3 ms·

On an intellectual level, I understand the importance on working on the high profile projects, but I'm not sure how to do it without feeling, well sociopathic.

On an intellectual level, I understand the importance on working on the high profile projects, but I'm not sure how to do it without feeling, well sociopathic. As an example, a friend of mine recently lost his job. His co-workers had a similar attitude and focused on the high profile work the the CEO cared about (e.g. industry conferences, television ads). My friend focused on more junior level tasks (e.g. tech support, maintaining the corporate website). He even had some tasks with negative prestige (e.g. unclogging toilets). When a change in the tax code altered the company's finances, my friend was fired. Within a month, the company had lost half their clients as support calls were going unanswered, the website was down, and clients who visited in person encountered an office that smelled of feces. None of my friend's tasks were high profile, but they were all critical to the health of the company. I know that I'll be rewarded better if I do the high profile tasks instead of the drudge work. However, the drudge work still has to be done. Should I ignore the drudge work and let the organization fall apart around me or should I convince some other person to perform the drudge work for which they won't be rewarded?

mooreds 13y ago
Or, you could work for an organization that recognizes (even glamorizes) the drudge work. See Zappos, etc.
- wpietri 13y ago
  I think it's also worth learning to do internal PR for unglamorous things. I was once a sysadmin, and I got incredibly tired of being unappreciated. Eventually I burnt out on the work and shifted to other things. But I came to realize that some of it was my fault. Uncomfortable with recognition, I was almost secretive about how much hard work I was doing to keep everything running smoothly. I didn't even give people a chance to appreciate what I was up to. In retrospect, I was thinking that good work would shine on its own, that they would understand the complexities of what I was doing. Hah! I don't even do that myself. I don't run around saying, "Hey, the internet is amazing! Thank you $ISP for keeping me connected!" every 20 minutes. But when it goes down, I go right to WTF-land. If you're going to take one for the team, let the team know. And when you notice other people doing important but unglamorous stuff, call it out. Praising them publicly helps create a culture that values more than the showy big wins. There's a technique called "appreciative inquiry" that I've found really helpful to shift my thinking in that regard. Rather than starting from an expectation of perfection, I start by asking myself, "What's good about this?"
  - mooreds 13y ago
    Oooh, thanks for the pointer to appreciative inquiry. Looks very interesting.
nostrademons 13y ago
The way I prefer to think of it is: it is not your job to protect people (particularly senior management) from the consequences of their decisions. Make your decisions in your own best interest; it is up to the organization to make sure that your interest aligns with theirs. Google used to have a severe problem where code refactoring & maintenance was not rewarded in performance reviews while launches were highly regarded, which led to the effect of everybody trying to launch things as fast as possible and nobody cleaning up the messes left behind. Eventually launches started getting slowed down, Larry started asking "Why can't we have nice things?", and everybody responded "Because you've been paying us to rack up technical debt." As a result, teams were formed with the express purpose of code health & maintenance, those teams that were already working on those goals got more visibility, and refactoring contributions started counting for something in perf. Moreover, many ex-Googlers who were fed up with the situation went to Facebook and, I've heard, instituted a culture there where grungy engineering maintenance is valued by your peers. None of this would've happened if people had just heroically fallen on their own sword and burnt out doing work nobody cared about. Sometimes it takes highly visible consequences before people with decision-making power realize there's a problem and start correcting it. If those consequences never happen, they'll keep believing it's not a problem and won't pay much attention to it.
- patio11 13y ago
  The way I prefer to think of it is: it is not your job to protect people (particularly senior management) from the consequences of their decisions. That's a really, really good line, and also a good guiding principle. None of this would've happened if people had just heroically fallen on their own sword and burnt out doing work nobody cared about. Slight disagree here: it was entirely possible that many people could have sacrificed their health, happiness, and quite possibly lives to the altar of Google's code quality... and changed absolutely nothing about Google's trajectory because Google would neither have noticed their efforts nor, had it noticed them, cared. That's not one of my periodic elbow swipes at Big Daddy G, by the way, that's just Life At A Megacorp. It was substantially the same way at my old day job -- I managed to convince myself that with just a few more hours and a few more tech talks and a little more quiet politicking I was going to get us on the Modern Web Applications (TM) bandwagon, and yet, seen from the clarifying distance of a few years, I bet it is highly likely that you'd have to be really adept with the subversion command line to find traces of my lasting impact on that company as employee #4,256. This is one reason I really prefer (personally) working for smaller companies. I like knowing that the stuff I work on matters. (And I totally get that there exist compensating differentials for working at Google, both for you personally and the other Googlers. You've previously mentioned "It feels great to have millions of people use something I made with my own hands", and I agree, that does sound awesome, and it's a flavor of awesome which will likely not be accessible to me for quite a while if ever due to the don't-work-for-e.g.-Google decision.)

mooreds 13y ago

Or, you could work for an organization that recognizes (even glamorizes) the drudge work. See Zappos, etc.

wpietri 13y ago
I think it's also worth learning to do internal PR for unglamorous things. I was once a sysadmin, and I got incredibly tired of being unappreciated. Eventually I burnt out on the work and shifted to other things. But I came to realize that some of it was my fault. Uncomfortable with recognition, I was almost secretive about how much hard work I was doing to keep everything running smoothly. I didn't even give people a chance to appreciate what I was up to. In retrospect, I was thinking that good work would shine on its own, that they would understand the complexities of what I was doing. Hah! I don't even do that myself. I don't run around saying, "Hey, the internet is amazing! Thank you $ISP for keeping me connected!" every 20 minutes. But when it goes down, I go right to WTF-land. If you're going to take one for the team, let the team know. And when you notice other people doing important but unglamorous stuff, call it out. Praising them publicly helps create a culture that values more than the showy big wins. There's a technique called "appreciative inquiry" that I've found really helpful to shift my thinking in that regard. Rather than starting from an expectation of perfection, I start by asking myself, "What's good about this?"
- mooreds 13y ago
  Oooh, thanks for the pointer to appreciative inquiry. Looks very interesting.

nostrademons 13y ago

The way I prefer to think of it is: it is not your job to protect people (particularly senior management) from the consequences of their decisions. Make your decisions in your own best interest; it is up to the organization to make sure that your interest aligns with theirs. Google used to have a severe problem where code refactoring & maintenance was not rewarded in performance reviews while launches were highly regarded, which led to the effect of everybody trying to launch things as fast as possible and nobody cleaning up the messes left behind. Eventually launches started getting slowed down, Larry started asking "Why can't we have nice things?", and everybody responded "Because you've been paying us to rack up technical debt." As a result, teams were formed with the express purpose of code health & maintenance, those teams that were already working on those goals got more visibility, and refactoring contributions started counting for something in perf. Moreover, many ex-Googlers who were fed up with the situation went to Facebook and, I've heard, instituted a culture there where grungy engineering maintenance is valued by your peers. None of this would've happened if people had just heroically fallen on their own sword and burnt out doing work nobody cared about. Sometimes it takes highly visible consequences before people with decision-making power realize there's a problem and start correcting it. If those consequences never happen, they'll keep believing it's not a problem and won't pay much attention to it.

patio11 13y ago
The way I prefer to think of it is: it is not your job to protect people (particularly senior management) from the consequences of their decisions. That's a really, really good line, and also a good guiding principle. None of this would've happened if people had just heroically fallen on their own sword and burnt out doing work nobody cared about. Slight disagree here: it was entirely possible that many people could have sacrificed their health, happiness, and quite possibly lives to the altar of Google's code quality... and changed absolutely nothing about Google's trajectory because Google would neither have noticed their efforts nor, had it noticed them, cared. That's not one of my periodic elbow swipes at Big Daddy G, by the way, that's just Life At A Megacorp. It was substantially the same way at my old day job -- I managed to convince myself that with just a few more hours and a few more tech talks and a little more quiet politicking I was going to get us on the Modern Web Applications (TM) bandwagon, and yet, seen from the clarifying distance of a few years, I bet it is highly likely that you'd have to be really adept with the subversion command line to find traces of my lasting impact on that company as employee #4,256. This is one reason I really prefer (personally) working for smaller companies. I like knowing that the stuff I work on matters. (And I totally get that there exist compensating differentials for working at Google, both for you personally and the other Googlers. You've previously mentioned "It feels great to have millions of people use something I made with my own hands", and I agree, that does sound awesome, and it's a flavor of awesome which will likely not be accessible to me for quite a while if ever due to the don't-work-for-e.g.-Google decision.)