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It's a signal from the market ("employer") that what you currently offer is not what they currently value. If you desire greater rewards/ recognition, you need

by e1g 5y ago

It's a signal from the market ("employer") that what you currently offer is not what they currently value. If you desire greater rewards/ recognition, you need to discover what they value and decide if you want to offer that. Developers expect that work such as "refactoring", "platform architecture", "R&D", "investing into the future" has some intrinsic value to the business. At the company level, work such as "knowledge sharing", "upskilling the team", "fixing bugs for revenue-generating products", "reassuring management" can be more impactful given their current values and roadmap. You must choose whether to spend your energy working on your priorities or their priorities. Generally, you make more money if you help other people solve their problems rather than your problems. Or find new partnerships where the two sets overlap, but the highest-earning consultants can fall in love with solving the problems they do have, not the problems they wish they had.

whoknowswhat11 5y ago
If you have a champion in mgmt things like "refactoring" or "platform architecture" can pay off. Please refactor this app off our oracle DB so we can say $10M - you will be fine and they may start slotting you into key business areas. If you are toiling doing platform, refactoring on a product without a ton of love - then yeah - that may be pretty low visibility for most folks.
- e1g 5y ago
  Yes, priorities and values are malleable. A strategic worker can help the company understand that they have a previously unknown problem, demonstrate that it's bigger than some other priorities, and show how they can take accountability for fixing this problem. This is what a champion does, and you can be the champion for your own work. Either you help change priorities by educating others or update your own understanding of relative priorities based on that education. Doing this requires a different skillset from actually solving the problem, and anyone who can do both consistently will be fast-tracked in any direction they want.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  Be the change you want to see the world - in quite a few big organizations, if you really believe that a major refactoring of a major project is needed, the only way that's going to happen is if you switch over from development to management and become that champion, enabling other people to implement it, and without that you'll never see it happen.
asimpletune 5y ago
I agree with this 100%. Also, perhaps the work you did was super valuable, but the company is simply not equipped to understand things like this. A much more realistic understanding of how the company "sees" and "feels" is through its managers. Unfortunately, they are often detached from what actually matters to the company, or discouraged from swimming outside of their lane. So, in the end, it is unfortunately very common for your "value" to the company to be what your manager values, and it is all too often the case that what they value is not totally in alignment with what actually matters to the company's bottom line (like from the perspective of the C-suite/shareholders). This is obviously not the case for an early startup.
- BizarroLand 5y ago
  To me it's like having no problem paying $40,000 to the carpenters who assembled your house but cursing the world when you have to pay the architect $10,000 for designing it. Shortsighted managers act like the 12 carpenters are doing all the "work" so they don't understand why 1 architect should get paid as much as 3 carpenters, never realizing the 12 carpenters wouldn't have a job without the architect.
rmk 5y ago
This is true from anecdotal experience. However, what confuses things is that the "employer" simply doesn't know what it wants. The "employer" in this case is your immediate manager and, perhaps, a promotion committee that may include your peers. This set can have quite a bit of turnover in a company without good direction. The only constants that get recognized no matter the people (who may not have the ability or interest in evaluating technical contributions) are big talk, puffery, and unjustified confidence and optimism. Not to mention relentless positivity.
- hinkley 5y ago
  One of the relentlessly positive leads, the one who keeps calling me out for being pessimistic, has been swinging from his own petard for the ~year for rushing out changes we can’t really reason about a priori and getting smacked with obscure-to-us corner cases and regressions that are customer visible. I don’t think he’s absorbed yet how much political capital he’s burned through. Both his own and the team’s. People are frustrated. But of course he wouldn’t notice, he’s an optimist and they don’t think about things like that.
  - abacadaba 5y ago
    sounds like management material to me
hinkley 5y ago
What they value and what they need often are not in alignment, and only briefly come into alignment when something fails. You can either shop for another team that has its priorities straight, move on, or play games. Sometimes you have to develop a plan to fix something, and then not apply it until other people experience the pain themselves. Otherwise nobody knows how many land mines you’ve thrown yourself on. Games aside, it’s unfortunately part of delegation that they don’t fixate on what went well. They have other plates to keep spinning.
- steveBK123 5y ago
  Sadly true.. From both a psychology & KPI perspective, an avoided unknown issue does not get the visibility of a quickly/competently resolved experienced issue. Sometimes one can be too proactive in this business.
eptcyka 5y ago
I don't believe it's healthy to look at a single employee-employer relationship through the prism of market capitalism. Maybe they just need to get better at defending their work and be clearer to their management about what they expect.
HWR_14 5y ago
> It's a signal from the market ("employer") that what you currently offer is not what they currently value. If you desire greater rewards/ recognition, you need to discover what they value and decide if you want to offer that. Is that really what it's signaling? "Need" and "salary" seem only loosely related.

by e1g 5y ago

whoknowswhat11 5y ago

If you have a champion in mgmt things like "refactoring" or "platform architecture" can pay off. Please refactor this app off our oracle DB so we can say $10M - you will be fine and they may start slotting you into key business areas. If you are toiling doing platform, refactoring on a product without a ton of love - then yeah - that may be pretty low visibility for most folks.

e1g 5y ago
Yes, priorities and values are malleable. A strategic worker can help the company understand that they have a previously unknown problem, demonstrate that it's bigger than some other priorities, and show how they can take accountability for fixing this problem. This is what a champion does, and you can be the champion for your own work. Either you help change priorities by educating others or update your own understanding of relative priorities based on that education. Doing this requires a different skillset from actually solving the problem, and anyone who can do both consistently will be fast-tracked in any direction they want.
PeterisP 5y ago
Be the change you want to see the world - in quite a few big organizations, if you really believe that a major refactoring of a major project is needed, the only way that's going to happen is if you switch over from development to management and become that champion, enabling other people to implement it, and without that you'll never see it happen.

asimpletune 5y ago

I agree with this 100%. Also, perhaps the work you did was super valuable, but the company is simply not equipped to understand things like this. A much more realistic understanding of how the company "sees" and "feels" is through its managers. Unfortunately, they are often detached from what actually matters to the company, or discouraged from swimming outside of their lane. So, in the end, it is unfortunately very common for your "value" to the company to be what your manager values, and it is all too often the case that what they value is not totally in alignment with what actually matters to the company's bottom line (like from the perspective of the C-suite/shareholders). This is obviously not the case for an early startup.

BizarroLand 5y ago
To me it's like having no problem paying $40,000 to the carpenters who assembled your house but cursing the world when you have to pay the architect $10,000 for designing it. Shortsighted managers act like the 12 carpenters are doing all the "work" so they don't understand why 1 architect should get paid as much as 3 carpenters, never realizing the 12 carpenters wouldn't have a job without the architect.

rmk 5y ago

This is true from anecdotal experience. However, what confuses things is that the "employer" simply doesn't know what it wants. The "employer" in this case is your immediate manager and, perhaps, a promotion committee that may include your peers. This set can have quite a bit of turnover in a company without good direction. The only constants that get recognized no matter the people (who may not have the ability or interest in evaluating technical contributions) are big talk, puffery, and unjustified confidence and optimism. Not to mention relentless positivity.

hinkley 5y ago
One of the relentlessly positive leads, the one who keeps calling me out for being pessimistic, has been swinging from his own petard for the ~year for rushing out changes we can’t really reason about a priori and getting smacked with obscure-to-us corner cases and regressions that are customer visible. I don’t think he’s absorbed yet how much political capital he’s burned through. Both his own and the team’s. People are frustrated. But of course he wouldn’t notice, he’s an optimist and they don’t think about things like that.
- abacadaba 5y ago
  sounds like management material to me

hinkley 5y ago

What they value and what they need often are not in alignment, and only briefly come into alignment when something fails. You can either shop for another team that has its priorities straight, move on, or play games. Sometimes you have to develop a plan to fix something, and then not apply it until other people experience the pain themselves. Otherwise nobody knows how many land mines you’ve thrown yourself on. Games aside, it’s unfortunately part of delegation that they don’t fixate on what went well. They have other plates to keep spinning.

steveBK123 5y ago
Sadly true.. From both a psychology & KPI perspective, an avoided unknown issue does not get the visibility of a quickly/competently resolved experienced issue. Sometimes one can be too proactive in this business.

eptcyka 5y ago

I don't believe it's healthy to look at a single employee-employer relationship through the prism of market capitalism. Maybe they just need to get better at defending their work and be clearer to their management about what they expect.

HWR_14 5y ago

> It's a signal from the market ("employer") that what you currently offer is not what they currently value. If you desire greater rewards/ recognition, you need to discover what they value and decide if you want to offer that. Is that really what it's signaling? "Need" and "salary" seem only loosely related.