[zeroth32]

Really bad advice! Hard work does not pay, corporations are not meritocracy.

About 15 years ago, our corporation had orphaned project. Entire team of 5 developers quit without notice (found other job). Horrible code, no documentation, no tests, no spec, not even build system (was on one of the developers laptop). There was important deadline 6 months away.

I stepped up, worked 16 hours a day four couple of months, eventually got project back on track, and trained new team. As reward I got put on PIP (performance improvement plan) and eventually got fired.

Problem was:

- I worked for other division, for my manager I was dead weight. It was sort of emergency reassignment and paper work never got ironed out.

- I mostly worked from home, come to office barely. Some coworkers thought I left. Not keeping appearances was main excuse for getting me PIPed.

- My project was 1 month behind the schedule. I missed the important deadline.

- Senior manager who initiated my work quit, leaving me behind.

I am not sure what is the lesson here. But now I work in remote job, where I can do all my weekly work in about two hours. Way happier now.

Edit: this was official assignment from very senior manager within company. I saved them a lot of money on fines!

[AndrewKemendo]

What you describe above is not what the article is describing.

To be honest the author doesn't do a great job at explaining the difference between meaningful dirty work, eg work that needs to get done in order to actually move the company forward, but nobody at the current company can do it, and trying to resurrect abandonware with no coherent vision or power.

The latter will almost always lose (I've been in similar positions) whereas you can indeed build a serious career around the former.

[zeroth32]

But this was the first case! Very important project for legal compliance, not some sort of abandonware nobody cared about. I had enough skills to put it on track, on official assignment from higher management.

[whiplash451]

The lesson is : watch your own back. Communicate to people about what you do and (more importantly) what you are not doing and last, never take double assignments. Seems like you trusted your company a lot more than you should have.

[kortilla]

>Hard work does not pay, corporations are not meritocracy.

The former is true, but the latter does not follow. The lesson of your story is that corporations are a meritocracy, but you need you need to work on stuff that helps your management directly.

If you’re working on something unofficially, you’re basically moonlighting so you’re taking a big gamble that it pays off into something better because you’re not doing your actual job.

[Negitivefrags]

This is really it right here. I actually find it amazing that such a significant percentage of people don’t actually understand what their job even is.

Your job is to work on what your manager wants done. It’s that simple.

Now if you have a bad mananger they may not be effective at communicating that to you. If that’s the case than it’s even easier to get ahead. You can be one of the few people that actually asks!

[zeroth32]

Are they meritocracy? How does it go with diversity and other noble goals? The only way for highly productive individual to get fair salary is to start their own business and do consulting. Or do shady stuff like over-employment!

That was official work, very senior manager pulled me out of project, and temporarily assigned me to different division. Not my fault paper work and finances between divisions never got sorted out, I did not even had access to that stuff!

[tikhonj]

That is, companies are a meritocracy as long as "merit" means "making your bosses happy".

[intellectronica]

Actually the author was very careful to qualify their advice as applying to work at high growth companies, rather than corporations or very early state startups, where this approach is much less likely to be effective.

Also, the example you describe, which I'm sure has left a strong impression on you, doesn't contradict the advice on offer. Again, the author explains what kind of dirty work they are referring to - problems that have enough reputation to make it obvious to everyone that solving them is extremely valuable.

[bluedino]

Bad management/company, not bad 'hard work'

[ClumsyPilot]

thats like 69% of all companies

[frobozz]

Am I reading this right? You worked double time for months, and in that time you neglected your own job, without it being authorised by your line manager?

All so that a manager in a different department wouldn't look bad for losing an entire team in one go?

That's the lesson. Don't do that. Pick up extra work if you want to, but always do your own job first.

[stingraycharles]

I don’t read it the same way; I read that he got reassigned, as he was “dead weight” to his manager.

Still bad, but probably means that all this was inevitable, and his manager already made up their mind before the project even started.

[willio58]

Appearances are soo important in jobs, much more than quality of work. This is why fully remote jobs are so great, people are on a more even playing ground.

[agumonkey]

I'm trying to find books about strategics and tactics used in work groups.

[nus07]

Sounds like -yet another day at Amazon :)