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> and most managers fail to punish at least some of these slow learners of theirs False, they punish by not crediting that work as work. Glue work, keeping th

> and most managers fail to punish at least some of these slow learners of theirs False, they punish by not crediting that work as work. Glue work, keeping things tidy, dealing with that annoyance that everyone else has been able to get away with suffering through (and ignoring), all of this will be worth approximately 0 at performance review time because your time is a zerosum game that is traded off with highly visible, political, and otherwise rewardable work. It's been my experience that in larger companies you generally have to play in the framework.(I'd roughly draw the line at 1000+ employees), at quite small companies (or as a self employed / entrepreneur, roughly <200 employees) you should follow the path of highest EROI on your efforts regardless of who's job it is. In the gap you have to read the culture and management.

3eb7988a1663 10d ago
I can think of at least two people in my career who were, ahem, load bearing for the company. They did all of the BS, non-sexy work required to keep the place running. Never wasted time on vanity projects, just showed up day after day doing the actual necessary things. They were criminally under appreciated by management. Their career trajectory significantly worse than those who engaged in the highly visible projects.
- two_handfuls 10d ago
  Was the company over 1000 employees?
  - airstrike 10d ago
    In my case and experience, yes.
  - 3eb7988a1663 9d ago
    Significantly larger, yes.
- dust-jacket 10d ago
  I've never understood why people would continue to care so hard when their efforts are unappreciated. But I've also never worked at a large company.
  - jltsiren 10d ago
    Do you exercise because it makes you stronger and faster? Or because it's something you enjoy, and it also keeps you healthy? Many people get satisfaction from doing their job well. From their perspective, if they are already happy with what they have, why would they make themselves unhappy by constantly pursuing more?
    - djmashko2 9d ago
      For me - I don’t enjoy it personally.
  - jacobolus 10d ago
    Some people have the primary goal of making things work for everyone. Other people have the primary goal of personally benefitting. These are often in conflict. The better a company or team can align these goals, the more effective it is, and the more everyone tends to benefit, but in many organizations the folks looking for personal advantage are most likely to end up in charge.
  - pixl97 10d ago
    These people exist all over the place and they are the reason why society generally works. Shit would, and shit does go sideways when they stop doing their jobs, small and big companies alike. >why people would continue to care so hard when their efforts are unappreciated. So quite a few marriages.
  - Brian_K_White 10d ago
    It's because being rewarded is not the primary reason they do anything. It's a component and it's nice, but it's not the definition if life and existence.
  - toomuchtodo 10d ago
- 98codes 10d ago
  As someone that has done a lot of that work, can confirm.
esafak 10d ago
If the company does not recognize its importance just LET THE DAMN THING FAIL. That is how management will pay proper attention to it.
- ozim 10d ago
  I like getting paid each month and not having to look for job. Letting it fail is directly opposing my need to pay mortgage.
  - esafak 10d ago
    Presumably your official duty is not to make sure that company does not fail but something more specific. Work on your responsibilities, and if your manager is nagging you to fix something that isn't that, have him make it official so you get recognized for it. If it should not be your job push back.
  - carlosjobim 10d ago
    If the entire company of thousands of employees stand or fall depending on your work alone, then you can find something which pays double your salary in less than a day. And thus pay your mortgage.
- maerF0x0 10d ago
  > LET THE DAMN THING FAIL Fully agree, enterprise failure is one of the most important mechanisms in market economies. This also applies to gov't bailouts
- jjk166 10d ago
  It can take years for the damn thing to fail even after the key support stops entirely. In that time you and your colleagues will suffer, and the people responsible will jump ship long before the full impact has been felt, learning nothing from the experience and likely blaming it on the person they leave holding the bag. You can try to get a job elsewhere but things which aren't appreciated at one company often times aren't appreciated at most. Doing a good job is often in your personal best interest regardless of what an out of touch middle manager thinks is more important.
atoav 10d ago
Exactly. As a media tech guy, my best feedback during the past decade of work was always linked to some lazy fuckup of someone else that I "heroically" rushed in to fix by fixing some noob level misuse. Meanwhile the actually most heroic work I did was literal PCB level repair of a piece of ancient equipment whose function my boss wouldn't even understand, but the failure of which would stop our main room to a grinding halt. I then had to repeatedly ask to replace that equipment with a new replacement. The highly visible work is often not the one that really counts, especially if you do not understand the subject matter.
- _kb 9d ago
  Similar environment, identical experience. Fixing something that’s visibly and publicly broken (or able to be sold) gets immediate praise. Preventing that issue before it occurs is thankless and invisible. There are people doing that invisible work in every org. They normally become visible around a week after they quit.
  - atoav 9d ago
    Well and this goes further. You will find that some people will only chose to do the visible work. And this will often get great feedback from superiors, although it is the metaphorical equivalent of running around with a fire extinguisher and waiting for fire to pop up in an environment littered with flammable garbage, instead of — you know — ensuring that a fire doesn't start to begin with. So being celebrated for leaving everything at the brink of collapse, they will just do that, while ensuring to be in the spotlight when the shit inevitably hits the fan. This can become so perverted that the number of extinguished fires is treated as some sort of metric for success by management, instead of seeing it as the failure it is. Feel free to replace this with "all nighters" in other jobs. Who is more dedicated to the job, the person that just does it all in time with plenty of room for mistakes and unforseen circumstances or the one who slacks around 90% of the duration and then squeezes in some all nighters in the last hours? If your project has to rely on all nighters without good reason¹ this just indicates bad planning to me. ¹: There are legit reasons why working through the night is needed, e.g. the work you do can only be done during the night or there are legit last minute problems that nobody could have planned for. But if you literally have those every time, they are to be expected and are to be scheduled for during normal working hours.
yosefk 8d ago
Right, but that's more a lack of reward than outright punishment. If you work with these people on something that "crosses boundaries" and that something succeeds, you can credit them and in the hope to help their career. I agree that larger places are worse in this regard (though there can be a small part of a large place which is, well, small enough to work like a small one), and that you should generally make sure you're rewarded for your work, and if you're not, either work less or work elsewhere.

3eb7988a1663 10d ago

I can think of at least two people in my career who were, ahem, load bearing for the company. They did all of the BS, non-sexy work required to keep the place running. Never wasted time on vanity projects, just showed up day after day doing the actual necessary things. They were criminally under appreciated by management. Their career trajectory significantly worse than those who engaged in the highly visible projects.

two_handfuls 10d ago
Was the company over 1000 employees?
- airstrike 10d ago
  In my case and experience, yes.
- 3eb7988a1663 9d ago
  Significantly larger, yes.
dust-jacket 10d ago
I've never understood why people would continue to care so hard when their efforts are unappreciated. But I've also never worked at a large company.
- jltsiren 10d ago
  Do you exercise because it makes you stronger and faster? Or because it's something you enjoy, and it also keeps you healthy? Many people get satisfaction from doing their job well. From their perspective, if they are already happy with what they have, why would they make themselves unhappy by constantly pursuing more?
  - djmashko2 9d ago
    For me - I don’t enjoy it personally.
- jacobolus 10d ago
  Some people have the primary goal of making things work for everyone. Other people have the primary goal of personally benefitting. These are often in conflict. The better a company or team can align these goals, the more effective it is, and the more everyone tends to benefit, but in many organizations the folks looking for personal advantage are most likely to end up in charge.
- pixl97 10d ago
  These people exist all over the place and they are the reason why society generally works. Shit would, and shit does go sideways when they stop doing their jobs, small and big companies alike. >why people would continue to care so hard when their efforts are unappreciated. So quite a few marriages.
- Brian_K_White 10d ago
  It's because being rewarded is not the primary reason they do anything. It's a component and it's nice, but it's not the definition if life and existence.
- toomuchtodo 10d ago
98codes 10d ago
As someone that has done a lot of that work, can confirm.

esafak 10d ago

If the company does not recognize its importance just LET THE DAMN THING FAIL. That is how management will pay proper attention to it.

ozim 10d ago
I like getting paid each month and not having to look for job. Letting it fail is directly opposing my need to pay mortgage.
- esafak 10d ago
  Presumably your official duty is not to make sure that company does not fail but something more specific. Work on your responsibilities, and if your manager is nagging you to fix something that isn't that, have him make it official so you get recognized for it. If it should not be your job push back.
- carlosjobim 10d ago
  If the entire company of thousands of employees stand or fall depending on your work alone, then you can find something which pays double your salary in less than a day. And thus pay your mortgage.
maerF0x0 10d ago
> LET THE DAMN THING FAIL Fully agree, enterprise failure is one of the most important mechanisms in market economies. This also applies to gov't bailouts
jjk166 10d ago
It can take years for the damn thing to fail even after the key support stops entirely. In that time you and your colleagues will suffer, and the people responsible will jump ship long before the full impact has been felt, learning nothing from the experience and likely blaming it on the person they leave holding the bag. You can try to get a job elsewhere but things which aren't appreciated at one company often times aren't appreciated at most. Doing a good job is often in your personal best interest regardless of what an out of touch middle manager thinks is more important.

atoav 10d ago

Exactly. As a media tech guy, my best feedback during the past decade of work was always linked to some lazy fuckup of someone else that I "heroically" rushed in to fix by fixing some noob level misuse. Meanwhile the actually most heroic work I did was literal PCB level repair of a piece of ancient equipment whose function my boss wouldn't even understand, but the failure of which would stop our main room to a grinding halt. I then had to repeatedly ask to replace that equipment with a new replacement. The highly visible work is often not the one that really counts, especially if you do not understand the subject matter.

_kb 9d ago
Similar environment, identical experience. Fixing something that’s visibly and publicly broken (or able to be sold) gets immediate praise. Preventing that issue before it occurs is thankless and invisible. There are people doing that invisible work in every org. They normally become visible around a week after they quit.
- atoav 9d ago
  Well and this goes further. You will find that some people will only chose to do the visible work. And this will often get great feedback from superiors, although it is the metaphorical equivalent of running around with a fire extinguisher and waiting for fire to pop up in an environment littered with flammable garbage, instead of — you know — ensuring that a fire doesn't start to begin with. So being celebrated for leaving everything at the brink of collapse, they will just do that, while ensuring to be in the spotlight when the shit inevitably hits the fan. This can become so perverted that the number of extinguished fires is treated as some sort of metric for success by management, instead of seeing it as the failure it is. Feel free to replace this with "all nighters" in other jobs. Who is more dedicated to the job, the person that just does it all in time with plenty of room for mistakes and unforseen circumstances or the one who slacks around 90% of the duration and then squeezes in some all nighters in the last hours? If your project has to rely on all nighters without good reason¹ this just indicates bad planning to me. ¹: There are legit reasons why working through the night is needed, e.g. the work you do can only be done during the night or there are legit last minute problems that nobody could have planned for. But if you literally have those every time, they are to be expected and are to be scheduled for during normal working hours.

yosefk 8d ago

Right, but that's more a lack of reward than outright punishment. If you work with these people on something that "crosses boundaries" and that something succeeds, you can credit them and in the hope to help their career. I agree that larger places are worse in this regard (though there can be a small part of a large place which is, well, small enough to work like a small one), and that you should generally make sure you're rewarded for your work, and if you're not, either work less or work elsewhere.