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I think you're twisting the original article's meaning of "useful" and "valuable." Useful means you are able to contribute meaningfully. Valuable means you are

by kmoser 1y ago

I think you're twisting the original article's meaning of "useful" and "valuable." Useful means you are able to contribute meaningfully. Valuable means you are perceived as being able to provide value to the company (in this case by being useful), and are treated accordingly. An engineer who does their job so well that they reduce everyone's workload by automating things and showing others how to do some of their tasks doesn't become less useful; in fact just the opposite, since presumably they will continue to need to do this as the landscape changes and not everybody will have their advanced knowledge of how to efficiently organize things at a high level.

mjr00 1y ago
I didn't interpret the article that way. > Being useful means that you are good at getting things done in a specific area, so that people above you can delegate that completely. You are reliable, efficient, maybe even indispensable in the short term. But you are seen primarily as a gap-filler, someone who delivers on tasks that have to be done but are not necessarily a core component of the company strategy. I take this to mean "usefulness" is: you have a tactical role in the company, where you are able to perform necessary tasks. If you can perform them with little supervision, you are very useful. However, "value" is eliminating those gaps entirely. Instead of being the on-call person who fixes every issue, which is undeniably useful, you fix the root causes so those issues don't happen. This does make you less useful, by definition, because fewer on-call issues means there's fewer reasons to keep you around. But assuming you also do an ok job of communicating what you've done, and your bosses aren't totally clueless, people will recognize this as valuable. The fact that you were able to identify a systemic issue and address it is what makes you valuable, and it will get you invited into broader technically strategic discussions. In theory, at least. Again these are just my interpretation of useful vs valuable as far as the article's definition. I don't agree with the terms in a broader sense.

by kmoser 1y ago

mjr00 1y ago

I didn't interpret the article that way. > Being useful means that you are good at getting things done in a specific area, so that people above you can delegate that completely. You are reliable, efficient, maybe even indispensable in the short term. But you are seen primarily as a gap-filler, someone who delivers on tasks that have to be done but are not necessarily a core component of the company strategy. I take this to mean "usefulness" is: you have a tactical role in the company, where you are able to perform necessary tasks. If you can perform them with little supervision, you are very useful. However, "value" is eliminating those gaps entirely. Instead of being the on-call person who fixes every issue, which is undeniably useful, you fix the root causes so those issues don't happen. This does make you less useful, by definition, because fewer on-call issues means there's fewer reasons to keep you around. But assuming you also do an ok job of communicating what you've done, and your bosses aren't totally clueless, people will recognize this as valuable. The fact that you were able to identify a systemic issue and address it is what makes you valuable, and it will get you invited into broader technically strategic discussions. In theory, at least. Again these are just my interpretation of useful vs valuable as far as the article's definition. I don't agree with the terms in a broader sense.