4 ms·

> If given the choice between "my company would be just fine without me" and "everything would fall apart if I didn't show up to work, I found the problem. It’

> If given the choice between "my company would be just fine without me" and "everything would fall apart if I didn't show up to work, I found the problem. It’s not “your company”, it’s “the purchaser of your time and attention”. Act accordingly.

sdoering 5y ago
I remember reading "Anything you want" by Derek Sivers. There he describes, that he actually went towards "my company would just be fine without me" with his own company. So regardless of being an employee doing bodyleasing towards their employer, being an employee that identifies with "their" company or being a boss/founder/owner/manager these two sides of the axis exist and one needs to find the spot that fits for them within that range. I don't think there are "one size fits all" easy answers. Or at least if they are given imho and by my experience they are wrong more often than not.
- hinkley 5y ago
  It's a fine line. If you want to stay employed, but not be pigeonholed, you need your company to see a future with you in it, rather than always thinking of you in the present tense, dealing with the latest problems du jour. I think for me these sorts of pre-emptions have always felt quite jarring, so the feedback loop for me is tighter than for some. If you bring me a novel problem to solve, I will happily stop what I'm doing and help you figure it out. For some reason I've only rarely had problems getting back into whatever you interrupted. Whereas with fire drills I have trouble spinning back up into what I was doing before. Perhaps to do with finite energy reserves. Ultimately I credit my early successes getting promoted to Lead to this pattern, because 'novel' problems either explain a wider portion of the overall architecture to me, or end up being all hands on deck when it turns out this issue is bad and is already in production. I cannot emphasize enough how much smarter you sound offering a solution you've had 30 minutes to an hour to think about instead of 10 minutes. The developer who triages an issue is two steps ahead of everyone else who is thinking on the fly. Doubly so if you have to wrangle everyone into a meeting room to discuss things. Unless the other people are vastly smarter or knowledgeable than you, you will hold your own in that conversation, even if you are somewhat junior. And if you're instead on a par, you will excel.
wildmanx 5y ago
Unless you are a co-founder or otherwise heavily invested.

sdoering 5y ago

I remember reading "Anything you want" by Derek Sivers. There he describes, that he actually went towards "my company would just be fine without me" with his own company. So regardless of being an employee doing bodyleasing towards their employer, being an employee that identifies with "their" company or being a boss/founder/owner/manager these two sides of the axis exist and one needs to find the spot that fits for them within that range. I don't think there are "one size fits all" easy answers. Or at least if they are given imho and by my experience they are wrong more often than not.

hinkley 5y ago
It's a fine line. If you want to stay employed, but not be pigeonholed, you need your company to see a future with you in it, rather than always thinking of you in the present tense, dealing with the latest problems du jour. I think for me these sorts of pre-emptions have always felt quite jarring, so the feedback loop for me is tighter than for some. If you bring me a novel problem to solve, I will happily stop what I'm doing and help you figure it out. For some reason I've only rarely had problems getting back into whatever you interrupted. Whereas with fire drills I have trouble spinning back up into what I was doing before. Perhaps to do with finite energy reserves. Ultimately I credit my early successes getting promoted to Lead to this pattern, because 'novel' problems either explain a wider portion of the overall architecture to me, or end up being all hands on deck when it turns out this issue is bad and is already in production. I cannot emphasize enough how much smarter you sound offering a solution you've had 30 minutes to an hour to think about instead of 10 minutes. The developer who triages an issue is two steps ahead of everyone else who is thinking on the fly. Doubly so if you have to wrangle everyone into a meeting room to discuss things. Unless the other people are vastly smarter or knowledgeable than you, you will hold your own in that conversation, even if you are somewhat junior. And if you're instead on a par, you will excel.

wildmanx 5y ago

Unless you are a co-founder or otherwise heavily invested.