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The three year myth

165 points by surprisetalk 9mo ago

deleted 9mo ago
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yfw 9mo ago
Theres some false dichotomies here. Not getting a promotion might not be as intentional as the author seems to believe. Often orgs are slow to change and headcount is one of those hard to challenge issues. 100% agree with the timing point, often the promotion has very little to do with what is within your control.
- decimalenough 9mo ago
  You've got the causality a bit off here. A promotion is always intentional: somebody with power has to actively decide that getting you promoted will advance their interests. Not getting promoted, on the other hand, is the default state of affairs. Are they doing work above their level? Will they keep doing it even if they don't get the promotion? Great, then there's no need to promote, move onto the next thing or person.
  - kittbuilds 9mo ago
    [dead]
- hnlmorg 9mo ago
  As a hiring manager who’s worked at various different scales of organisation, I think the original article is a fair warning. Headcount doesn’t take 2+ years to resolve. Even in heavily bureaucratic organisations, it’s a few months at worst. Organisation wide restructures can take years and changes to departmental structure can be suspended while the org restructure happens, barring any unusual and typically director approved circumstances (like scoring major new project with a key client).But any employee would be well aware of such restructures and client projects. Changes to pay will typically be postponed until the next pay review cycle. So could be up to a year. But if it’s longer then that’s typically a sign that your manager (or above) has already vetoed any such pay increase and they’re not being truthful with you about it. Ultimately, if you get told to wait 2 years and the reasons are not “company wide restructuring” then there’s some shadow politics going on and you should definitely be reviewing your job prospects. And if there is a company wide restructure happening, then you should also be updating your CV just in case too. If you get told to wait 3 years the just assume it’s never going to happen. Because you can guarantee even if your management has the best of intentions, priorities will shift multiple times within those 3 years.
fyredge 9mo ago
Reading this article reminds me of all the advice in university on the importance of soft skills. The OP sounds like a competent technical worker but lacked the soft skills to secure his position. All organizations have a consensus that guides it's decision. While heavily skewed towards leadership, even the consensus of the lowest hierarchy worker is important. From what I saw in TFA, OP correctly identified that there was a need for FinOps but did not do the work to get buy in from the organisation. Even though I find it absolutely tedious and sickening. Some amount of politicking is inevitable for survival.
- dpe82 9mo ago
  There's also a corollary to this: if the organization does not recognize some work as needed or useful, you could well be actively wasting your time putting effort into it. There might be a good reason the company doesn't care that you just don't see, and leadership could be (at best) confused about why you would spend time on it.
  - nine_k 9mo ago
    Given enough soft skills, you can persuade your boss that what you are doing is important, and help him/her represent the department as uncovering and proactively addressing an important issue. Ideally it should align well with the boss's boss agenda.
    - dpe82 9mo ago
      For sure, but sometimes what you or I think should be important really isn't in the grand scheme of things. An example could be focusing on cost or efficiency - generally very reasonable things to care about - but if all a company cares about right now is growth at all costs, then that focus would be wrong. This can happen - the company leadership might see a market that they absolutely must enter and be dominant in no matter the cost. That may not filter down well 3-4 layers of management; so the soft skill in that instance would be in sussing out what several layers of management above you actually care about and surfacing to them things that align with those concerns.
atleastoptimal 9mo ago
there r companies that scale 100x in 3 years If you aren't scaling yourself as much then you're moving too slow
- lukan 9mo ago
  Does it count, if your belly size scales as much?
- pierrec 9mo ago
  I love this and will make it my motto. Scale yourself 100x every 3 years, or you're too slow. If I manage to keep it up roughly 11 years I will finally achieve planet scale.
  - gib444 9mo ago
    Only planet scale? If you're not at least galaxy-scale, are you even trying?
- trymas 9mo ago
  I am now eager to see your track record and how did you personally scale 100x in last 3 years (or ~1 000 000x in last decade)
  - atleastoptimal 9mo ago
    in 2024 I made 1 new contact In 2025 I made 100 new contacts extrapolate. In 2026 I will make 10,000 new contacts (though I won't make them all directly, my associates will be my proxies)
    - AlexeyBelov 9mo ago
      And in 2030's you'll make millions of contacts per day. What does this even mean? Are you in a MLM scheme?
- gib444 9mo ago
  I could probably scale 100x with a $10-100m personal funding round
sneak 9mo ago
> The pink slip comes as a total surprise. It always comes as a surprise. You did everything you were told, even waited patiently like you were asked. You trusted the organization to reward you in turn - and now you've lost your job. Your reward is your paycheck. On Friday night, the balance anyone owes anyone is zero. You didn’t “trust” them at all. They had no further obligations to you, nor you to them. You seem to have invented obligations that don’t exist.
- keiferski 9mo ago
  The fact that so many companies operate this way is really depressing. I want to work with people I trust to have some genuine respect for my future, personally or career wise. There is nothing more destructive than talking to people daily, having a good working relationship with them, and then randomly getting laid off with no warning or explanation. Years of positive interactions go up in smoke overnight, because the company couldn’t bother to treat you like a human with needs, and instead act as if you’re just a mercenary. And to be clear, I’m not talking about budgetary or performance issues that lead to layoffs. I mean when you’ve done good work for a company for years, then out of the blue, get a meeting request for a Friday afternoon. It makes for a cold, mercenary world that I want no part of.
  - azthecx 9mo ago
    Not all companies operate like this, but many large ones do. Smaller chops can have exactly the kind of culture that you describe, but they're also quite often hard to find as they tend to have some stable business and long employee retention, it's unlikely you will find them at the same time you're looking for a job.
    - keiferski 9mo ago
      Yeah I am lucky enough to be in a company with a solid culture now. I definitely think you need to avoid companies with 1) large turnover, 2) investor-driven growth metrics, and 3) a hostile or passive approach to company self-criticism. Like the guy in the article, I have found that companies which hand-wave away legitimately good ideas or criticism in favor of some vague “strategy” reason tend to be untrustworthy. Well-run companies want to improve themselves, even if they don’t have the resources to make that improvement quickly.
yellow_lead 9mo ago
I've been told to wait for a pay increase/promotion twice. And I got it both times (luckily). The time periods were only a few months or a year each time. I think it's a judgement call but making such a long-out promise like 3 years in the tech industry is a huge red flag. Even at one year you should be skeptical and asking how/why as the author suggests.
- deleted 9mo ago
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- hnlmorg 9mo ago
  Being told you have to wait until the next pay review cycle, is normal. It’s how a business with healthy and defined processes should operate. But you should only be waiting at most a year. If you get told “wait 2+ years” then that’s usually a sign that they’ve already decided you’re not eligible (for whatever reasons they decide) but don’t want to be candid with you. If you get told to wait for any duration beyond the next pay review cycle, then take that as a sign that you’re not going to progress under the current regime.
  - rrr_oh_man 9mo ago
    > It’s how a business with healthy and defined processes should operate. That sounds like bullshit. Why?
    - hnlmorg 9mo ago
      Because it shows the company has processes in place for economic planning, with budget allocation, and all the other systems and checks that are meant to ensure stability and profitability. That’s not to say that businesses with these processes defined can’t still be total shitshows. But the ones that don’t have those processes are more likely to be shitshows.
  - PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago
    Can I get an exception of it was a terrible fiscal year? Take the startup situation: We were unprofitable year 1, we were break even year 2. Year 3 we look to repay investors and begin fun times. Year 4, fun times. I suppose I can think of enough exceptions that I reject the theory the original OP posted.
helloplanets 9mo ago
> On your way out the door, you hear the rumors: someone else did your thing years after you showed yours off. They got the credit, the bonus, the promotion, the recognition. They're a Senior now, or a Lead, or a Director, or a VP. If it actually went down like this, that's pretty horrible, and that someone else is a grifter. Very harmful for any organization in the long run, because that behavior will be applied to anyone who's "ripe to be taken advantage of" (from his point of view), burning them out of the way. That is, if they were aware that you made the thing that they picked up later. Though I wonder why the original didn't go through. The other person pushed harder for it to go through, or showed it off with a different sort of demo? Or was it a different sort of technical implementation / design?
- dupdup 9mo ago
  >grifter blatantly naming ,the part you mention was under timing section I guess the grifter didn't just copy paste what our guy did. it did have more impact and well timed
  - helloplanets 9mo ago
    > blatantly naming Not sure if you mean that I'm being hostile for no reason towards this 'someone else'. The second section in my original post is the big conditional. > I guess the grifter didn't just copy paste what our guy did. it did have more impact and well time This is more than likely correct. Either way, I do think it's grifter behavior to not mention/include anyone else who was involved in the project if you pick it up halfway through. Unless the code (or whatever else) is actually bad, and you have to do extra work to redo it. And, if you are actually aware who even worked on the project to begin with. But it very well might've been a case where some higher up passed the project off to another programmer (months/years later) with no malicious intent whatsoever, and the programmer just did the thing as requested. Or a myriad of other explanations.
- golly_ned 9mo ago
  I see this same thing now. In this case, it’s a more senior engineer and his manager taking credit for work a less senior engineer who’d left the team did. There’s simply no advantage to crediting work to someone who’d left the team. We love to blame those who are misfortunate. It’s called just world syndrome. It’s deeply uncomfortable to realize that this kind of thing is the norm, and justice is the exception. I’ve been extremely fortunate in my career, but not due to any special savviness of my own.
deleted 9mo ago
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krisoft 9mo ago
If you ask for a raise and they say “maybe in two to three years” thats simply a polite no. > “you know the world outside is hostile to job seekers and a steady paycheck beats the unemployment line” You can search for a new job while employed. Unless you are stuck on an underwater submarine playing hide-and-seek you can always fire off a few inquiries.
- ozim 9mo ago
  I am doing that but I also got annoyed by recruiters or HR or whoever that was in last 2 inquiries I sent out. They would call me out of the blue in the middle of the day expecting I pick up and have time to talk with them like I would be jobless person waiting for them to call. I didn’t pick up at all because I was busy. Earlier I remember I would get an email to at least give me heads up they will contact me next week or something. It was also quite common recruiters were calling me at the end of the day. For those last ones I got an email saying they were calling. I replied they can try on a day where I don’t have meetings and best time - they never replied to email or tried to call…. I don’t expect it should be all about me, but my idea is that small email saves everyone’s time.
  - massysett 9mo ago
    With a mentality like that no, you’re not going to get another job. Job seeking while you’re employed means you have to subjugate the needs of your current employer. When an opportunity calls? You pick up the phone! You’re the kind of person who is so dedicated to your job that you will have to lose it and then be unemployed before you get a new one. That is absolutely ok. Job seeking while employed takes a ton of energy and might not be worth it to you. Don’t bother then.
    - hunta2097 9mo ago
      I know someone who has used this trick to get a pay rise whilst not looking for work. You wait until your boss is in earshot, get someone to ring you and the walk quickly away from your desk saying "yes, yes I'm still interested... Just a sec". It might make your boss actually consider the reality of replacing you.
mkl95 9mo ago
In the zero-interest rate economy, it was easy for early to mid-career engineers with average skill to switch to a company that paid them 20%+ more money. I did it myself multiple times. The current economy and AI have turned the tables. Even today, waiting for three years is pushing it for most folks, but understandable. Career growth is being decimated across the industry, and opportunities simply aren't there anymore like they used to be. You can be dedicated and above average, but you are still stuck in the same industry as everyone else.
arjie 9mo ago
One of the notable things about FAANG processes that I've observed from my friends there is that roles and processes are mechanized[0]. Individuals are placed like precision robotics in a bigger machine. This kind of structure means that you have a defined process for promotion or pay raises and you know what your role is. In fact, one might even posit that the ability for these large organizations to create a machine to extract surplus from labour in a systematic fashion is the reason for their success. For most people, this is wonderful. Knowing what you will be valued for is very useful. It says "do the things that are useful to us" and "stop doing the things that are useless to us" and tells you "these are the things that are useful and those are the things that are not useful". At their scale, rare errors in the process will inevitably show up, but smaller companies often have these errors at higher rates. All that to say, success often comes from identifying what is useful to the organization and what is not, and then what is useful and what is not to the person who has control over one's role in the organization. In mechanized organizations, this should be easier. In unmechanized organizations, one's skill at this will dominate one's technical skill at determining success. But it's just a skill, and if you cannot find a way to train it, the easiest workaround is to ask the person making the decision: "if I wanted it in 3 months, what would I have to do?". You may get an answer that was untrue 3 months later, but you just shrank your timeline in a way that is much more meaningful, and perhaps more likely is that you'll either get an unrealistic timeline (which is useful signal), or you will hit it and get what you wanted (which is also desirable). 0: A classic example of this is that no one can "get you into Google/Facebook/whatever". This reveals the other non-obvious purpose of their interview process besides quality-control of hires: quality-control and rules compliance on interviewers.
- rrr_oh_man 9mo ago
  > A classic example of this is that no one can "get you into Google/Facebook/whatever". That is so not true.
  - theonething 9mo ago
    Care to offer an explanation?
JackFr 9mo ago
Losing your job sucks. Typically, there is no silver lining. I’ve been laid off 2x and those were both among the worst experiences of my life. > rawness is an excellent time to reflect on what went right and what I could've done better, before the brain starts coping with the trauma of the event in question. But that isn’t what he’s done in the essay. I don’t think he’s doing an honest assessment of what he could have done better. Rather there’s a thin patina of “I should have realized . . .” and then a litany of complaints about the company. And the complaints about the company are the same usual ones that everyone makes. I HAVE BEEN THERE. I HAVE MADE THEM TOO. But I would advise, in six months in a year when you’re in a new job, to take a HARD look at yourself. Try not to cast people as villains and thus can be a learning experience.
- K0balt 9mo ago
  If losing your job is traumatic, I’d suggest reviewing your relationship with employers and employment in general. It’s not a stable situation, and there is no social aspect in reality. It’s an accounting decision. Employment is almost always exploitation on one side or the other, with the best case being mutual exploitation. Employment inherently involves paying less for your work than it is worth. In an ideal situation, in exchange you get access to tools at a cost less than they cost to access on your own. It’s inherently violent on some level. Ending violence shouldn’t be traumatic.
  - bluecheese452 9mo ago
    That is nice but my bills still need to be paid.
    - K0balt 9mo ago
      I’ve been on both sides of the table for decades. I try to find ways to bind incentives from either side so that they are better aligned, but it’s always exploitative in one way or another. It’s just suboptimal. Perhaps employee owned businesses are the solution.
      - 9mo ago
throwaway290 9mo ago
> I was given a warning because said proposal was (unknowingly) opposed to a Senior Director's vision Warning? Wtf. Even if knowingly opposed, you pay this dino to provide expertise not lick your ego. I'd start looking at that moment... bigger red flag than promotion delay.
jimnotgym 9mo ago
I like the other employment 3 year problem. In this the company fills jobs with keen but cheap young people to save money. These people work hard, get experience and take qualifications. Three years later you have a cohort of young people with excellent CVs and qualifications above their peers... that the company can't afford to pay the market rate for! Then it loses a whole cohort of great staff.
- alansaber 9mo ago
  I suspect many companies factor in that young people are the most likely to churn, so don't expend much effort retaining them
  - jimnotgym 9mo ago
    That is a self-fulfilling prophecy though. Why do they churn, because they are young, or because you refuse to pay them the same for doing the same work as their peers?
cladopa 9mo ago
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- Falsintio 9mo ago
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Falsintio 9mo ago
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jtrn 9mo ago
For anybody that is interested in a clinical psychologist's take, here is mine… This article triggers an overwhelming feeling that something is missing in the story. Of course, being fired is genuinely painful, and the author's emotional state is understandable. But I think there is a much better way to understand this situation that would be beneficial to the author. Please note that this is just a guess, and in reality, I would explore if this is a good fit for both reality and what the person is capable of talking about, and quickly back off if not both were true. This is just an exercise in hypothesis building that accompanies every meeting i have with a client, and initial theories are often wrong. First is the defense mechanism of abstract answers. I once asked a girl why she stole from her mother AGAIN, and she responded, "I try to get back up, but I fall down." This is a deflection and a non-answer. This author does the corporate version of that. Instead of saying, "I struggled to read the room," they describe "The Three-Year Myth." There is the bitterness here that often accompanies the wound to professional identity. The author literally tells us they are smarter than their boss, harder working than their peers, and more ethical than the company. The easiest explanation is to blame failure on the system being rigged against good people. This might be a coping mechanism, but it might also hinder personal growth. Then there is the claim that the author didn't know why they were fired. However, i think they tell us exactly why in the hardware paragraph. Look at the what the author describes… a senior director presented a vision to a customer. The author (without checking with the director) proposed a totally different architecture because they "read the requirements line by line" (implying the director didn't). The author received a formal warning. The author’s Interpretation is "My timing was perfect for the market, but poor for the systems of power." (I was too smart/right, and they were threatened). That might hold some truth, but its not implausible that the author undermined senior leadership, embarrassed the company regarding a client commitment, and likely communicated it with arrogance ("no AI summaries here!" as he writes). And receiving a formal warning is an extremely serious signal. To frame a formal HR warning as simply timing being inconvenient to power that be, shows a near-total lack of accountability. There is zero reflection on how they advocated for their ideas. The author claims, "I'm literally not built for competition so much as cooperation," yet their anecdotes describe them fighting against cost centers and trying to override directors. The self-reflection that does appear is careful and limited. The author admits to being "naturally helpful and cooperative" and bad at "game theory" but these are virtues reframed as vulnerabilities. "I'm too good and too cooperative for this corrupt world" isn't really self-criticism. The one moment that approaches genuine insight "I need to expand into leadership skills" is immediately followed by blaming stakeholders who "blocked change at all costs." The OCD mention functions similarly and it explains the overanalysis as a feature, not something that might be creating friction with colleagues. This is someone who likely has high technical intelligence but problems with soft skills. They prioritized being technically right over being effective, and when the social consequences arrived (the warning, the firing), they built a defensive wall of abstraction to avoid seeing their own role in the fall. A proper question is WHY has this happened repeatedly and in multiple roles, across multiple organizations, with the same pattern? The author even acknowledges this but thinks the answer is "I keep falling for the same trap." I think it would be more helpful to ask, "Why do I keep creating the same dynamic?"
sublinear 9mo ago
I have to somewhat disagree, but the details matter a lot. If you insist on seeking the absolute top pay for the work and want to always be on the cutting edge in a fast-paced environment, sure the advice in the blog post is correct. If you instead take 80% of the pay and pick a place to work that's more slow and steady, the traditional advice starts to make sense again. The key thing is you must have strong and unique skills with the experience to match that the business actually values. You need to bust your ass just as hard as if you were working for 100% of the pay. If they didn't think they were getting a good deal they wouldn't keep you. Simple as that. I do agree it shouldn't take 3 years though. It should be more like getting promoted every year for the first 3 to 5 years and then you either settle in for the long haul (believe me this really is what a traditional employer wants most!), or decide that you're bored and move on. It's your choice. Definitely, if there's no promotion after the first couple of years I would worry that I'm not what they were looking for after all. There is no myth. You just have to truly know your worth and not overplay your hand. Knowing your worth is ABSOLUTELY NOT about milking every last drop like a desperate loser. I thought we would have learned this by now after the death of hustle culture. It's a lot like dating. This is just the unspoken compromise everyone assumes you're already aware of. I'm surprised this kind of article still resonates and gets posted on HN.
- matwood 9mo ago
  > You just have to truly know your worth and not overplay your hand. This is super hard for a lot of people to hear, but nearly everyone is replaceable. There are a lot of smart people who work hard - that's table stakes in many high paying jobs. One of the things I liked about playing sports both team and individual is there's little room to hide. At the end of the day you know exactly where you stand, and your ego has to accept that and either get better or be happy with your spot.
strangescript 9mo ago
If your co-workers are getting promotions and raises and you are not, its a you problem. If someone else is getting credit for your work, its a you problem. Given your claims of impeccable work, we are only left to assume its a personality issue. Its not to say its fair or right, but life is a popularity contest, whether we like it or not. More likeable people get more things, sometimes undeservingly so.
- golly_ned 9mo ago
  It’s not true that if someone else is getting credit for your work, that’s a you problem. At my workplace now, there’s a senior staff engineer taking credit for work that was done by someone 3 levels below him. And the senior staff engineer still thinks he is not getting enough credit for his work. The senior staff engineer’s manager has been crediting him for the work the less senior engineer had done, since the less senior engineer is no longer at that team, in forums where the less senior engineer has no access to. The less senior engineer is plenty likeable. As is the senior staff engineer. But the less senior engineer had left that team, and the senior staff engineer and his manager are unscrupulous, and do what they’d like to their advantage. This is called “just world syndrome.”
- jimbokun 9mo ago
  This advice is completely, 100% inactionable. Congratulations on composing the platonic ideal of useless advice.
komali2 9mo ago
> I was given a warning because said proposal was (unknowingly) opposed to a Senior Director's vision, one they'd already presented to the customer prior to seeking my input and neglected to mention when I reached out. My timing was perfect for the market, but poor for the systems of power within the organization. I feel like there's two paths you can take in your career: corporate stooge, or productive worker. The corporate stooge will be more capitalistically rewarded, because businesses aren't optimized for productivity or quality, they're optimized for capitalistic rewards. There was an article recently about dating apps and their inherently contradictory incentives. They're incentivized to keep you on the app, which means getting you kinda good matches, but not so good that you stop needing the app. The business world seems to be nothing but these contradictions, and it seems our choices are to learn to take this Kafkaesque fully into our internal model of the world, or give up and accept that we'll be disposed of every few years, despite keeping some part of the company's heart beating (a part some exec will one day gleefuly rip out of their own metaphorical chest so as to drive up price immediately before acquisition or something).
begueradj 9mo ago
> Your performance review is solid, of course, your deliverables unimpeachable, but something begins to feel increasingly off. Your colleagues are in more meetings, but your task list only grows longer. Your progress on said project is appreciated by your boss and team, maybe even your boss' boss, but never really recognized. Managers sabotage talented employees: https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/what-drives-managers-to-sabotage-talented-employees https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/what-drives-ma...
singpolyma3 9mo ago
My last acquisition they tried to convince us to give every employee a "slightly lower" salary coming in so they could "get a raise sooner". I was like WTF are you trying to pull. If you know you'll give them the raise then pay them that now.
ferroman 9mo ago
This is exactly my experience (and I've been doing this fo 20 years now). Saw it on every job I had. The usual bs is "we are developing new performance and grows framework" "promotions will happen on next cycle" "we are reorganizing now" "we want to add more transparency" etc. But somehow they always know who to call when shit hit th fan. Don't fall for it. Look for another job once you see this. Looking for new job nowadays take a while and it's better to be employed during this process.
notepad0x90 9mo ago
On one hand there are places that will look out for job-hoppers so the 3yr rule is good. But for promotions, job-hopping is the best strategy. The part people don't talk about much is the toll it takes on you when you switch jobs. It's like moving but worse. It's not like switching your wardrobe or something, it's a very drastic and intense change. There really is no hard-and-fast rule with these things, you just have to figure out your industry, country, region and other details and determine what is best. An advice I could have used earlier myself is the whole networking and building contacts thing. This is both internally and in your industry. There is literally nothing more important for your career than being likeable and building a reputation. Whether it's a promotion, better pay, or landing a better gig, focus on that as a priority. In case what I'm saying isn't clear: be the biggest butt-kissing sycophant possible, and never be negative or disagree unless you're very confident that's absolutely what's expected of you by the right people. You don't get paid for how hard you work, you get paid for how valued you are. I think that's a bit obvious, but what many miss is that it isn't how valuable you are for the company that matters, it isn't even how valuable you are to your team, or to delivering some goal that matters. What matters is how valuable you are to individuals. Competency matters, but only as a 2nd or 3rd point of order. It matters how well you're liked, but also how good you are at improving how well-liked others are. Sometimes there just aren't any opportunities where you are, nothing can be done about that other than jumping ship. However, expecting to be promoted, or paid more because of "the rules", that doesn't work well in real life.
- cyanydeez 9mo ago
  My asset has always been to be a well timed prediction engine. But it only works if people already rely on you and listen to you.
  - Zee2 9mo ago
    I have to say the same, but even as someone who isn’t really “relied upon”. The best asset for my own independent well-being has always been knowing which way the wind blows and sailing in that direction. I have to imagine if there was some internal Polymarket-esque platform I’d be a rich man... (facetiously speaking) Unfortunately knowing the way the wind blows is not as much of an asset to those in charge.
majgr 9mo ago
I never was good at these human power things. Years after happening, I realised I was the object of a manipulation. I never cared about promotions and stuff like that. I change jobs because I am bored by it after couple of years anyway. I do not mind, well, I will welcome, when AI takes jobs of managers. No more politics, power plays, setting coalitions.
jfrbfbreudh 9mo ago
The author could be technically competent, but I think he’s completely failed to recognize one of the core principles of getting recognition and promotions at work: Who are you bringing with you? As in, who else gets recognition and success as a result of you doing well? If it’s your boss, great, promotion likely. If it’s your skip, even better. If the result of your grand project is that it solely makes you look good, nobody else is incentivized to support you in any capacity. It’s much more likely that it will have the exact opposite effect: you will be seen as a selfish and ambitious threat.

165 points by surprisetalk 9mo ago

deleted 9mo ago

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yfw 9mo ago

Theres some false dichotomies here. Not getting a promotion might not be as intentional as the author seems to believe. Often orgs are slow to change and headcount is one of those hard to challenge issues. 100% agree with the timing point, often the promotion has very little to do with what is within your control.

decimalenough 9mo ago
You've got the causality a bit off here. A promotion is always intentional: somebody with power has to actively decide that getting you promoted will advance their interests. Not getting promoted, on the other hand, is the default state of affairs. Are they doing work above their level? Will they keep doing it even if they don't get the promotion? Great, then there's no need to promote, move onto the next thing or person.
- kittbuilds 9mo ago
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hnlmorg 9mo ago
As a hiring manager who’s worked at various different scales of organisation, I think the original article is a fair warning. Headcount doesn’t take 2+ years to resolve. Even in heavily bureaucratic organisations, it’s a few months at worst. Organisation wide restructures can take years and changes to departmental structure can be suspended while the org restructure happens, barring any unusual and typically director approved circumstances (like scoring major new project with a key client).But any employee would be well aware of such restructures and client projects. Changes to pay will typically be postponed until the next pay review cycle. So could be up to a year. But if it’s longer then that’s typically a sign that your manager (or above) has already vetoed any such pay increase and they’re not being truthful with you about it. Ultimately, if you get told to wait 2 years and the reasons are not “company wide restructuring” then there’s some shadow politics going on and you should definitely be reviewing your job prospects. And if there is a company wide restructure happening, then you should also be updating your CV just in case too. If you get told to wait 3 years the just assume it’s never going to happen. Because you can guarantee even if your management has the best of intentions, priorities will shift multiple times within those 3 years.

fyredge 9mo ago

Reading this article reminds me of all the advice in university on the importance of soft skills. The OP sounds like a competent technical worker but lacked the soft skills to secure his position. All organizations have a consensus that guides it's decision. While heavily skewed towards leadership, even the consensus of the lowest hierarchy worker is important. From what I saw in TFA, OP correctly identified that there was a need for FinOps but did not do the work to get buy in from the organisation. Even though I find it absolutely tedious and sickening. Some amount of politicking is inevitable for survival.

dpe82 9mo ago
There's also a corollary to this: if the organization does not recognize some work as needed or useful, you could well be actively wasting your time putting effort into it. There might be a good reason the company doesn't care that you just don't see, and leadership could be (at best) confused about why you would spend time on it.
- nine_k 9mo ago
  Given enough soft skills, you can persuade your boss that what you are doing is important, and help him/her represent the department as uncovering and proactively addressing an important issue. Ideally it should align well with the boss's boss agenda.
  - dpe82 9mo ago
    For sure, but sometimes what you or I think should be important really isn't in the grand scheme of things. An example could be focusing on cost or efficiency - generally very reasonable things to care about - but if all a company cares about right now is growth at all costs, then that focus would be wrong. This can happen - the company leadership might see a market that they absolutely must enter and be dominant in no matter the cost. That may not filter down well 3-4 layers of management; so the soft skill in that instance would be in sussing out what several layers of management above you actually care about and surfacing to them things that align with those concerns.

atleastoptimal 9mo ago

there r companies that scale 100x in 3 years If you aren't scaling yourself as much then you're moving too slow

lukan 9mo ago
Does it count, if your belly size scales as much?
pierrec 9mo ago
I love this and will make it my motto. Scale yourself 100x every 3 years, or you're too slow. If I manage to keep it up roughly 11 years I will finally achieve planet scale.
- gib444 9mo ago
  Only planet scale? If you're not at least galaxy-scale, are you even trying?
trymas 9mo ago
I am now eager to see your track record and how did you personally scale 100x in last 3 years (or ~1 000 000x in last decade)
- atleastoptimal 9mo ago
  in 2024 I made 1 new contact In 2025 I made 100 new contacts extrapolate. In 2026 I will make 10,000 new contacts (though I won't make them all directly, my associates will be my proxies)
  - AlexeyBelov 9mo ago
    And in 2030's you'll make millions of contacts per day. What does this even mean? Are you in a MLM scheme?
gib444 9mo ago
I could probably scale 100x with a $10-100m personal funding round

sneak 9mo ago

> The pink slip comes as a total surprise. It always comes as a surprise. You did everything you were told, even waited patiently like you were asked. You trusted the organization to reward you in turn - and now you've lost your job. Your reward is your paycheck. On Friday night, the balance anyone owes anyone is zero. You didn’t “trust” them at all. They had no further obligations to you, nor you to them. You seem to have invented obligations that don’t exist.

keiferski 9mo ago
The fact that so many companies operate this way is really depressing. I want to work with people I trust to have some genuine respect for my future, personally or career wise. There is nothing more destructive than talking to people daily, having a good working relationship with them, and then randomly getting laid off with no warning or explanation. Years of positive interactions go up in smoke overnight, because the company couldn’t bother to treat you like a human with needs, and instead act as if you’re just a mercenary. And to be clear, I’m not talking about budgetary or performance issues that lead to layoffs. I mean when you’ve done good work for a company for years, then out of the blue, get a meeting request for a Friday afternoon. It makes for a cold, mercenary world that I want no part of.
- azthecx 9mo ago
  Not all companies operate like this, but many large ones do. Smaller chops can have exactly the kind of culture that you describe, but they're also quite often hard to find as they tend to have some stable business and long employee retention, it's unlikely you will find them at the same time you're looking for a job.
  - keiferski 9mo ago
    Yeah I am lucky enough to be in a company with a solid culture now. I definitely think you need to avoid companies with 1) large turnover, 2) investor-driven growth metrics, and 3) a hostile or passive approach to company self-criticism. Like the guy in the article, I have found that companies which hand-wave away legitimately good ideas or criticism in favor of some vague “strategy” reason tend to be untrustworthy. Well-run companies want to improve themselves, even if they don’t have the resources to make that improvement quickly.

yellow_lead 9mo ago

I've been told to wait for a pay increase/promotion twice. And I got it both times (luckily). The time periods were only a few months or a year each time. I think it's a judgement call but making such a long-out promise like 3 years in the tech industry is a huge red flag. Even at one year you should be skeptical and asking how/why as the author suggests.

deleted 9mo ago
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hnlmorg 9mo ago
Being told you have to wait until the next pay review cycle, is normal. It’s how a business with healthy and defined processes should operate. But you should only be waiting at most a year. If you get told “wait 2+ years” then that’s usually a sign that they’ve already decided you’re not eligible (for whatever reasons they decide) but don’t want to be candid with you. If you get told to wait for any duration beyond the next pay review cycle, then take that as a sign that you’re not going to progress under the current regime.
- rrr_oh_man 9mo ago
  > It’s how a business with healthy and defined processes should operate. That sounds like bullshit. Why?
  - hnlmorg 9mo ago
    Because it shows the company has processes in place for economic planning, with budget allocation, and all the other systems and checks that are meant to ensure stability and profitability. That’s not to say that businesses with these processes defined can’t still be total shitshows. But the ones that don’t have those processes are more likely to be shitshows.
- PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago
  Can I get an exception of it was a terrible fiscal year? Take the startup situation: We were unprofitable year 1, we were break even year 2. Year 3 we look to repay investors and begin fun times. Year 4, fun times. I suppose I can think of enough exceptions that I reject the theory the original OP posted.

helloplanets 9mo ago

> On your way out the door, you hear the rumors: someone else did your thing years after you showed yours off. They got the credit, the bonus, the promotion, the recognition. They're a Senior now, or a Lead, or a Director, or a VP. If it actually went down like this, that's pretty horrible, and that someone else is a grifter. Very harmful for any organization in the long run, because that behavior will be applied to anyone who's "ripe to be taken advantage of" (from his point of view), burning them out of the way. That is, if they were aware that you made the thing that they picked up later. Though I wonder why the original didn't go through. The other person pushed harder for it to go through, or showed it off with a different sort of demo? Or was it a different sort of technical implementation / design?

dupdup 9mo ago
>grifter blatantly naming ,the part you mention was under timing section I guess the grifter didn't just copy paste what our guy did. it did have more impact and well timed
- helloplanets 9mo ago
  > blatantly naming Not sure if you mean that I'm being hostile for no reason towards this 'someone else'. The second section in my original post is the big conditional. > I guess the grifter didn't just copy paste what our guy did. it did have more impact and well time This is more than likely correct. Either way, I do think it's grifter behavior to not mention/include anyone else who was involved in the project if you pick it up halfway through. Unless the code (or whatever else) is actually bad, and you have to do extra work to redo it. And, if you are actually aware who even worked on the project to begin with. But it very well might've been a case where some higher up passed the project off to another programmer (months/years later) with no malicious intent whatsoever, and the programmer just did the thing as requested. Or a myriad of other explanations.
golly_ned 9mo ago
I see this same thing now. In this case, it’s a more senior engineer and his manager taking credit for work a less senior engineer who’d left the team did. There’s simply no advantage to crediting work to someone who’d left the team. We love to blame those who are misfortunate. It’s called just world syndrome. It’s deeply uncomfortable to realize that this kind of thing is the norm, and justice is the exception. I’ve been extremely fortunate in my career, but not due to any special savviness of my own.

deleted 9mo ago

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krisoft 9mo ago

If you ask for a raise and they say “maybe in two to three years” thats simply a polite no. > “you know the world outside is hostile to job seekers and a steady paycheck beats the unemployment line” You can search for a new job while employed. Unless you are stuck on an underwater submarine playing hide-and-seek you can always fire off a few inquiries.

ozim 9mo ago
I am doing that but I also got annoyed by recruiters or HR or whoever that was in last 2 inquiries I sent out. They would call me out of the blue in the middle of the day expecting I pick up and have time to talk with them like I would be jobless person waiting for them to call. I didn’t pick up at all because I was busy. Earlier I remember I would get an email to at least give me heads up they will contact me next week or something. It was also quite common recruiters were calling me at the end of the day. For those last ones I got an email saying they were calling. I replied they can try on a day where I don’t have meetings and best time - they never replied to email or tried to call…. I don’t expect it should be all about me, but my idea is that small email saves everyone’s time.
- massysett 9mo ago
  With a mentality like that no, you’re not going to get another job. Job seeking while you’re employed means you have to subjugate the needs of your current employer. When an opportunity calls? You pick up the phone! You’re the kind of person who is so dedicated to your job that you will have to lose it and then be unemployed before you get a new one. That is absolutely ok. Job seeking while employed takes a ton of energy and might not be worth it to you. Don’t bother then.
  - hunta2097 9mo ago
    I know someone who has used this trick to get a pay rise whilst not looking for work. You wait until your boss is in earshot, get someone to ring you and the walk quickly away from your desk saying "yes, yes I'm still interested... Just a sec". It might make your boss actually consider the reality of replacing you.

mkl95 9mo ago

In the zero-interest rate economy, it was easy for early to mid-career engineers with average skill to switch to a company that paid them 20%+ more money. I did it myself multiple times. The current economy and AI have turned the tables. Even today, waiting for three years is pushing it for most folks, but understandable. Career growth is being decimated across the industry, and opportunities simply aren't there anymore like they used to be. You can be dedicated and above average, but you are still stuck in the same industry as everyone else.

arjie 9mo ago

One of the notable things about FAANG processes that I've observed from my friends there is that roles and processes are mechanized[0]. Individuals are placed like precision robotics in a bigger machine. This kind of structure means that you have a defined process for promotion or pay raises and you know what your role is. In fact, one might even posit that the ability for these large organizations to create a machine to extract surplus from labour in a systematic fashion is the reason for their success. For most people, this is wonderful. Knowing what you will be valued for is very useful. It says "do the things that are useful to us" and "stop doing the things that are useless to us" and tells you "these are the things that are useful and those are the things that are not useful". At their scale, rare errors in the process will inevitably show up, but smaller companies often have these errors at higher rates. All that to say, success often comes from identifying what is useful to the organization and what is not, and then what is useful and what is not to the person who has control over one's role in the organization. In mechanized organizations, this should be easier. In unmechanized organizations, one's skill at this will dominate one's technical skill at determining success. But it's just a skill, and if you cannot find a way to train it, the easiest workaround is to ask the person making the decision: "if I wanted it in 3 months, what would I have to do?". You may get an answer that was untrue 3 months later, but you just shrank your timeline in a way that is much more meaningful, and perhaps more likely is that you'll either get an unrealistic timeline (which is useful signal), or you will hit it and get what you wanted (which is also desirable). 0: A classic example of this is that no one can "get you into Google/Facebook/whatever". This reveals the other non-obvious purpose of their interview process besides quality-control of hires: quality-control and rules compliance on interviewers.

rrr_oh_man 9mo ago
> A classic example of this is that no one can "get you into Google/Facebook/whatever". That is so not true.
- theonething 9mo ago
  Care to offer an explanation?

JackFr 9mo ago

Losing your job sucks. Typically, there is no silver lining. I’ve been laid off 2x and those were both among the worst experiences of my life. > rawness is an excellent time to reflect on what went right and what I could've done better, before the brain starts coping with the trauma of the event in question. But that isn’t what he’s done in the essay. I don’t think he’s doing an honest assessment of what he could have done better. Rather there’s a thin patina of “I should have realized . . .” and then a litany of complaints about the company. And the complaints about the company are the same usual ones that everyone makes. I HAVE BEEN THERE. I HAVE MADE THEM TOO. But I would advise, in six months in a year when you’re in a new job, to take a HARD look at yourself. Try not to cast people as villains and thus can be a learning experience.

K0balt 9mo ago
If losing your job is traumatic, I’d suggest reviewing your relationship with employers and employment in general. It’s not a stable situation, and there is no social aspect in reality. It’s an accounting decision. Employment is almost always exploitation on one side or the other, with the best case being mutual exploitation. Employment inherently involves paying less for your work than it is worth. In an ideal situation, in exchange you get access to tools at a cost less than they cost to access on your own. It’s inherently violent on some level. Ending violence shouldn’t be traumatic.
- bluecheese452 9mo ago
  That is nice but my bills still need to be paid.
  - K0balt 9mo ago
    I’ve been on both sides of the table for decades. I try to find ways to bind incentives from either side so that they are better aligned, but it’s always exploitative in one way or another. It’s just suboptimal. Perhaps employee owned businesses are the solution.
    - 9mo ago

throwaway290 9mo ago

> I was given a warning because said proposal was (unknowingly) opposed to a Senior Director's vision Warning? Wtf. Even if knowingly opposed, you pay this dino to provide expertise not lick your ego. I'd start looking at that moment... bigger red flag than promotion delay.

jimnotgym 9mo ago

I like the other employment 3 year problem. In this the company fills jobs with keen but cheap young people to save money. These people work hard, get experience and take qualifications. Three years later you have a cohort of young people with excellent CVs and qualifications above their peers... that the company can't afford to pay the market rate for! Then it loses a whole cohort of great staff.

alansaber 9mo ago
I suspect many companies factor in that young people are the most likely to churn, so don't expend much effort retaining them
- jimnotgym 9mo ago
  That is a self-fulfilling prophecy though. Why do they churn, because they are young, or because you refuse to pay them the same for doing the same work as their peers?

cladopa 9mo ago

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Falsintio 9mo ago
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Falsintio 9mo ago

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jtrn 9mo ago

For anybody that is interested in a clinical psychologist's take, here is mine… This article triggers an overwhelming feeling that something is missing in the story. Of course, being fired is genuinely painful, and the author's emotional state is understandable. But I think there is a much better way to understand this situation that would be beneficial to the author. Please note that this is just a guess, and in reality, I would explore if this is a good fit for both reality and what the person is capable of talking about, and quickly back off if not both were true. This is just an exercise in hypothesis building that accompanies every meeting i have with a client, and initial theories are often wrong. First is the defense mechanism of abstract answers. I once asked a girl why she stole from her mother AGAIN, and she responded, "I try to get back up, but I fall down." This is a deflection and a non-answer. This author does the corporate version of that. Instead of saying, "I struggled to read the room," they describe "The Three-Year Myth." There is the bitterness here that often accompanies the wound to professional identity. The author literally tells us they are smarter than their boss, harder working than their peers, and more ethical than the company. The easiest explanation is to blame failure on the system being rigged against good people. This might be a coping mechanism, but it might also hinder personal growth. Then there is the claim that the author didn't know why they were fired. However, i think they tell us exactly why in the hardware paragraph. Look at the what the author describes… a senior director presented a vision to a customer. The author (without checking with the director) proposed a totally different architecture because they "read the requirements line by line" (implying the director didn't). The author received a formal warning. The author’s Interpretation is "My timing was perfect for the market, but poor for the systems of power." (I was too smart/right, and they were threatened). That might hold some truth, but its not implausible that the author undermined senior leadership, embarrassed the company regarding a client commitment, and likely communicated it with arrogance ("no AI summaries here!" as he writes). And receiving a formal warning is an extremely serious signal. To frame a formal HR warning as simply timing being inconvenient to power that be, shows a near-total lack of accountability. There is zero reflection on how they advocated for their ideas. The author claims, "I'm literally not built for competition so much as cooperation," yet their anecdotes describe them fighting against cost centers and trying to override directors. The self-reflection that does appear is careful and limited. The author admits to being "naturally helpful and cooperative" and bad at "game theory" but these are virtues reframed as vulnerabilities. "I'm too good and too cooperative for this corrupt world" isn't really self-criticism. The one moment that approaches genuine insight "I need to expand into leadership skills" is immediately followed by blaming stakeholders who "blocked change at all costs." The OCD mention functions similarly and it explains the overanalysis as a feature, not something that might be creating friction with colleagues. This is someone who likely has high technical intelligence but problems with soft skills. They prioritized being technically right over being effective, and when the social consequences arrived (the warning, the firing), they built a defensive wall of abstraction to avoid seeing their own role in the fall. A proper question is WHY has this happened repeatedly and in multiple roles, across multiple organizations, with the same pattern? The author even acknowledges this but thinks the answer is "I keep falling for the same trap." I think it would be more helpful to ask, "Why do I keep creating the same dynamic?"

sublinear 9mo ago

I have to somewhat disagree, but the details matter a lot. If you insist on seeking the absolute top pay for the work and want to always be on the cutting edge in a fast-paced environment, sure the advice in the blog post is correct. If you instead take 80% of the pay and pick a place to work that's more slow and steady, the traditional advice starts to make sense again. The key thing is you must have strong and unique skills with the experience to match that the business actually values. You need to bust your ass just as hard as if you were working for 100% of the pay. If they didn't think they were getting a good deal they wouldn't keep you. Simple as that. I do agree it shouldn't take 3 years though. It should be more like getting promoted every year for the first 3 to 5 years and then you either settle in for the long haul (believe me this really is what a traditional employer wants most!), or decide that you're bored and move on. It's your choice. Definitely, if there's no promotion after the first couple of years I would worry that I'm not what they were looking for after all. There is no myth. You just have to truly know your worth and not overplay your hand. Knowing your worth is ABSOLUTELY NOT about milking every last drop like a desperate loser. I thought we would have learned this by now after the death of hustle culture. It's a lot like dating. This is just the unspoken compromise everyone assumes you're already aware of. I'm surprised this kind of article still resonates and gets posted on HN.

matwood 9mo ago
> You just have to truly know your worth and not overplay your hand. This is super hard for a lot of people to hear, but nearly everyone is replaceable. There are a lot of smart people who work hard - that's table stakes in many high paying jobs. One of the things I liked about playing sports both team and individual is there's little room to hide. At the end of the day you know exactly where you stand, and your ego has to accept that and either get better or be happy with your spot.

strangescript 9mo ago

If your co-workers are getting promotions and raises and you are not, its a you problem. If someone else is getting credit for your work, its a you problem. Given your claims of impeccable work, we are only left to assume its a personality issue. Its not to say its fair or right, but life is a popularity contest, whether we like it or not. More likeable people get more things, sometimes undeservingly so.

golly_ned 9mo ago
It’s not true that if someone else is getting credit for your work, that’s a you problem. At my workplace now, there’s a senior staff engineer taking credit for work that was done by someone 3 levels below him. And the senior staff engineer still thinks he is not getting enough credit for his work. The senior staff engineer’s manager has been crediting him for the work the less senior engineer had done, since the less senior engineer is no longer at that team, in forums where the less senior engineer has no access to. The less senior engineer is plenty likeable. As is the senior staff engineer. But the less senior engineer had left that team, and the senior staff engineer and his manager are unscrupulous, and do what they’d like to their advantage. This is called “just world syndrome.”
jimbokun 9mo ago
This advice is completely, 100% inactionable. Congratulations on composing the platonic ideal of useless advice.

komali2 9mo ago

> I was given a warning because said proposal was (unknowingly) opposed to a Senior Director's vision, one they'd already presented to the customer prior to seeking my input and neglected to mention when I reached out. My timing was perfect for the market, but poor for the systems of power within the organization. I feel like there's two paths you can take in your career: corporate stooge, or productive worker. The corporate stooge will be more capitalistically rewarded, because businesses aren't optimized for productivity or quality, they're optimized for capitalistic rewards. There was an article recently about dating apps and their inherently contradictory incentives. They're incentivized to keep you on the app, which means getting you kinda good matches, but not so good that you stop needing the app. The business world seems to be nothing but these contradictions, and it seems our choices are to learn to take this Kafkaesque fully into our internal model of the world, or give up and accept that we'll be disposed of every few years, despite keeping some part of the company's heart beating (a part some exec will one day gleefuly rip out of their own metaphorical chest so as to drive up price immediately before acquisition or something).

begueradj 9mo ago

> Your performance review is solid, of course, your deliverables unimpeachable, but something begins to feel increasingly off. Your colleagues are in more meetings, but your task list only grows longer. Your progress on said project is appreciated by your boss and team, maybe even your boss' boss, but never really recognized. Managers sabotage talented employees: https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/what-drives-managers-to-sabotage-talented-employees https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/what-drives-ma...

singpolyma3 9mo ago

My last acquisition they tried to convince us to give every employee a "slightly lower" salary coming in so they could "get a raise sooner". I was like WTF are you trying to pull. If you know you'll give them the raise then pay them that now.

ferroman 9mo ago

This is exactly my experience (and I've been doing this fo 20 years now). Saw it on every job I had. The usual bs is "we are developing new performance and grows framework" "promotions will happen on next cycle" "we are reorganizing now" "we want to add more transparency" etc. But somehow they always know who to call when shit hit th fan. Don't fall for it. Look for another job once you see this. Looking for new job nowadays take a while and it's better to be employed during this process.

notepad0x90 9mo ago

On one hand there are places that will look out for job-hoppers so the 3yr rule is good. But for promotions, job-hopping is the best strategy. The part people don't talk about much is the toll it takes on you when you switch jobs. It's like moving but worse. It's not like switching your wardrobe or something, it's a very drastic and intense change. There really is no hard-and-fast rule with these things, you just have to figure out your industry, country, region and other details and determine what is best. An advice I could have used earlier myself is the whole networking and building contacts thing. This is both internally and in your industry. There is literally nothing more important for your career than being likeable and building a reputation. Whether it's a promotion, better pay, or landing a better gig, focus on that as a priority. In case what I'm saying isn't clear: be the biggest butt-kissing sycophant possible, and never be negative or disagree unless you're very confident that's absolutely what's expected of you by the right people. You don't get paid for how hard you work, you get paid for how valued you are. I think that's a bit obvious, but what many miss is that it isn't how valuable you are for the company that matters, it isn't even how valuable you are to your team, or to delivering some goal that matters. What matters is how valuable you are to individuals. Competency matters, but only as a 2nd or 3rd point of order. It matters how well you're liked, but also how good you are at improving how well-liked others are. Sometimes there just aren't any opportunities where you are, nothing can be done about that other than jumping ship. However, expecting to be promoted, or paid more because of "the rules", that doesn't work well in real life.

cyanydeez 9mo ago
My asset has always been to be a well timed prediction engine. But it only works if people already rely on you and listen to you.
- Zee2 9mo ago
  I have to say the same, but even as someone who isn’t really “relied upon”. The best asset for my own independent well-being has always been knowing which way the wind blows and sailing in that direction. I have to imagine if there was some internal Polymarket-esque platform I’d be a rich man... (facetiously speaking) Unfortunately knowing the way the wind blows is not as much of an asset to those in charge.

majgr 9mo ago

I never was good at these human power things. Years after happening, I realised I was the object of a manipulation. I never cared about promotions and stuff like that. I change jobs because I am bored by it after couple of years anyway. I do not mind, well, I will welcome, when AI takes jobs of managers. No more politics, power plays, setting coalitions.

jfrbfbreudh 9mo ago

The author could be technically competent, but I think he’s completely failed to recognize one of the core principles of getting recognition and promotions at work: Who are you bringing with you? As in, who else gets recognition and success as a result of you doing well? If it’s your boss, great, promotion likely. If it’s your skip, even better. If the result of your grand project is that it solely makes you look good, nobody else is incentivized to support you in any capacity. It’s much more likely that it will have the exact opposite effect: you will be seen as a selfish and ambitious threat.