[simorley]

Wrong. Business is about relationships. Be competent and do what is minimally required. Do extra networking or befriending your manager/boss/etc.

People who get ahead build relationships. The slaves stick around to do the extra work.

Competence + relationship > competence + extra work

It's so funny how all the business advice is about how to be a good slave rather than what really gets you ahead.

[tomtheelder]

> It's so funny how all the business advice is about how to be a good slave rather than what really gets you ahead.

This is almost literally the opposite of what the article is advocating.

The author is suggesting that should you complete the work required of you then you should spend any spare time you might have on things that benefit _you_ rather than necessarily benefiting your employer. The author spends the first half of the article explicitly distinguishing this from doing additional, unrequested work that contributes obvious business value. The caveats the author provides are to encourage people to do this in a way that isn't going to get them into trouble, pretty much.

Relationship building for engineers nearly always happens outside of the context of the actual work, so I don't think that's particularly relevant.

[indymike]

> Wrong. Business is about relationships. Be competent and do what is minimally required.

Wow. this is the worst advice I've ever read on HN. As an owner, I seek out employees that are good at politics and poor workers and help them find a job at another company (ESPECIALLY COMPETITORS). A lot of times, they even think they are getting a promotion when they leave.

> The slaves stick around to do the extra work.

This is the problem. "Extra" does not mean "extra work". It means go beyond. Solve an extra problem, write that document, squash an unexpected bug or two, organize a language meetup group... something outside the necessary.

> Competence + relationship > competence + extra work

Competence is a low bar that nearly every adult professional meets. Be better than competent is what the extra is all about. Also, building relationships isn't that hard. I can't tell you the number of times that I see people who are bitter about not getting promoted say no thanks to their manager when approached with, do you want to grab lunch?

[mjfl]

What about competence + relationship + hard work? Establishing relationships can be a part of work, and also hard work can be relationship building with a boss, who can then promote you... However, I share your aversion to being "a slave" and I also don't like to work for other people. But the only solution seems to be to work for yourself, which requires hard work just to survive. I thus feel like to satisfy the requirement of "no hard work" while working for someone else (because working for yourself is hard), requires the seeking of a position which is highly political and not really outcome dependent (otherwise your soon to be boss will have more incentive to filter you out), which sounds like the formula for some kind of bureaucratic cancerous cyst inside of a company, tbh. Which is something you would ideally not want to be a part of.

[a_imho]

This is one of those things that everyone knows is true, but no one can acknowledge it openly. Without vested interest it is simply natural to put one's interest ahead of the company one works for. In fact, doing extra, or normalizing extra can even make coworkers look bad.

https://elsajohansson.wordpress.com/2016/12/28/your-employer...

[Shadonototra]

Well said!