Nah in a lot of cases the guy doing the bare minimum also makes more than you.
He’s a project manager!
Do project managers make decent money? In my field I’ve always been told developers make significantly more.
I would make more as project manager, but I don’t want to be on the phone and write mails with clients all day
I would rather set myself on fire than to look at budgets, billable rates, timesheets, or talk to people.
I’m hardore technically aligned, and far enough along in my career (and at a good enough company) that I can turn down opportunities to PM.
Look at this fat cat who can turn down opportunities over here!
He’s such a dick
May I ask what your field is? I am in software development.
looks around barley, I think? 🤷
Ha. Ha. Ha. Lol, sort of
Industrial automation
When I was in college I learned I liked the idea of coding a lot more than I liked coding. Now I know just enough C++ to be able to translate dev speak into corporates speak and back, can claim to be an engineer, and get to talk to stupid people, who think they are smart, who think that I’m really smart, and I spend more of my day on social media. I had one job that in the six months I was there I think I actually did MAYBE 40 hours of work. If it wasn’t for “business conditions related to COVID-19” I’d probably still work there, though I’m making more, and working somewhat more, now.
developers SHOULD make more, but in my experience they don’t. I suspect part of this is because the people that make the salary decisions frequently talk to the PM so they know he’s valuable, but the devs even if he has talked to them he likley doesn’t have a relationship with them, and sees them primarily as a number of spreadsheet that can be replaced with less expensive developing nation devlopers anytime the stock price goes down (or in my case went up but they thought it was going to go down, so they went ahead and laid off 1,000 devs in the States anyway, promising to hire 3,000 Indian devs in their place, and then not actually doing that even, which made the stock price go up again)
Every time I’ve been promoted I’ve made more money and done less work. At this rate I’ll be 9-5 on the golf course in a few years making $500k/yr.
Kidding. Golf blows.
Whoa there friend, let’s not disparage the game just because of its association with capitalist pigs and blowhards.
Can I disparage it for it’s ecological impact?
Fair
I like mini golf. Good use of land competitively. If CEOs met in the mini golf course I think the world would be in a better place.
More interesting too
Just misses riding the cart
Golf cart racing track! Adjacent to the mini golf
Free golf for everyone!
The real payment is all the traumas we got along the overtimes
Hah! You got overtime? I just got trama and toxic managers.
In a better spot now, though
At my previous job they had a special term for unpaid overtime: “Professional time”
So glad I’m no longer working there.
“Professional time” sounds like a euphemism for wanking off on the clock.
Unpaid overtime probably (which would be a hard no from me)
We got straight banked time off in-lieu. It was bullshit.
True, but better than the places that expect it for nothing in return
Yeah, that’s a crock. My first corporates job did that to us, and then never approved the paid vacation requests, let-a-lone the banked time-off we were promised for being such good cubicle slaves working above and beyond, and it is all legal because “exempt salary employee”
Hah, cubicle. Not to shit on you, but that would have been much preferable to my situation. Seasonal environmental field work - 300ish hrs a month from May to November
I get paid way more than my coworkers, and even my supervisor, because when I got hired I immediately made a bunch of random tools in google sheets that only I know how to maintain, and spread them around until everyone was using them. Before long, I was essential to my department, and praised for going “above and beyond” even though I was mostly just dicking around making the tools rather than doing my actual job.
I have 0 coding experience, so the tools are absolutely horrendous behind the scenes, but that just means that they break pretty often, and people are reminded that only I know how to fix them. So, when I went looking around on LinkedIn for other offers after a few years, I eventually got one that was paying way more since it was in a major metro area, and I took it back to my manager to negotiate a 50% raise and a full-remote designation that virtually nobody else in my office is given.
You don’t get ahead by working hard, and you don’t get ahead by working smart to benefit the company, you get ahead by working smart to benefit yourself. Think about it this way - if you’re at the store to buy bananas, and you see that they’re selling bananas for $0.05 ea, you’ll likely think “Wow, that’s a great deal!” and buy a bunch of those bananas at the $0.05 price. You’re not going to pay them the price you think would be fair for a banana, you’re going to take advantage of the price you’re allowed to pay so that you can save money. Your employer sees you - working for less than you’re worth - as a $0.05 banana. You’re nothing more than a cheap commodity they were lucky to snag on sale.
Making yourself indispensable is a great way to never get promoted.
I turned down the promotion they offered me. It was significantly more work, required me to come back to the office, and only offered a 10% pay raise. It doesn’t matter where your “standing” in the company is - if you’re indispensable, you can fight for good pay even outside of managerial roles.
As long as you can get constant raises who cares about a promotion? If you got your job nailed down so much you only need to work like 5 hours a week and from home while getting raises I would turn down any promotion.
Promotion are almost always a trap. If you want a better job change companies!
It looks good on your resume when you apply for the next company, and that’s how you keep getting raises in today’s business environment.
It’s one good thing to have on a resume, sure, but another is the skillset itself. For example, I work with a highly specialized software, so I frequently get messaged with interview offers on LinkedIn because I show up every time employers search for that specific software.
You don’t get ahead by working hard, and you don’t get ahead by working smart to benefit the company, you get ahead by working smart to benefit yourself.
There is a bit too much “my situation fits all” here. Startup vs big corp, private vs government, thoughtful management vs not, etc. Other people will also recognize this mentality. Can’t say “eat the rich” because they only do what’s good for them, then do the same (yes, that’s extreme).
You should benefit the company, and they should benefit you. I take your point to mean this equation should be balanced (which unfortunately it usually isn’t), vs the specific words above.
That’s a fair point. You’re correct that my point is that the equation should be balanced, but you’re understating the reality with the statement “unfortunately it usually isn’t.”
I put in 4 hours of work last week, though my employer thinks I put in 40. In those 4 hours of work I started and finished a project for the company that will earn over $100k in gross profit. It ended up being almost exactly 1.5x my yearly salary. Just by putting in the absolute minimum effort I’m already earning my company more in a week than they pay me in a year. And I don’t even work for a large company. I’d imagine corporate giants have an even greater divide.
I’m not responsible for worrying about whether I benefit the company; most companies have gotten so good at maximizing profits while minimizing costs that even the most layabout worker earns them significantly more money than they cost to employ. My only thought is about how I can do as little as possible while still ensuring management continues to think I’m being productive.
Bro, I’m salaried and only really need to work six hours a day. So that’s exactly what I do. My coworkers put in 12-14 hours a day six days a week… We get the same paycheck.
Granted, I’m consistently rated at the bottom of my department by my supervisors, but I’m also the most highly requested employee by our customers. Literally no one else gets requested by name and I have to triage projects.
See I’m salary but I’m forced to put in 8 hrs a day. Even if I have no work to do. It sucks.
That’s horrible. What’s the point of salary if you have an hourly requirement? That sounds like fake hourly.
The point of Salary is so they don’t have to pay for overtime. The slave labor is the purpose, forcing people to work more than 8 is just a nice little cherry on top ☺️.
Having a one way street that can only work for them seems like some serious bullshit. I’m glad we don’t track our time where I work. If I had mandatory hours I’d insist on hourly rates.
Boom shakalaka. He shoots he scores.
This is the answer. I worked for a company before the law changed where “managers have to work 60 hours a week”. You know why? Because those last 20 hours made them half of what they would have had to pay someone else. Somehow people fell for it though. “It’s a guaranteed paycheck if I git sick. It’ll work out, won’t it?”
Nope.
It ain’t for you boo boo.
Why do you think there is so much disparity between your bosses and your clients?
I show up late and leave early and don’t participate in the “work culture” stuff, this makes my employer upset.
I get requested because I’m the best at my job and the customers talk to each other. I’ve had clients from other employees ask to switch to me but that’s not allowed by policy. The best I can do is look at the work they’re receiving and give feedback.
Sounds like shitty management.
It’s crabs in a bucket and they’re mad I won’t get in the water. I’m paid well and they mostly leave me alone. They’ve only once fucked up my career once by bad-mouthing me to a department I tried to transfer to in order to learn a new skill.
Crabs in a bucket makes sense for the staff, but not the management. Management should be judging with outputs in mind.
I’m consistently rated at the bottom of my department by my supervisors
Unless you miss out on raises or promotions because of this or lose your job, this is meaningless. It’s “this will go on your permanent record” but for adults. This is coming from somebody who is pretty proudly the quiet worker who stays around the middle of the pack and does just enough to keep things slightly better than just maintained, so both coworkers and bosses can objectively see that I’m neither making things worse nor just keeping things coasting. And I got a promotion last year, so I guess it’s the right strategy (here, anyway) lol.
Yep, they’re only middle management as far as the company is concerned I’m still competitive for corporate level promotions and my “bad” reputation will stay back in my current office. I’m gunning for a promotion next summer, so hopefully these dingbats will be in my rearview mirror next year.
Good luck and Godspeed! Write down every recent and upcoming success so you can cite objective improvements in your interviews/meetings. Customer feedback will help too. If you have any big clients who can vouch for you personally being the reason that your company kept their business, even better. The only risk there is that they may decide that you’re too valuable in your current role, but you can get ahead of that by pitching that you’ll be able to apply your success to bigger wins in a higher role and guide others to learn how to do what you’ve done. Worst case scenario, you don’t get that promotion but you still have it all compiled for interviews elsewhere. If you want to be at the level of that promotion, you should chase it whether it’s within the company or without! You got this!
do you have any other advice? they got us going back to the mines soon with no additional pay, no parking, and no bus passes. so I’m looking to adjust accordingly
Honestly, if you have time and are risk tolerant, going to flight school is a great career at the moment. You take on $200k in debt though.
“Okay but the guy who goes the extra mile will get a promotion and do better in the long run.” —a guy who has always gone the extra mile, never gotten a promotion and is doing exactly the same as everyone else
I got a new job last year. It was a massive pay cut. 1/3 of what i was making. Skip to the end for a TL/DR.
I hit the ceiling hard at the old job and people i had never worked with or worked with only a handful of times had basically all said i was uncomfortable to work with because of my pace. I’m a walk and talk guy and if i was hired for a job (I’m a long term contact worker) I was usually hired because someone else had started a project and here i am. I was a fuckin one man wrecking crew. I work amazingly well with just about everyone because i find their strengths and weaknesses and immediately (and usually subtly) just start with the weakness, get the ball rolling and by the time there’s momentum they are back in their comfort zone. Aim them and let em go. I work with management, i work with operators and I’ve worked with janitorial staff to solve really shitty problems quickly and mostly painlessly. Apparently that means I’m doing jobs other people should be doing (eg currently and actively employed) which rubs them the wrong way. I’m contact, dgaf. That’s a wall of text bitches.
TL/DR i know it’s easy to say money isn’t everything but it can definitely be a trap that promotes some bad/unsustainable life choices. Recognize its unsustainable and have a plan.
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I don’t go the extra mile for the company. I do it to help make things easier for my coworkers and the people who depend on us in the hope that I can make life a little less shitty for everyone.
I do a little extra because I know my other coworkers fuckin’ won’t. I tell my new hires that you’re not working for the other shift but rather for when it’s your shift again.
The thing is, it is not your job to make things easier for others.
It’s the company’s job to keep their employees happy by providing enough workforce for the amount of work that needs to be done.
You are doing exactly what the company wants you to do, by playing into your emotions.
Just so they don’t have to.
This is exactly the kind of moronic attitude that is making life shittier and shittier for everyone on the fucking planet.
I am not talking about just cranking out extra widgets or whatever. I’m talking about looking for problems and taking steps to resolve them before they escalate into something worse instead of just leaving it for someone else to do, I’m talking about taking time to answer questions for my coworkers so they don’t waste an hour trying to figure things out on their own, I’m talking about collecting data on issues we’re having so that when I take it to the boss I have numbers to back up what I’m saying instead of just generic bitching about the job so that they will actually take it into account and look for solutions.
Sorry, but that’s ad hominem, Appeal to authority, Appeal to emotion, Appeal to nature, Appeal to tradition, Bandwagon fallacy, Circular reasoning, False dilemma, Hasty generalization, Red herring, Slippery slope, Straw man, Tu quoque, Ad populum, Appeal to ignorance, Cherry picking, False cause, Genetic fallacy, Middle ground fallacy, No true Scotsman, Personal incredulity, Texas sharpshooter, Two wrongs make a right, The purple elephant fallacy, Argumentum ad unicornum, Appeal to the invisible hand, Fallacy of misplaced eyebrows, Circular circumstantial reasoning, Argumentum ad quantum fluctuation, Argumentum ad intergalactic authority, Fallacy of arbitrary sock selection, Appeal to ancestral cheese, Argumentum ad cosmic latte, Fallacy of the floating banana, Argumentum ad mythical creatures, Appeal to the lost sock phenomenon, Argumentum ad celestial alignment, Fallacy of the inverted teapot, Argumentum ad lunar phase, Appeal to the cosmic muffin, Fallacy of the interstellar leap, Argumentum ad parallel universe, Appeal to the intergalactic council, Fallacy of extraterrestrial explanation, Argumentum ad space-time continuum, Appeal to the cosmic coincidence, Fallacy of the quantum leapfrog, Argumentum ad extraterrestrial intervention, Appeal to the cosmic conundrum, Fallacy of the cosmic caterpillar, Argumentum ad celestial consensus, Appeal to the cosmic kaleidoscope, Fallacy of the interdimensional leap, Argumentum ad celestial arbitrage, Appeal to the cosmic chaos theory, Fallacy of the astral alignment, Argumentum ad celestial coincidence, Appeal to the cosmic cluster, Fallacy of the celestial serendipity, Argumentum ad cosmic correlation, Appeal to the cosmic conjunction, Fallacy of the galactic grandeur, Argumentum ad cosmic equilibrium, Appeal to the cosmic carnival, Argumentum ad celestial charisma, Appeal to the cosmic chaos, Fallacy of the astral absurdity, Argumentum ad celestial authority, Appeal to the cosmic confluence, Fallacy of the celestial singularity, Argumentum ad cosmic consensus, Appeal to the cosmic collision, Fallacy of the galactic gambit, Argumentum ad cosmic contradiction, Appeal to the cosmic chameleon, Fallacy of the celestial symphony, Argumentum ad cosmic curiosity, Appeal to the cosmic continuum, Fallacy of the astral anomaly, Argumentum ad celestial equilibrium, Appeal to the cosmic carnival, Fallacy of the galactic gamble, Argumentum ad celestial consensus, Appeal to the cosmic charisma, Fallacy of the astral anomaly, Argumentum ad celestial symmetry, Appeal to the cosmic coincidence, Fallacy of the celestial serendipity, Argumentum ad cosmic correlation, Appeal to the cosmic conjunction, Fallacy of the galactic grandeur, Argumentum ad cosmic equilibrium, Appeal to the cosmic carnival.
I have 40 hours a week at work.
I spend them trying to do a good job.
I have no fucking clue what people mean when they say they go the extra mile.
Sometimes it’s as small as clean up your work area for the next guy. That’s seen as the extra mile for lazy people.
I think most people would consider things like, working over 40 hours when you are salaried, routinely doing someone else’s job in addition to yours (like fixing their mistakes TOO much), skipping your lunch breaks to work.
Don’t get me wrong, doing those things SOMETIMES is ok. It’s when it becomes expected or ongoing that it’s a problem. Because no company is ever going to say “You are generating more profit for us at your own expense, slow down.”
Eh, going the extra mile is how I went from customer service agent to senior server engineer in 5 years (with the same company).
There’s always a balance between the two, but the most important thing is knowing how to say no without sounding like you’re saying no.
It is entirely job dependent. I have been in jobs where it was just a grind and going the extra mile simply put a smile on my boss’s face. In jobs like these the best thing you can do is carve out as many hours as possible during the work week to build new skills or apply to other jobs. I’ve also been in jobs where going the extra mile directly contributed meaningful skills to my resume/portfolio and helped me get a new job with way better pay.
Eh going the extra mile is how I got so burned out I had to quit a job for the sake of my physical and mental health.
Did I get promoted? Hell no. Never did. The boss’s wife sure did though.
Yes I’m aware you said balance but I just had to share why I’m currently trying not to care anymore. Note I said trying, I’m really terrible at not giving everything to every project I’m in.
My career has also gone very well in this time period by slacking on my previous job and using the extra time to get my current job. Per minute spent, I think it’s more cost effective to look for a new job. Companies hate loyalty now.
I don’t even sugar coat the “no” anymore. When the next company calls, all they’re going to share is how long I worked there.
Here’s a Venn Diagram:
(me) [alienation] (my labor)
but the most important thing is knowing how to say no without sounding like you’re saying no.
Yeah it’s a lot about how to market yourself to your higher ups. An employee is a commodity and selling commodites is more about marketing than the actual quality of the product. The biggest victims of that system are the introvert ones who do six extra miles but don’t get any recognition
Tell me about it, my inability to recognize my own achievements is almost pathological. Work extra to get a difficult but interesting project out on time then deflect any praise provided after is a sure fire way to never get noticed.
I’ve been in this game for a good bit now and while I’ve seen a bunch of go getters put in ridiculous hours and slave away and actually get promoted, I have seen faaaaaaar more just get promoted for being in the right place at the right time or, most times, being the child, spouse, in-law, or friend of someone high up in the company. In my experience your social standing or just plain luck accounts for about 90% of it. The other 10% isn’t the work you do, it’s the work they think you do.
that’s capitalist bullshit
OK, buddy.
the most important thing is knowing how to say no without sounding like you’re saying no.
The best part is that once you have proven expertise and an impressive resume, you don’t even have to sound like you’re saying no anymore. After being a lackey for a long time, it feels wrong to say no because it makes you feel like an asshole, but the reality is that there’s only so much time; there are only so many hours in a day, and you have only so many days left in this world, and you should expect to actually enjoy some amount of those remaining days. Plus you start to realize that your value far exceeds your compensation, otherwise a company whose sole existence is for the purpose of profit would be incapable of existing since there is no profit if the labor is paid what it is objectively worth. So you just pick your battles and tell people to fuck off when they overstep. It costs money to hire and train a replacement, so unless you’re already highly compensated, you have the power to say no to egregious asks and you really should, or you set precedent that you’ll say yes to that type of shit and they will continue pushing until they find the line where you finally say no. There is risk that they’ll fire you and figure out later that it takes more than one new hire to do what you were already doing without considering the scope creep, but with a good resume and a healthy savings I enjoy playing chicken with a bad boss.
I’ve been with my current company for almost 3 years and I’ve only had to say no a couple of times. They’re far from perfect, but they’re good enough that I actually don’t like to say no when I have to here. They pretty much always have reasonable asks. I’m 35 but I could actually see myself staying here until retirement unless they drastically change. I know for a fact that I could go elsewhere for similar pay and treatment pretty easily (because I’ve interviewed and received offers but turned them down because the pain of change wasn’t worth something lateral), so I’m ready if they do pivot to fuck this environment up but I’d really rather stay.
A lot of us “do the bare minimum” do the bare minimum because of all of the time in the past we spent going the extra mile only to be rewarded with ever greater expectations for identical compensation and opportunity.
They made us this way.
No sympathy for them. No mercy!
I go the extra mile. It’s not for pay. It’s because I’m stuck at work for 8 hours anyways and I’d rather work than pretend to work.
Yeah I put in enough work to be proud of myself and not bored. I try to focus on skills and projects that are marketable
Some people are passionate about always doing the best they can, and they get a great deal of satisfaction from it. I love being excellent at what I do.
I don’t have a wife or kids. My jobs are a huge part of my identity. Heck - my night job teaching is something I do because I want to do it, not for the little bit of extra money.
But I also know that I’m weird. Most people just want to do their job and go home to their families, and that’s great. They’re doing the job, so they should be compensated every bit as much as the people like me who are devoted to their work.
Nah, I get it. I’m much the same way - I don’t do things half assed - just not made that way.
That said, I’m also not going to eat the corporate brainwashing gruel. The higher up you go the more you see people just flat accept stupid corporate decisions as ‘enlightened’ and they heavily adopt the corporate lexicon. Who needs a critical eye when you fit in?
Fuck that noise.
While I realize there are rules, structures, and culture in place. They shouldn’t hinder people. IDGAF about how someone does something as long as the product is technically sound, reads like Tolstoy, and was efficiently created.
I work a shit ton of OT, but I get paid 1.5x or 2x based on circumstances for that extra time
I deliver the same quality of work on ST and OT—my best, but I would never work unpaid OT (e.g. some of my salaried engineers have been living at the job during our system upgrades) or do things well beyond the scope of my job.
Fuck that
I inderstand fully. I used ti go through the same. At the same time I noticed a big difference when i got married. And a huge one when i had kids. Having a child and being responsible for it is a life changing situation. I tell my self that i became an adult not when i turned 18 but when i became a parent. When this happened to me, my perspective about work stoped revolving about being the best, and turbed to be just and help others be better. That made me soon to realize that those 2 cannot get always together.
Tldr: work 2 live > live 2 work
If you see me going the extra mile, it’s probably the side-effects of me using the company’s resources to learn and do crazy experiments for my own gain.
And neither gets enough to cover inflation.
Going the extra mile is a good way to never get promoted because you are too valuable in your current position.
It depends on the company and how they treat your job, but mostly as a worker you are there to fulfill a company’s requirement. Unless there’s a position or incentive to go that extra mile, don’t, most companies will never see it. Even if you want to do the extra work for yourself, I’d recommend to find a way to do it as a hobby if it’s unrewarded, separate from work.
What they will see is the absence in case they do need it, and then they will be required to fulfill it, although they may not want to focus on better and more empowered workers with higher expectations and may instead just focus on quantity over quality by hiring more people to fill it. Even worse, don’t be the guy who makes his (and other’s) jobs obsolete to scummy bosses.
Open your eyes, you aren’t in school, you aren’t getting rewarded for better grades at work unless they make it part of the business and your bosses stick to it and not just plugging in friends, buddies, and associates.
My rule at work has always been based around the bears and hikers analogy. You dont have to be the best at what you do. Just dont be the worst.
Also some jobs afford opportunities for non-conventional self-education. If you can learn useful personal or professional skills while at working, do it, and under the guise of work.
