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The most useless career advice I've received is variations of "do a good job and you'll be rewarded". No one ever told me the outsized role that context and oth

The most useless career advice I've received is variations of "do a good job and you'll be rewarded". No one ever told me the outsized role that context and other stuff outside my control can have on your career progress. So say that in case A you get hired to maintain an old system that is on the path to deprecation, and in case B you get hired to work in a greenfield initiative that ends up exploding and generating tons of revenue. Even if you do the same good job in both cases, you are almost certainly going to be rewarded and promoted faster in the second case. The key is that this compounds. If you have a higher job level, you tend to get better opportunities that help you grow further, which in turn means more promotions and/or bigger opportunities.

brg 3y ago
I think it’s not wrong, just incomplete. Doing a good job on an important problem will be rewarded, in time. Once a persons impact and reliability is trusted, opportunities come to them.
- piva00 3y ago
  In my experience that's not really the reality. Career progression is a game, each big org has their set of rules for it, the people I've seen progress fastest are usually the ones who figured out the game, how to tick the right boxes, how to show to the decision-makers that the boxes were ticked, not necessarily by being absolutely reliable or having a big impact. Usually they jump into the projects that have more visibility or hype, focus their work on the aspects the org considers most valuable for the "next step in the ladder" and jump ship to a different team/project/department as soon as possible. I've seen that both on engineering and product sides, most of the people I worked with that progressed quickly in their career weren't actually reliable, at least not reliable to the people they worked closely with: they jumped ship to other teams/parts of the org as soon as possible, leaving just a trail of half-done initiatives that were just good enough to tick the boxes needed for a promotion. Doing a good job is secondary to this, sometimes doing a good job aligns with the box-ticking, sometimes it doesn't really matter. If you are decent at salesmanship and persuasion, and can get some visibility from the upper echelons the actual delivery will only matter in 1-2 years, by then they're already out and up.
- eschneider 3y ago
  That is without a doubt, the funniest thing I've heard all week. Thanks!
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  Sure, sometimes, maybe. Or you get fired before that. Or the work that made you visible will dry up. Or people that could reward you will move elsewhere or are fired. There are few small companies where this could work, otherwise dont rely on it, you will end up very sad.

brg 3y ago

I think it’s not wrong, just incomplete. Doing a good job on an important problem will be rewarded, in time. Once a persons impact and reliability is trusted, opportunities come to them.

piva00 3y ago
In my experience that's not really the reality. Career progression is a game, each big org has their set of rules for it, the people I've seen progress fastest are usually the ones who figured out the game, how to tick the right boxes, how to show to the decision-makers that the boxes were ticked, not necessarily by being absolutely reliable or having a big impact. Usually they jump into the projects that have more visibility or hype, focus their work on the aspects the org considers most valuable for the "next step in the ladder" and jump ship to a different team/project/department as soon as possible. I've seen that both on engineering and product sides, most of the people I worked with that progressed quickly in their career weren't actually reliable, at least not reliable to the people they worked closely with: they jumped ship to other teams/parts of the org as soon as possible, leaving just a trail of half-done initiatives that were just good enough to tick the boxes needed for a promotion. Doing a good job is secondary to this, sometimes doing a good job aligns with the box-ticking, sometimes it doesn't really matter. If you are decent at salesmanship and persuasion, and can get some visibility from the upper echelons the actual delivery will only matter in 1-2 years, by then they're already out and up.
eschneider 3y ago
That is without a doubt, the funniest thing I've heard all week. Thanks!
saiya-jin 3y ago
Sure, sometimes, maybe. Or you get fired before that. Or the work that made you visible will dry up. Or people that could reward you will move elsewhere or are fired. There are few small companies where this could work, otherwise dont rely on it, you will end up very sad.