4 ms·

You win if by win you mean fool everyone to pay you for nothing, if you're someone who gets satisfaction mostly from feeling smarter than others and "winning",

by vasco 5y ago

You win if by win you mean fool everyone to pay you for nothing, if you're someone who gets satisfaction mostly from feeling smarter than others and "winning", that sounds adequate It's also possible to get satisfaction from delivering a big project, doing something hard with your team and so on though, instead of a purely adversarial attitude.

MattGaiser 5y ago
There are certainly intrinsic motivations as well, but what the company incentivizes is performing, whether or not you achieve anything. You can still achieve something if you wish, but achievement is not a requirement.
allenu 5y ago
> You win if by win you mean fool everyone to pay you for nothing, if you're someone who gets satisfaction mostly from feeling smarter than others and "winning", that sounds adequate There have been many times in my career where I went the extra mile, but didn't communicate it well enough and ended up not getting rewarded for it. I also noticed other people over-communicated what they did, even in cases where I didn't think what they did was really that hard. If they get rewarded for that, is it fair? My opinion today is it doesn't matter. If I want that bonus or that promotion, I'm going to "perform" for my boss to make sure I get my share.
- squabble 5y ago
  I hope my surgeon doesn't have your attitude. You need to both do good work and take responsibility to communicate this to your manager. If you just do good work, but don't communicate it, your manager might not know and won't reward you properly. If you don't do good work but only "perform", you lack integrity, you're not developing yourself, you're cheating your customers, and you are a drain on your employer and society.
  - allenu 5y ago
    Oh I don’t disagree with your comment about integrity. I just don’t think good work is enough in the corporate rat race. I know when I’ve done good work and I’m proud of it, and I do my best to put good effort into whatever I do, but I’m not naive enough to think that somehow that’s enough to get rewarded at work. Working for someone else is a combination of doing good work and managing expectations. Sometimes good work isn’t enough, or even needed.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Presumably medical work is different from this type of office work.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      Perhaps most importantly/obviously in ease of measuring effectiveness, patient outcomes have a lot of other factors of course, but it seems like a better metric than 'number of closed tickets' or 'lines of code' or whatever.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    Unsurprisingly, even in medicine doctors who do better at patient communication get better reviews. And there's an entire industry of alternative medicine which is bad at proving efficacy but good at selling it to the patient ...
    - astrange 5y ago
      The placebo effect is so strong that doing nothing convincingly might be all they need.
    - trulyme 5y ago
      I would argue that patient communication is a vital role in healing. Some doctors might get by beeing bad at it, but there should be someone in the system who explains the situation and possible tradeoffs to the patient instead of them. After all, the patient is the single person who is most motivated for healing to succeed. Quite a few doctors never grasp this concept (to be fair, they are similar to many engineers in this), which is a shame.
- hellisothers 5y ago
  My findings exactly, if an impactful project ships in a forest and no manager is around to see it will you get promoted? Not in my experience
s5300 5y ago
In a country with healthcare tied to employment & ever rising cost of the most basic of living, it gets hard to blame people who do whatever they have to do to get by / live
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Forget even needs. I don't blame employees for playing the game for whatever reason, as that is the game management has, though its actions/neglect, decided that it wants played.
  - chii 5y ago
    And this is why financial independence is so sought after by a lot of people - they want to stop playing this game, but without having to make sacrifices to their lifestyle.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Ironically, that financial independence comes about from investing in companies that engage in this game.
- wyclif 5y ago
  I thought the point of Obamacare was to separate healthcare from employment, but it turns out it never succeeded in truly accomplishing that.
- wyclif 5y ago
  You say that healthcare is tied to employment in the US. Obamacare tried to change that but failed.
  - yourapostasy 5y ago
    Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. At this point, the military axiom of taking any action at all is better than inaction seems to hold. If you want to change the status quo of American healthcare, Obamacare is better than doing nothing while waiting for healthcare Godot, even if Obamacare is the opposite direction of where you want to go. I see this a lot in our industry (and other industries) as well. People will endlessly bikeshed for a perfect solution until well past the point that "any action at all" was a better choice than continual bikeshedding. This dynamic is often used by stakeholders with a significant investment in the status quo to politically kill any change while appearing to be onboard with change.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
Managers often take advantage of that attitude and when their employees start to realise that it drives away most of the satisfaction from the work. It's hard to keep that adversarial attitude at bay when that is the lifeblood of management.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>It's also possible to get satisfaction from delivering a big project, and then getting fired because obviously don't need you anymore! I have a hard time faulting people for attitudes or behaviors that are adversarial considering that the system seems to be designed to be adversarial, although I must admit I find myself unable to play those games as they seem too tiring than just trying to work hard and deliver and hope that works out.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  on the other hand now I think of some projects I was on that didn't go too well, could it be that the guys who I thought were clueless idiots that were seriously making everything we did take twice as long were actually performing work for more important people than me - the product owner who could never make a decision themselves but had to rope others into it (thus creating a paper trail of work performed) or the technical tester who had been given that job because he was tired of writing excel spreadsheets and needed more challenges and wrote many unreasonable bug reports. So while I don't fault them (as being immoral or unethical) I sure can be annoyed by them.
watwut 5y ago
I think winning here is more money, more interesting projects, bosses treating you better and so on. It is very material. Satisfaction from good work turns into resentment quickly when you find yourself respected less then peers.
ttctciyf 5y ago
Isn't the point that "win" here means "progress in one's career"? I think the comment is pointing out that promotions and salary increases depend on the perceptions of those in a position to grant them. (See also: Goodhart's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law )
pianoben 5y ago
I think the point is a little more general than that. You "win" by convincing people to pay you - whether it's for nothing, for regular work, or for superior work, is immaterial. This isn't a zero-sum game, at the IC level at least. Winning doesn't mean others lose. It just means you get paid. There are many roads to victory, including empty performance.

by vasco 5y ago

MattGaiser 5y ago

There are certainly intrinsic motivations as well, but what the company incentivizes is performing, whether or not you achieve anything. You can still achieve something if you wish, but achievement is not a requirement.

allenu 5y ago

> You win if by win you mean fool everyone to pay you for nothing, if you're someone who gets satisfaction mostly from feeling smarter than others and "winning", that sounds adequate There have been many times in my career where I went the extra mile, but didn't communicate it well enough and ended up not getting rewarded for it. I also noticed other people over-communicated what they did, even in cases where I didn't think what they did was really that hard. If they get rewarded for that, is it fair? My opinion today is it doesn't matter. If I want that bonus or that promotion, I'm going to "perform" for my boss to make sure I get my share.

squabble 5y ago
I hope my surgeon doesn't have your attitude. You need to both do good work and take responsibility to communicate this to your manager. If you just do good work, but don't communicate it, your manager might not know and won't reward you properly. If you don't do good work but only "perform", you lack integrity, you're not developing yourself, you're cheating your customers, and you are a drain on your employer and society.
- allenu 5y ago
  Oh I don’t disagree with your comment about integrity. I just don’t think good work is enough in the corporate rat race. I know when I’ve done good work and I’m proud of it, and I do my best to put good effort into whatever I do, but I’m not naive enough to think that somehow that’s enough to get rewarded at work. Working for someone else is a combination of doing good work and managing expectations. Sometimes good work isn’t enough, or even needed.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Presumably medical work is different from this type of office work.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Perhaps most importantly/obviously in ease of measuring effectiveness, patient outcomes have a lot of other factors of course, but it seems like a better metric than 'number of closed tickets' or 'lines of code' or whatever.
- pjc50 5y ago
  Unsurprisingly, even in medicine doctors who do better at patient communication get better reviews. And there's an entire industry of alternative medicine which is bad at proving efficacy but good at selling it to the patient ...
  - astrange 5y ago
    The placebo effect is so strong that doing nothing convincingly might be all they need.
  - trulyme 5y ago
    I would argue that patient communication is a vital role in healing. Some doctors might get by beeing bad at it, but there should be someone in the system who explains the situation and possible tradeoffs to the patient instead of them. After all, the patient is the single person who is most motivated for healing to succeed. Quite a few doctors never grasp this concept (to be fair, they are similar to many engineers in this), which is a shame.
hellisothers 5y ago
My findings exactly, if an impactful project ships in a forest and no manager is around to see it will you get promoted? Not in my experience

s5300 5y ago

In a country with healthcare tied to employment & ever rising cost of the most basic of living, it gets hard to blame people who do whatever they have to do to get by / live

MattGaiser 5y ago
Forget even needs. I don't blame employees for playing the game for whatever reason, as that is the game management has, though its actions/neglect, decided that it wants played.
- chii 5y ago
  And this is why financial independence is so sought after by a lot of people - they want to stop playing this game, but without having to make sacrifices to their lifestyle.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Ironically, that financial independence comes about from investing in companies that engage in this game.
wyclif 5y ago
I thought the point of Obamacare was to separate healthcare from employment, but it turns out it never succeeded in truly accomplishing that.
wyclif 5y ago
You say that healthcare is tied to employment in the US. Obamacare tried to change that but failed.
- yourapostasy 5y ago
  Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. At this point, the military axiom of taking any action at all is better than inaction seems to hold. If you want to change the status quo of American healthcare, Obamacare is better than doing nothing while waiting for healthcare Godot, even if Obamacare is the opposite direction of where you want to go. I see this a lot in our industry (and other industries) as well. People will endlessly bikeshed for a perfect solution until well past the point that "any action at all" was a better choice than continual bikeshedding. This dynamic is often used by stakeholders with a significant investment in the status quo to politically kill any change while appearing to be onboard with change.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

Managers often take advantage of that attitude and when their employees start to realise that it drives away most of the satisfaction from the work. It's hard to keep that adversarial attitude at bay when that is the lifeblood of management.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

>It's also possible to get satisfaction from delivering a big project, and then getting fired because obviously don't need you anymore! I have a hard time faulting people for attitudes or behaviors that are adversarial considering that the system seems to be designed to be adversarial, although I must admit I find myself unable to play those games as they seem too tiring than just trying to work hard and deliver and hope that works out.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
on the other hand now I think of some projects I was on that didn't go too well, could it be that the guys who I thought were clueless idiots that were seriously making everything we did take twice as long were actually performing work for more important people than me - the product owner who could never make a decision themselves but had to rope others into it (thus creating a paper trail of work performed) or the technical tester who had been given that job because he was tired of writing excel spreadsheets and needed more challenges and wrote many unreasonable bug reports. So while I don't fault them (as being immoral or unethical) I sure can be annoyed by them.

watwut 5y ago

I think winning here is more money, more interesting projects, bosses treating you better and so on. It is very material. Satisfaction from good work turns into resentment quickly when you find yourself respected less then peers.

ttctciyf 5y ago

Isn't the point that "win" here means "progress in one's career"? I think the comment is pointing out that promotions and salary increases depend on the perceptions of those in a position to grant them. (See also: Goodhart's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law )

pianoben 5y ago

I think the point is a little more general than that. You "win" by convincing people to pay you - whether it's for nothing, for regular work, or for superior work, is immaterial. This isn't a zero-sum game, at the IC level at least. Winning doesn't mean others lose. It just means you get paid. There are many roads to victory, including empty performance.