If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued

> Lots of fresh grads and junior staff focus 99% on being useful, but career advancement beyond the first one or two promotions depends MUCH more on being valued.

Yeah. I've seen a lot of ICs get stuck at the "senior developer" level rather than progressing to team lead, staff/principal eng, etc because they were too focused on being useful, by cranking through Jira tickets and features, rather than thinking strategic and higher level. This is a totally fine career choice, but there's only so far that "coding better and faster" can take you.

The counterintuitive part is increasing your valuableness often reduces your usefulness. As a mundane example, in early stage startups there may be one engineer who handles production deployments, schema migrations, and on-call duties. This is extremely useful! For this engineer to increase their value, however, they'll want to automate production deployments, teach others how to run schema migrations, and set up on-call alerting and schedules. By doing this, they become less useful, since others can now do their work, but more valuable, since they've been able to delegate responsibilities.

> Lots of fresh grads and junior staff focus 99% on being useful, but career advancement beyond the first one or two promotions depends MUCH more on being valued.

“People don’t remember who went to grab drinks on a Tuesday, but they’ll remember who helped them close a million dollar deal and get a huge bonus”

Give your coworkers superpowers and opportunities will flow.

It seems the difference is just the degree of usefulness / value. Rather than being different terms, I think they're just different spots on the spectrum. What's the difference between someone being "useful" vs "valuable", one is 6/10 the other is 8+/10 (made up numbers).

A sales person that consistently hits quota is useful. A rainmaker that keeps bringing in million dollar deals is valuable.

I understand with what you're saying, and I agree for the most part. I just think describing this as "value" vs. "usefulness" is the wrong framing and unhelpful, and I can think of specific examples from my past that show this.

First, what you are describing in this comment sounds very much to me like following the adage "be loyal to people, not companies", and to that I totally agree. It's definitely critical in your career to build trust and relationships with folks you work with, and be dependable.

But for an example of why I think this "useful" vs. "valued" framing is wrong, I can think of a colleague at a previous company who I think was great at her role - she was a relatively junior (i.e. a couple years of experience) front end developer. She was responsive, implemented features well, and always demoed her work well and was extremely prepared. People also loved working with her - she was friendly, had very little ego, and had an almost disarming way of interacting with folks that would instantly defuse tensions on her team. I would work with her again in a heartbeat, and she was a great addition to her team.

At the same time, after working with her a while it became clear that her developer skills were limited. She was a great taskmaster, but the didn't have a great "systems-wide" way of thinking. She would implement features as requested, but when she would give demos I remember there were a bunch of times that there were semi-obvious questions ("Wait, how would the user get to screen A if they click button B first?") that she didn't bring up beforehand and did't consider in her implementations. I could trust her to implement individual components and screens, but I couldn't really say "Here's a description of the user problem, and the general direction we want to go in - how would you solve this?"

So if you asked me, I would say this person was a very valued person on her team. In her role, I think she was great. But I also don't think I'd expect her to perform well if she was asked to go in more "strategic and ambitious directions", as taken from the article.

I really like this comment and I think your framing is the correct way to think about it.

For example, when I look through the pattern of folks in my LinkedIn network who have been hit hard by layoffs, it's clear to me that a lot of roles were "luxuries" or "impulse buys" during the ZIRP era, and so many of those roles have vanished over the past 2 years or so.

Often, especially in large businesses, which of these categories you fall into (investment, insurance, luxury/impulse buy) is more a function of which of these buckets your business unit is in than you as an individual.

I've always tried to avoid working for cost centers, where the business's goal is to reduce cost as much as possible while continuing to provide the necessary utility (like on-premise IT). Cost centers are most prone to offshoring and automation; and this is where the "AI threat" is most likely to materialize.

But if your business unit is viewed as an investment center (like an R&D center), you're part of a strategic asset and you're also (by proxy) viewed as an investment. Luxury and impulse buys also happen here a lot more often.

I think the author is over indexing on the value that the company brings to its customers and the value that an employee beings to the company - as if there is just a kind of lossless value roll up going on here. In reality, there are many humans in the mix - various gatekeepers with all kinds of objective functions that are not necessarily aligned with the overall stated objective of the company. The better a company is, the more aligned it will be, but still good to keep in mind the gatekeeper layers in an org and what their actual objective functions are.

> layoffs that have snared well-respected, senior technologists. Apparently they were "valued", until they weren't"

See, I think it's more honest to say that 99% of employees are not valued at all, in that "the company" or top management actually care about what you think because you think it. People are kept around as long as the person 1-2 levels above them in management believe they have a positive short-term ROI, and everyone will be unceremoniously let go nearly instantly the moment they think they don't need you, whether you have just not distinguished yourself, or just basically at random when revenue misses dictate general cutbacks.

The author of the piece seems to place great personal significance specifically on his ideas mattering to the execs, but I think that may not be such an important thing to every personality type. I do mildly like being part of some 'strategic' conversations, but it's honestly more because I don't want the tech team to be blindsided by an impossible product requirement, and because I feel like I am good at identifying low-hanging fruit. But in terms of whether the company pursues one strategy or another at the highest level, that is hard, and you have to feel pretty bad when you make a bad bet. I don't think I need that at all to be happy.

I'll clarify, because, at least in my read of it, I am saying something very different than the author.

I was using "valued" in scare quotes that sentence you quoted - yes, I agree, the literal meaning of what I was saying is that they were useful until they weren't.

But, thus, I think it's important to understand that, at least from a business perspective, they were never "valued", and so I don't think it's helpful to think of things in those terms - again, I think that term implies a, well, value judgement that is inappropriate in the context.

By analogy, what I'm trying to say is similar to the difference between using the words "team" and "family" in a business context. I think using team is fine - teams want to win, and they cut people all the time if they don't have the right skills to help them win. Using the word "family" is simply bullshit, and it's just manipulation by business owners to try to get more work out of employees.

So my advice is to not ever think of yourself as "valued" in business. Remember that you are always just useful depending on the context of your role, your skills, and the current business environment.

I think it could be the opposite: they were valued, but not useful.

Setting boundaries is only a thing if you're able to implement them, just like in geopolitics.

If you lack the power to implement them they mean nothing.

Children can try and set the boundaries they want, but parents, family and society in general can just laugh and ignore them.

It's called attachment theory and does show up in more than just romantic relationships.

Keep in mind it’s not really accurate.

Our organism’s primary goal is survival. Unknown territory will feel unsafe and thus stressful, up to the point of unreal, even if on a rational level it may actually be safer. It takes courage to face and calm those fears without consciously or unconsciously returning to known survival strategies - and meta cognition skills to sufficiently distance yourself from those past emotional memories. After all, they allowed you to survive.

That sounds fascinating, and I worry it will be "humor that is way more documentary than I am at all comfortable with", like, say, Office Space or Idiocracy. :)

Great timing, though, I've been in need of a new read and I'm a Ricky Gervais fan. Thanks!

did you stop contracting? what brought you back to the FTE side?

I had one job as a contractor where I got hired as a temp. After 6 months they wanted me to join as an employee, but I turned it down because it would have meant travel. They kept re-upping me for 6-month intervals, and it was a good feeling to know that they truly wanted me there. Also, I didn't get a year end review, so I just got to keep working while the other engineers got called in one at a time and then came out pissed off about their lower than expected raise. :-)

To be fair to employers… even high performers need comforting lies some of the time.

(and middling performers a lot more)

I don’t think anyone (excluding the literally deranged) spends their day trying to maximize the number of lies directed at employees.

Thanks. I already retired once at 39 with this exact view in mind. I'm frankly amazed I'm still overemployed at 48. But yes, I've been super bearish on the remaining chapters in my career. I've hedged by paying off a (argh, low-interest) mortgage, stacking the bank, and I have a very well developed and near-tech-money side hustle that is ageism resistant.

I keep waiting for this shoe to drop. It hasn't yet. Now the pendulum has swung far enough that I want to preserve my time more than I want to stack more bricks. Amusingly, it's a source of tension with my wife who plans to work for another 15 years and will not be excited to see me out playing without her. (her people live into 100 on the regular. My people die in their 40s and 50s with alarming frequency -- our horizon perspectives are very different :D )

All good problems. If I lose all my tech jobs tomorrow, I will be grateful for the run and not be going hungry. I half expect I'd be relieved.

> If your mentality is "just show up for work, do what they ask and go home" then it should be no surprise you're at the top of the list to get laid off.

Conversely, if you think that devoting yourself to work will put you at the bottom of the list to get laid off, you are in for a big surprise eventually.

You made some assumptions. Don't put stock doesn't mean don't be nice, make friends, be helpful, work hard etc. It mean don't be naive. It means also invest in stocks, skills, other income streams, networking etc.

Has it ever occurred to you that you have it backwards?

He has this mentality because he has never been valued, not the other way around.

> At my last job I was the only developer who knew bash and Linux.

Where or how so you find such jobs/companies? Whenever I interview for non faang companies I’ve been asked things like the cap theorem, concurrency issues, microservice patterns, ddd, and of course on top of that the live coding and systems design interviews.

For once, I’d like to join a company in which I seem to bring something only I know.

They still did not value you in the end. That was just manipulation to get you to stay.

I'm not sure this is a reliable guide. I'm in academia, and the people who really can't be replaced are the administrative staff with hard-won institutional knowledge and connections--but they're valued far less than splashy big-name faculty with no institutional loyalty.

thats what they want too

if you bring even a tiny bit of your spunk, enthusiasm and passion to work you;d be labeled a problem immediately.

They want apathetic mindless drones.

return TEST_SUCCESS

Thought I had one, turned in my notice but they rescinded offer a week later for no obvious reason and went hiring freeze. Was about the exact point when the market started inclining couple of years ago. Still think if I had interviewed a month before I would have got the position Been jobless ever since.

I blame my self for it, for not having the insight. Consequences were severe

It would be nice, heck I would accept a 50% pay cut for a better team since I didn't even need all the money I was earning (except for my current survival I guess), money isn't what it's about to me so long as I can feed myself, but my job hunt now isn't really about team value anymore. It's not something I can afford to think about when any job has to do for the rent. I could go back to stocking shelves if the next data entry thing I feel over skilled for doesn't get back to me

I like my hobbies, just I can't pretend to enjoy them all day when my current lifestyle has been unsustainable for so long. It was easier start of the job drought and I could do whatever I wanted and it felt nice, picked up some (unmarketable but fun) skills. Now it's all caught up to me.

"At least the gig economy is an option" is a thought that appeared in my head recently

Some of these may also work in different life stages. Want reasonable job security & compensation but currently pursuing a masters / raising an infant / dealing with elderly parental care - "useful&not valued" may not be so bad for a few years.

> does good work without self-marketing

I kinda feel called out. My work should speak for itself. It often does, but I will always forget it when it comes time to speak of myself nicely.

I simply do not care to self-promote. It feels vain and vanity is one of the most useless things possible to me. Donald Trump is about 98% vanity, if you want to see what vanity is.

Not being able to actually cite the things I’ve done to someone who already knows what those things are has cost me several promotions, though. I can do the work, I can forecast needs, be ready for them, and solve them before they arrive, but because I don’t self-promote, people who can’t shut up about themselves get promoted beyond me.

Now that I’ve typed all that out, I am remembering just how many times this has happened, and now twenty minutes into the week and I am 100% misanthropic. People suck.

The punnet square of value and utility

turns out the consulting firms stole from the german army

That kind of work avoidance sounds like a lot of work.

Advice would be to try to find a job or role doing something you’re interested it.

A lot of the subject matter of my work is not that interesting to me, and the politics and lack of any sort of vision or leadership at most organizations these days makes project work sometimes stressful. But (maybe as a survival mechanism?) I’ve found that focusing on improving how I do my work and taking pride in my output (even if no one else notices) is a way for me to have some control over my work day.

This way it’s about me and I’m not looking for external validation (which isn’t coming for a myriad of reasons that would be exhausting to list here).

My point is that we all (most of us anyway) have to work so my theory is that it’s best to try to find some balance of interesting, pays ok and you’re good enough at it that you can find some meaning in your work.

To me, work avoidance sounds mentally draining.

I had to double check that I wasn't sleep posting or something cause that's literally what 90% of my days are like.

Probably 5% of the time I'll get stuck completely and those days are immensely stressful but on the flip side, the 5% of the time I actually am able to silence the procrastination demon in my ear, those days are so satisfyingly productive.

Or you’re clever and lazy but haven’t found the right general to promote you to high leadership yet. I think of Sir Ken Robinson whenever I hear anyone say ADHD is synonymous with “stupid”

https://youtu.be/iG9CE55wbtY

Sounds like upper management material!

It's always been that way ...

> However I will never forget how the one man, who never actually did any work, who interrupted everyone, and who made these accusations, was basically doing everything he could do "seem like he had a job".

Judging from your description, you could actually be a threat to his position. So that might be a preemptive strike.

...the polite quiet well meaning, happy, working, well adjusted polite English gentleman...

You need to watch out for those, speaking as one myself. We did run an empire once and not by being nice. Have a look at George Orwell's short pieces set in Burmah (now Myanmar).

I've noticed a strong trend that newly hired managers suffer from imposter syndrome more than anyone else. Rocking the boat, lighting fires, picking fights with their reports or people outside the team - these are common symptoms.

I am in my mid forties. I have always walked away the moment I have been yelled at any job. Each time I have done this I had zero dollars in the bank. That is a privilege I give to my family, and they don't even use it. If it is a big organization walk straight to HR or go home and call a lawyer.

Yeah that general doesn't seem too clever

exactly. I've been a consultant for a large company for 7+ years. We had a very large conversion project and I am the subject matter expert on one of the internal systems involved. My effort during the launch was minimal, because I knew the system so well and any data needed, I had already built tools years ago for extracting/manipulating it.

My value (and effort), was seen as high from upper management. I also learned to schedule teams, slack, and email messages accordingly. Even if I get something done very fast, I can easily manipulate the perception around it.

I think perceived effort can be a positive or a negative. When you are starting you want to make it clear you are a hard worker. After that, no one cares and its better to look like you can easily handle what you are doing. No one promotes the person who is working really hard at the level below.

And the big one...

-3. Other people (mostly above you) will steal your glory and call it their own.

It is astonishingly simple, but it isn't easy. Not everybody is willing to do the research and practice outside the job to make it easy.