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This is why I never go "above and beyond" anymore. Companies only care what you did for them yesterday and will drop you like a bad habit because it'll make the

• zinclozenge 3y ago
  Agreed, and I'll go one further. This is why you should work multiple jobs, aka overemployment.
  • geodel 3y ago
    True. Other day I saw a provocative challenge on LinkedIn Whats stopping you from doing 336 hours worth of work in 168 hours of a week? To be honest I had no answer.
    • zinclozenge 3y ago
      The overemployment philosophy is to be so good at your job that you can do N (where N > 1) jobs in the usual 40 hours per week. So really, it's about finding those companies where you can meet those expectations.
  • oofta-boofta 3y ago
    Did we just become best friends?
• DevKoala 3y ago
  So you lose the company $100M and you shouldn't be accountable either? Also, think about this, these people were promoted multiple times for going "above & beyond". They just weren't an optimal fit for their last roles.
  • BeFlatXIII 3y ago
    More like: don't be a department head on an unlucky project.
  • nehal3m 3y ago
    They were laid off, not fired. Accountability was not necessarily a consideration here.
  • mynameisvlad 3y ago
    Our industry is blameless for a reason, and this extends to this situation fully. Please explain to me exactly how it was that one director's fault that the movie lost $100M. Because in reality, it's going to be a lot more than one person's fault that a movie was a dud. Especially when there are so many moving pieces behind a piece of content's popularity.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
      Usually, losses at that scale, started from the original pitch and greenlight. It was a bad idea from the start, and was never given a chance to correct. Steve McConnell was a big proponent of the worst bugs start in the Requirements Phase. Same goes for almost any project. The people that greenlight garbage are frequently fired, too, but that usually means they need to delay buying that second private island. People further down the food chain, might actually end up having to put their kids to work at McDonald's, instead of sending them to college.
      • mynameisvlad 3y ago
        That's not even remotely true. There are many reasons for a movie (or literally any other project) to not do well and many inflection points among the movie's development process which could have massively changed the impact. Politics in this case also played a big part around the movie's launch, for instance. It's impossible for you to say with certainty that a single decision caused the movie to flop and it's disingenuous to think so. Especially disingenuous to say it's one person's fault that an entire movie was pitched, greenlit, made, and then flopped. There are literally thousands of people who made decisions along the way, starting from the initial greenlight which would have been given by multiple people.
• rtkwe 3y ago
  How long does that good will last for though? Toy Story 2 was released just shy of 24 years ago. It feels fair for that to have worn off by now and by all accounts she's done well at the company making plenty of money.
  • hotpotamus 3y ago
    I wonder if it's still making money? I'm sure the copyright is still valid.
    • rtkwe 3y ago
      Copyright is definitely still valid. Tracing where money is being made gets so much trickier with streaming platforms, especially when it's owned by the copyright owner instead of being licensed. Best you can really do is divvy up the monthly subscription each person pays by the time spent watching a particular show. I'm sure it's also still getting licensed for TV airings somewhere a few times a year along with a trickle of DVD/Blu-ray sales.
  • dspillett 3y ago
    She's been involved at high level of other projects since then. She has producer credit for Toy Story 4 for example, I seem to recall that did well enough and was only a couple of years before Lightyear. I think here she has fallen foul of the old “you are as good as your last result” during a costs downsizing period.
• atonse 3y ago
  I know that we tell ourselves this story about management just so we can justify doing the bare minimum as employees. But where does that leave us as a society? I just feel this cynical statement is as silly as a blanket statement as one that would say the opposite, something like "companies provide value and jobs and take care of employees" I would argue though, that the way you describe companies is definitely more true of larger companies because people just aren't invested/attached to each other and that enables that kind of thinking (employees just lines on a spreadsheet). Many small businesses (and small business owners like myself) do want to build a team and take care of the team and hope the team also invests back into the company. That doesn't mean they can't lay people off if they can't afford to keep them. But things are more likely to be human at a smaller size anyway.
  • esotericimpl 3y ago
    Employee owned businesses combined with strong labor unions.
    • itake 3y ago
      Why are there so few successful employee owned businesses?
      • truckerbill 3y ago
        Because they naturally don't want to rely on exploitation to the same degree. That's not a problem of the concept but the context.
      • flangola7 3y ago
        Because the system dis-incentives it. It's hard to compete when your opponent is willing to play dirty and the referee doesn't care to stop it.
  • trey-jones 3y ago
    As a 10 year veteran of a small (less than 20 employees) software company, I can confirm they do exist. Many a screw-up has been overlooked, and I do feel that my overall contribution to the company is valued. We are all friends here. It's not perfect, but I don't envy participants in the corporate rat race.
• xyzelement 3y ago
  I am not sure that strategy optimizes for your outcomes however. Think about probabilities. Does doing good and relevant work increase your chances of promotion and better pay? Yes. Does it decrease your chances of being laid off? Yes. So it seems like doing good work is your best chance at doing well, although nothing is guaranteed. Now obviously if you're doing the minimum at work because you're growing your own business - that could be the superior strategy. But if you're doing the minimum so you can just waste time doing nothing - seems worse.
  • peruvian 3y ago
    > Does it decrease your chances of being laid off? Yes. This is so hilariously false.
    • xyzelement 3y ago
      Not sure where you've worked but in my experience based on established finance firms, a scale-up and FAANGs, layoff-rounds - especially early ones - have a high mix of low and borderline performers. Being in that cohort obviously hurts you - though obviously nothing is guaranteed.
  • alangibson 3y ago
    What industry are you in, and how long have you been at it? I tend to think the parent post is objectively correct after 25 years of doing everything computer related.
  • nehal3m 3y ago
    There's a flip side you're skipping over. Going above and beyond has an opportunity cost, you are spending time and effort on a chance of improving your employment situation at the cost of spending that time and energy elsewhere, places where it _could_ be a guarantee at a better life. For example, spending time doing things you love, or spending time just being around the people that you love. In my opinion the optimised outcome is a good life, not good employment.
  • maerF0x0 3y ago
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• caturopath 3y ago
  > Companies only care what you did for them yesterday Yeah, they should employ you forever if you, out of luck, not work, had some hard drives at home in 1998.
• savanaly 3y ago
  They didn't lay her off the next day or even the next year or even next decade. How long does a heroic act entitle you to a job at a company for?
  • Retric 3y ago
    It’s not like she did nothing over the last 24 years. But, assuming they save a company orders of magnitude more than their entire salary for the rest of your career, it’s probably worth it to keep such people around indefinitely assuming they continue to actually work. If for no other reason but to incentivize other people to go above and beyond. I’ve seen the other side of this where employees decided not to save the company 10’s of millions because it would be a hassle and they wouldn’t be rewarded for it. Nobody wins when you fail to reward people.
• inconceivable 3y ago
  small or tiny companies don't adhere to these dynamics (mainly because it's impossible to over-hire in the first place), but of course generally nobody "established" wants to work for a no-name company if it isn't some well funded startup. they're happy to interview and get an offer and use it as leverage against a bigger company, though. you also hear this from customers, but of course generally nobody wants to be a customer of a smaller unknown company either. same thing - they're happy to get a quote and use it as leverage against a big competitor. as long as you want that upside of security or a big paycheck or prestige or "never got fired for choosing" or whatever imaginary thing you've convinced yourself of, you're also going to get a corresponding downside when the going gets tough. live by the sword, die by the sword. if you're unhappy about the dynamics of big companies, maybe consider a change.
• 0xB31B1B 3y ago
  It’s a job, not a pension. The goodwill lasts a quarter, not 20 years.
• kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
  Just change your last name to Kennedy and you can keep failing up at Disney.
• samtho 3y ago
  This is one of the reasons why I’ve become disillusioned from working for 99% of companies out there. I don’t expect a great deal of loyalty from a company but I expect not to axed for dumb reasons that usually have little to do with me. Running a company out of fear is how you get a highly neurotic, blame-deflecting, egotistical, competition-over-collaboration workplace. In practice, these are the smells I look for, but sadly, it’s not always visible in the interview process: * Each of the organizations of the business produce more evidence of their worth than actual value they bring * Blame is deflected causing everyone from C-level to individual contributors speaking with the passive voice within internal communication * Yes-men/women bubble up to the top and those who pose contrary opinions are not welcome Unfortunately, most companies have some degree of these, but there are some that are worse than others. I’ve just found that starting my own thing is going to be better long term for my mental health even if it puts me in a more precarious financial situation.
  • newsclues 3y ago
    It's a breakdown of the incentive structure that has been so successful.
• ap99 3y ago
  This is a grim way to live. Yes, there are companies that are extreme in their mercurial attitudes towards employees. But so are there people like that. Do you similarly say, I don't do anything above and beyond for other people because that one time some boy/girl/friend left me because I had a bad day? No, you find the people who value you. And because there needs to be balance, you show that you value them by sometimes going above and beyond. And besides that, you should be tying everything you do for a company to some self-oriented goal. Like these folks laid off from Pixar, do you think they are now at a net negative in life for having been laid off? Their lives have been enriched through skills, relationships, income, savings, experiences, etc. Does it suck to be laid off? Definitely. But if you come away from a 20 year career at a company feeling empty and used then I'd say that's more on you than on the employer. If you think to yourself, "I could have given so much more time to my family but the company forced me to work." No, you did that to yourself. You work for an abusive employer? Plan your escape.