game you are tricking yourself at playing the zero sum game because of trust issues.
    - abrokenpipe 5y ago
      It seems like the optimal strategy would be to do the minimum and then job hop since the pay increase is greater and getting a raise for working hard is not certain. I personally have not seen much correlation between pay working hard and getting pay raises, it seems about as likely as getting one for doing the minimum, and the effort to dollars ratio is usually not worth while. I don't want to put in 50% more effort only to get a 5-10% raise. Plus, as stated before, switching jobs results in much bigger pay increases making the raises irrelevant.
      - tayo42 5y ago
tikhonj 5y ago
The problem is that "doing a good job" is rarely the objective at most organizations! People naturally want to do a good job; it's just more interesting and satisfying. But then we have layers of management and process and culture that push back on that in favor of control: follow directions, don't rock the boat, don't take any risks, always look like you're busy... In a world like that, the people who just "do a good job" are characterized by some level of stubbornness coupled with an ability to navigate this kind of environment. Should that really be the key skill that matters? Is not being sufficiently stubborn "a form of systematic corruption"? That seems like a fundamentally uncharitable perspective that also provides no real solution. When that's how you see the situation, what can you do about it? My experience has been that changing environment and process to actively trust people and, crucially, clearly signal that trust improves things far more than blaming people. If you expect people to phone it in, they probably will; if you can establish real trust instead, they'll go out of their way to make something work.
notapenny 5y ago
I personally want to do a good job, but some companies make that hard to employees, albeit sometimes inadvertently. Whether it's by tying people up in politics, having them do busywork, or just failing to reward them. To give an example, at one of my previous jobs, for several years in a row I was noted by my managers as being a high performer and someone who would be ready for leadership. Despite this, I got an average (you did good but that's it) performance rating, because only a few people could get the higher rating. The first year I had just joined so I was excluded by default, the second/third year other people ranked higher and because that rating only went to about 2 people, I missed out. When after this my manager approached me about a lead role, which was extra responsibility but no extra pay, I was pretty much done. When I was in my 20s-30s I hated people who seemed like they checked out, but I understand that a lot more now. Again, I'll do a good job regardless and if I don't get rewarded for that, I'll find the door and go elsewhere, but I completely understand why people who don't have that luxury or drive would rather keep their heads down and just go through the motions.
- jollybean 5y ago
  You may want to take some time to reflect on the issue you articulated in your second paragraph. So you 'did a good job' and the company maybe indicated there was a future for you, but they couldn't fulfill it. That's not hugely nice. But can you fathom for a minute that it seems your peers were doing 'An Even Better Job' and perhaps better suited for advancement? At least in the eyes of the company? Put on your 'Management Hat' for a moment and understand that maybe it's unfortunate you thought there was an opportunity where there was not, but that those kinds of indications are fleeting anyhow. Someone thought they were going to Lead the League in Scoring until it turns out they didn't. At very least, despite the companies misrepresentation, a lack of professional maturity for young devs. to assume that 'hope' is a guarantee of anything. When you're a manager, you're a manager, before that, it's all talk. This scenario isn't even a 2 out of 10 in terms of the mistreatment or misappropriation of employees - it's just a mostly normal thing that happens in noisy channels. Maybe they were thinking of advancing you - someone else came along. That's life. I'm glad you seem to want to 'Do A Good Job' regardless, but it should be noted that you're not comped for future prospects of advancement. So in this situation just 'Doing A Good Job' would be an expectation of the job. Not some thing you do on the condition of some future event. If you are mistreated, obviously, that's not good, and it's the company leadership 'Not Doing a Good Job' but I don't see a strong indication of anything other than normal operations here.
AllegedAlec 5y ago
Then they should pay me for results, not for showing up. Then I'd have an incentive to actually try to do the best job I can.
brailsafe 5y ago
Doing a good job, and doing the minimum job, are not mutually exclusive. You can do a good job with the minimum amount of work required to stay employed. There's no reason to do more, unless you're compensated for doing more.
mmarq 5y ago
Actually working more than the bare minimum in an environment where hard work is not rewarded, is the second most sensible thing to do, after leaving. Should you work hard so some shareholders can buy a yacht? It is the job of management to reward and incentivise hard work, and not the job of individual contributors. Fighting over surpluses is a very healthy dynamic, it’s a mechanism for individuals and organisations to understand the importance of each other’s contribution, produce price signals and improve the efficiency of the system. Instead pretending that a salary negotiated 10 years ago still matches the value of my contribution produces all sorts of distortions (eg productive employees being blocked in less productive organisations).
salt-thrower 5y ago
If a company can make twice the profit for half the effort, they will. Why should I behave differently?
perl4ever 5y ago
>Because it's a form of systematic corruption, maybe the biggest kind of corruption in the White Collar world. There is generally surplus value in any exchange of goods or services that benefits both parties. Some people insist that if the employer captures it, they have stolen it from the employee, and others think that if the employee captures it, they have stolen it from the employer. The fact is, it's up for grabs, and what I think is salient morally, is that neither party created it alone.
jonathankoren 5y ago
> Doing the 'bare minimum' to keep a job is actually generally far under-performing, as most companies won't generally let people go. Isn’t doing the minimum exactly the same as the company paying workers the least amount they can get away with?

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago

>...I can't help but stop caring about the job I'm doing when it's only real utility to me is that I don't have to put in any effort to keep having it. Yikes! That's my current situation in a nutshell. My biggest concern is that I don't want to risk jumping ship and landing at a toxic company/team, or landing in a bad work culture. Don't get me wrong, I've got a nice vision about what I want to do where I am, but I can't get the money to carry it out, so I'm in that "no to low effort" stage.

Nursie 5y ago
If you land somewhere toxic, you can always move again. In my experience there’s almost always something toxic about a workplace, it’s finding one you can live with for a few months or years that’s the trick.
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- hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
  It's all relative. I left an absolute clusterfuck of an engineering org (leads would scream at each other in meetings when things went wrong) a few years back. I landed somewhere much better, but now find myself complaining about much less severe problems.

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