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In my experience, people who lean into doing dirty work just end up doing more dirty work. It's a recipe for being invaluable to the team, but not a recipe for

• strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  I wish i could upvote you a thousand times. The path to a good career is focusing on the right stuff and digging deep. Think about where you work and what the most important products are at your company and what skills you need to become a valuable contributor there and move in that direction even if you are very far away from there currently. If you have 0 interest in the most valuable products at your company and you still want a good career, then move to a different company.
• bitL 4y ago
  Basically, "don't get pigeonholed". It's similar to data engineers thinking they will do real ML some day and their data job is just temporary...
  • mjr00 4y ago
    > It's similar to data engineers thinking they will do real ML some day and their data job is just temporary... Hah yeah but this is just the reality of ML. "Engineer who only codes up awesome new ML algorithms" isn't a real job. For every 1 person coming up with exciting new algorithms, there's 500 people dealing with data pipelines, cleaning, maintenance, and operations. A while ago I got hired by a large SF tech company as a "machine learning engineer" and my team spent nearly all of their time writing Javascript web wrappers on top of scikitlearn. Thrilling stuff.
    • disgruntledphd2 4y ago
      Yeah, pretty much all data jobs are mostly ETL, unless you're a researcher.
  • crispyambulance 4y ago
    > "don't get pigeonholed" I've done this with mixed results as far as career satisfaction goes. To be honest, getting pigeon-holed isn't always a conscious choice and once you realize that's what happened it's really hard to make a transition out of it. Sometimes the best approach is to play the cards you've been dealt. As long as one does work which is personally meaningful, intellectually challenging, and which pays "enough" and has some stability, that all makes the sting of status-envy less of a bitter pill to swallow. On the other hand there's no shortage of obsessively status-focused people out there. There's a guy on youtube whose channel is all about getting promoted at FAANG's, specifically, Amazon. That's it. Just practical deadpan advice on getting to "L7" (https://www.youtube.com/c/ALifeEngineered https://www.youtube.com/c/ALifeEngineered). I guess it's fine if that's what one _really_ wants out of life, but it seems like a recipe for profound meaninglessness for almost everybody.
    • ZephyrBlu 4y ago
      It's crazy to me that's how you perceive his YouTube channel. Have you watched any of his videos? I've watched all of them and he feels far more focused on helping people become a better engineer than giving you a guide for Staff+.
  • maxFlow 4y ago
    > It's similar to data engineers thinking they will do real ML some day and their data job is just temporary... This is unfair to DEs, not to mention inaccurate as of 2022. The statement assumes DEs are yearning to do "real ML" while suffering in their "data job" and waiting for a chance to move "upwards". Data engineering is a terminal career path by itself which may or may not support a dedicated ML function. In fact many of my DE colleagues switched from DS/ML/DL citing "model fatigue". Now, "ML engineers" spending 90% of their time producing a workable dataset to get to the "real ML" is a different discussion.
    • bitL 4y ago
      I am not saying all DEs want to do ML, however to many it is advertised as a step towards good ML jobs and that is mostly incorrect.
• colordrops 4y ago
  It's a tradeoff. I've been working on the front lines most of my career and it has lead to some amazing growth and achievements, but now that I've got children and want to spend more time with them I'm perfectly fine being in a cost center and staying out of the critical path. It does take some savvy to get visibility for your work but nothing a seasoned engineer couldn't handle.
  • bigcat12345678 4y ago
    Cost center is the critical path, they are the punching bag for others' failures.
    • colordrops 4y ago
      What I mean by critical path is that the business or product will fail immediately if you don't do your job. That's certainly not the case with the "back office" sort of work that I currently do.
• givemeethekeys 4y ago
  Unless your dirty work can be communicated in terms of cost savings or value generated, stay the heck away. Otherwise you'll be stuck making the same shitty salary and your boss will keep making excuses on why you can't get a raise or promotion.
• WalterBright 4y ago
  > that's how business often works It's how everything works. > it's not rational nor fair Life gets a lot better once one accepts and deals with reality and stops getting wrapped around the axle about fairness.
  • tmpz22 4y ago
    I don’t like how your comment advocates for conformity to “reality”. Sometimes going against the grain is absolutely the right thing, especially when dealing with individual situations versus generic advice.
    • WalterBright 4y ago
      I'm bald and wear glasses. That's quite unfair. What do you suggest I do to redress this unfairness?
      • groffee 4y ago
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
        • sarchertech 4y ago
          Evidence isn’t great for either of those. Definitely not good enough for you to be so flippantly dismissive of the OP.
          • notriddle 4y ago
            It’s also missing the point. Not every disability has a known cure, even if WalterBright’s examples do.
      • whatarethembits 4y ago
        With strong enough motivation, one could dedicate their life to research in these areas. Much of mankind’s thrust forward can be attributed to such individuals. But this is easier said than done.
• nostrademons 4y ago
  Being invaluable to the team gives you negotiating leverage. The other half of this strategy that the blog post left unwritten is: 1.) learn how to sell that dirty work and connect it back to the successes your high-growth company enjoyed in the marketplace 2.) apply to other high-growth companies who want someone willing to do their dirty work 3.) get a competing offer and 4.) negotiate that into a higher salary or stock package. You can't clear a market without competition. All of the other career advice, whether it be "work for a profit center rather than a cost center" or "impress your boss" or "do the dirty work" or "take credit for other's success" or "don't take credit for other's success" means nothing if there's never a reason to give you a raise because you're going to keep working for your employer regardless of the terms.
  • jjtheblunt 4y ago
    > Being invaluable to the team gives you negotiating leverage. What if the team (or its product) gets cancelled?
    • nostrademons 4y ago
      Still gives you negotiating leverage, but just in a different way. Doing all the grungy work means that a.) you can describe what grungy work needs to be done that a potential new employer and b.) you can describe the solutions you took to these problems. Basically, you can pass all the bullshit filters that savvy employers put in place, because you are not actually bullshitting. You still make your money in the transaction, that point where you actually get an offer letter from an employer and negotiate a compensation package. But the input to that compensation package is based on how much value your new employer expects you to add to them, and a primary input to that is how much value you added for your past employer, and how much your new employer believes your claims of that.
  • rgblambda 4y ago
    >Being invaluable to the team gives you negotiating leverage. In my experience that hasn't worked out. Being invaluable just means more pressure gets piled on you, and any reward or leverage you think you might be getting in return doesn't materialise. The credit you earn doesn't translate into anything tangible. Managers just don't take into account the fact that you can and most likely will leave. The project ends up screwed but that's no longer your problem. I've seen it happen multiple times at multiple companies.
• fnordpiglet 4y ago
  I would say doing the dirty work in a profit center is the best way to become invaluable and begin working in areas you wanted to but found inaccessible earlier in your career. Then just repeat that over and over again until you’re where you want to be and enjoy it. I’d say the hardest part of that advice is the identifying where you want to go and when you’re there, then allowing yourself to simply enjoy it rather than seeking the next thing. It’s easy to overshoot if you’re ambitious. I’m at the point of having overshot personally and trying to figure out how to walk my career backwards to where I was happiest.
• spaetzleesser 4y ago
  “be working on a profit center rather than a cost center.” Ideally work on something the CEO or another bigwig has passion for and understands to some degree.
• modeless 4y ago
  > unsexy, money-losing area of business At big tech the unsexy areas are the money makers. Everyone wants to work on the money losing parts. It's not actually clear to me which is better for a career.
• epolanski 4y ago
  This so much. You want to be as close as possible to critical aspects of big money.
• five82 4y ago
  Speaking from 25 years of experience with dirty work, I completely agree that it’s not a great career path if you’re looking for anything other than more dirty work. Even your own team often doesn’t appreciate how much you make them look better. It’s too easy to be overlooked if you’re the one behind the scenes going above and beyond to ensure things are running well. The best advice I can give is to be invaluable to your management and your company. Seek out and take advantage of the higher profile opportunities so you can gain the exposure you need for your career.
• spaghettiToy 4y ago
  >be working on a profit center rather than a cost center. I automate jobs. But my company sells products. Is that profit? It seems like a cost, but we eliminate head count. Hmm saying it out loud. We make profit, just not revenue.
• jimmygrapes 4y ago
  Do a stint in A/R for awhile to pad resume. "Increased profits by X [insert fluff]" and there you go.
• kamaal 4y ago
  Stick to the OKR model. There's always a 10x yield moonshot project in every company even if not officially put on a paper and called OKR. Work there, that's likely to get more money and attention than regular dirty work. As a corollary also do the same in Personal life. You want to be chasing the 10x gain things. Not regular stuff. In the days of the old this used to be called Do not sweat the small stuff. >>Yes, it makes no sense, and it's not rational nor fair, but that's how business often works. It is perfectly fair. If you were constructing a new building by definition its likely to have more life and last long than maintaining an older building. No matter how heroic your efforts maintaining the latter are.
• mbrodersen 4y ago
  You are 100% right. Work on the high profile projects that senior management cares about. Bonus points for being good at translating tech details to business speak (as in how tech/problem X impacts $).
• tpoacher 4y ago
  What you're saying is in line with the PIE adage/principle: Performance counts for 10% of your career progression; Image counts for 30%, Exposure for 60%. Obviously whoever came up with this adage plucked the numbers out of thin air, but the point stands. First search hit on duckduckgo for your convenience: https://arrowheadconsulting.com/2021/02/24/the-p-i-e-theory-of-success-performance-image-exposure/ https://arrowheadconsulting.com/2021/02/24/the-p-i-e-theory-...
• warinukraine 4y ago
  I do the dirty work in a profit center. Your observation that doing the dirty work makes me invaluable for the team but has been really bad for my career is 100% correct. I've had this role for about 4 years and I wish I'd understood this earlier. I've been trying to leave for a few months now. The fact that I work in a profit center doesn't make your observation any less true.