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Is It O.K. to Be a Mediocre Employee?

• jenntoda 14y ago
  The average incentive system says yes. Why work so hard when the result of your work (the company's output) will be the average of everyone's output in the company? So the trick of the game of keeping your paycheck with minimal effort IS to be that average employee of the company. Work less, you might get noticed. Work more.. well, it gets averaged out, so the incremental benefit to you is diminished. Picking and choosing which company you want to associate yourself with is a whole different question.
• paulhauggis 14y ago
  You can easily do this at a large company (you can even be a really terrible employee and get away with it). But, I've worked at small companies pretty much my entire career and it's not easy to do this without getting noticed and eventually fired.
• Thunderchild 14y ago
  If I work hard I get between a .15 and .25 raise next time the evaluations come in. If I phone it in I get between a .15 and .25 raise next time the evaluations come in. Let me pick... That's assuming there isn't a raise freeze, which there has been for the last 3 years. The dirty little secret of successful companies is that as an average employee it really doesn't matter how much harder I work I won't see any actual benefit. They'll fire me if they want and there's not much I can do about it. What I can do is the minimum to get my check and go home.
• toomuchcoffee 14y ago
  The sad fact is that at large companies at least, not only is it often perfectly OK to slip into perpetual mediocrity mode, but also, far too often -- given the way these companies treat their employees -- downright necessary, in order to maintain one's health and sanity.