I think it may be your sincere ambivalence that makes your article so great.
Also, unfortunately, I can assure you that your astute perception is exactly how (some parts of) the world works, especially at senior executive levels. There are complex, interlocking systems of “make me look good - take down that guy - do what’s good for us, not what’s good for the company” that can make this mentality legitimately powerful. At the C-level, correct but slightly misphrased statements can create a fired-in-90-days failure (literally the difference between “but” and “yes, and”). It’s _insane_.
There's an alternate reading of The Prince as a pro-democratic piece - throughout the entire work, Machiavelli reminds the titular Prince that the strongest cities, in terms of power, were those that were governed democratically, where all men of the city felt that they were defending, not just a prince, but an institution they were a part of. Almost all of his infamous pieces of advice are prefaced with "this is the second best answer, and only if you absolutely must hold on to as much personal power as you can."
This is my preferred reading as well - the dude is pro-democracy _specifically because_ he knows what the right move is for a king, and it sucks for everyone else.
He wrote the book as much as a warning as as a reason for the prince to invite him back to Florence.
While there are kernels of uncomfortable truth in the article, I think there's at least equal parts begging the question.
"The kinds of opportunists who are attracted solely to wealth and status have no principles at all beyond accumulation of these two objects." Well, yes, by definition, but it's not clear that the definition is useful. Iff those people exist, that's how they'll act is used to not-so-subtly suggest that these people actually exist and they're taking "your" promotion unless you defend.
"I can do anything I want for three years and it won't show up in the metrics!" No, you can do anything you want and it won't show up in the SEC/Wall Street reported metrics, but you better believe Amazon has faster-acting internal metrics than that.
'"the codebase is such a mess this team can't ship anything until we spend three months refactoring" is really bad delivery. An opportunist would say "we need to work toward paying off the technical debt"' A pragmatist or realist would also say the same thing rather than demand an embargo on shipping features for three-months for what might be seen as (and might be) navel-gazing.
It's an enjoyable read, but in a similar vein as Harry Potter is an enjoyable read. Maybe it will provoke some thinking that's applicable to your work life, but it's more entertaining than educational, IMO.
> No, you can do anything you want and it won't show up in the SEC/Wall Street reported metrics, but you better believe Amazon has faster-acting internal metrics than that.
How would amazon metrics be faster? The main point is that a lot of large/systemic changes ("pay off tech debt") can take a long time to show up in any metric, giving you cover to get promoted as people don't think of timestamped metrics as time-delayed as they actually are.
Let's say you have internal metrics around feature cycle time.
If that number is getting ugly, you might be able to get some tech debt projects going. If you spend 3 months just on tech debt, ship 0 features, and then still have just as bad a feature cycle time in the 3 months after that as in the 3 months before... that can get noticed. And it's not gonna look great.
Whether or not your org does notice that or not is a question about the sort of company you're working for. The original article here assumes you're working at a fairly inefficient and unmotivated one.
The 3 years he quotes is from his perspective, which is from the view of "what company-spanning initiatives are we going to tackle" or "what teams and projects do we need to bootstrap or expand on?". It takes years for these things to get done and have the desired impact on the bottom line, but within those years are individuals and teams growing their respective businesses. Those businesses are absolutely monitored yearly/quarterly/weekly at some level of abstraction in the company.
How long it takes for work to have impact depends greatly on the scope of that work and the level of abstraction you're viewing the work at.
Part of the problem here is the place in the blog ascribes value to where you are rather than what you did. If nobody is asking how you influenced the current state of being but is instead just evaluating the person presiding over current success, then the behavior described is unsurprising.
> It's an enjoyable read, but in a similar vein as Harry Potter is an enjoyable read. Maybe it will provoke some thinking that's applicable to your work life, but it's more entertaining than educational, IMO.
That's the unfortunate reality with a lot of Substack type newsletters.
The real world truth is often so boring and simple that it can be summarized in a short blog post. Want to get promoted? Work on important projects for the company, build rapport and relationships in the company, build a reputation for getting things done on time with high quality and low drama. You'll either get promoted, or build a foundation upon which you can pivot into a promotion at another company.
That's boring to read, though, so much pop-business advice turns into ego-stroking stories about how the reader is morally superior to all of the other unprincipled ladder-climbers around them. There's a large appetite for stories about how the world is unfair, and there are many writers happy to deliver those stories.
I'm part of a mentorship program for junior developers. These kinds of articles have been detrimental to a lot of impressionable young people who are growing up convinced that the world is thoroughly corrupt and therefore the only way to win is to become corrupt yourself. In reality, if anyone finds themselves at a company where people are promoted based on lies, nepotism, and general corruption then you don't want to get promoted there anyway. Get out while you can, because any company that rewards people who play games over people who deliver results is doomed to go downhill. In the real world, the good companies really do identify and promote those who consistently deliver results.
There are tech or tech-adjacent companies with tens of thousands of employees that have around for decades, when not 100+ years, who are corrupted in more than one meaning of the world. And they pay decently well, when not top 10%. I may have worked in one of those.
> Work on important projects for the company, build rapport and relationships in the company, build a reputation for getting things done on time with high quality and low drama.
This will not get you promoted beyond the middle rungs.
There's not a lot of room in the upper rungs. The audience of people trying to nab that promotion from VP to SVP at $FORTUNE500 is an awful small audience to write for.
These pithy, cynical takes are devoid of any real claims or suggestions. What are you actually proposing as a way to the top rung? Gaming the system and being cutthroat?
I am not proposing anything. I am just observing what happens empirically. Doing these things tends to get people soft influence but no formal authority. It's simply what is.
Agreed. Being reliable and getting things done is not memorable. Someone who is actively getting in people's faces, pushing along agendas, meeting with others, and on the whole being "visible" as projects move along is more likely to be associated with getting things done than someone who quietly gets work done and is liked by everyone but does not make a big ado about it.
People get promoted not for what they do, but what they appear to do.
> Want to get promoted? Work on important projects for the company, build rapport and relationships in the company, build a reputation for getting things done on time with high quality and low drama. You'll either get promoted, or build a foundation upon which you can pivot into a promotion at another company.
Did you answer the question posed in the article: Which of the top leaders in your company get there by doing this? The only common theme seems to be "build rapport and relationships in the company".
"too damn well-made for its own good" and said that it confused audiences and critics.
~~~
Similarly, "How to get promoted" may be confusing. But you may also use these "tips" to identify [and fire] employees which try to abuse your corporate promotion system.
A lot of times people yearn for promotion only because their peers are promoted. At least that's what I saw in Uber. When Uber had only a handful of senior/staff engineers, few people were vocal about promotion. But when Uber suddenly promoted a large number of people, everyone was screaming for a promotion. In contrast, few engineers in Netflix complained about titles for all ICs had the same title - this may be selection bias, though.
That is to be expected, similar to the way open discussion of salaries puts upwards pressure on salaries. When Bob sees Alice get promoted, he asks himself why. Maybe it's obvious that Alice is a better employee, but not by so much that Bob feels it's out of his reach. So he works harder and then asks his boss if now wouldn't be a good time for that promotion for him too.
Or maybe it's not obvious why Alice got promoted and Bob didn't, so Bob asks his manager. Hopefully the manager can explain the reasoning in a way that Bob can understand, and Bob can get to work to level-up or can accept that he's just not as good as Alice. (If the manager can't come up with a good reason...well...that's a problem. For the manager.)
If no one's getting promoted, then there's not much point in asking for a promotion. May as well keep your eye on jobs at other companies if you'd like to get ahead. Sometimes companies try to keep the promotions quiet, in an apparent effort to suppress the masses clamoring for a promotion. I suppose it works, as much as suppressing salary discussion works. ("Here's your annual raise this year, you did a _great_ job, this 3% shows that, almost _no one_ gets 3%, this is super high. Great job, Bob! Oh, and don't worry about that promotion, it's super rare to get promoted within your first x years at the company, it'll come...")
Thank you, came to say something similar. This is basically Machiavellian corporate politics, by someone clearly bitter at the way the system works.
The bit I found useful in there is the idea that the people who don't care about quality still might care about promotion - for some people it's just a job, and for others skipping on quality is a way to be seen to produce a lot of quantity. It's easy to see how 1000 lines per day is probably going to get you promoted in a hurry, regardless of whether there are twice as many bugs in that code than the average of the code base and twice as much code as there needs to be. Those multipliers make a massive difference in the long run, but are probably too small to detect in individual commits.
> "I can do anything I want for three years and it won't show up in the metrics!" No, you can do anything you want and it won't show up in the SEC/Wall Street reported metrics, but you better believe Amazon has faster-acting internal metrics than that.
I can't speak for Amazon, but what he said is true in my company. We have metrics, but a 3 year horizon sounds right. Rarely do bad endeavors get killed quicker than that.
There is a lot of truth here but it's not universally true, it depends on where you work and who you work for.
Two teams in the same building, same dept. can be night and day different.
The longer people hang around, the less of this is possible.
I saw a lot of this at a fast growing company that got 'very huge' and then failed, partly due to this reason, I have so little respect for CEO's that promote hustlers.
One thing that I wish was more obvious to me when I was starting my career on how to get promoted - work for a growing org in a growing company. If your company and org are stagnant or shrinking - there is likely a cap on how many people at certain levels they will support. And even if not, promotions will be slow due to budget.
This is gold. Beyond the second level (or third level if they're thin levels) of SWE/IC, promotions are at least as much about there being whitespace that needs filled as they are about your individual trajectory/ability.
If the entire pie is expanding at a breakneck, nearly unsustainable pace, there's so much whitespace that modest performers can get quick promotions. If the entire pie is static, even strong performers will be promoted far more slowly.
Because the first few promotions are (mostly) about the individual ability/capability, it can be tempting to assume that mid-career and late-career promotions are "more of the same". They're not.
It's all about who is the favorite. I had a tech lead who didn't know what SCCM was even though we supported a thick-client that was installed using SCCM. He had numerous other deficiencies in things like system design and wanting/trying to avoid implementing security fixes to bring us inline with standards. But he knew how to talk to management and the business to make them like him. He was very much a 'yes man'. Unfortunately I speak my mind, so I am just intermediate.
Nope. He didn't understand the business either, he just agreed with everything they and management said.
I had a story with incorrect requirements where the business and the tech lead would not listen to me, even when I explained it in multiple ways. It wasn't until I spent 3 weeks building it and had a consultant raise my same concern that they realized their mistakes. In my opinion it came down to them being classist assholes - don't listen to a midlevel dev, only the highly paid consultant.
I'm actually not that well versed in the nitty gritty. I tend to be more of a big picture and concepts guy. I had at least some respect from other tech leads on that project, just not my own. Perhaps my tech lead felt threatened or just enjoyed talking down to me and talking shit about me. I had two other tech leads find out that I was only a midlevel dev and they both said that wasn't right and I should have been a senior (technically the role I was filling was supposed to be for seniors).
I think its the best way to get a meaningful raise. Many jobs will promote you but still can't go more than 10% of your current base, max. While switching jobs you can net a lot more than that.
It's 7% at my company. Not even worth it since they expect a 15% increase in hours and increase your responsibilities. Hourly, it's actually a pay cut, even if the yearly comp goes up.
There is a flip side to this. As employees see this happen, they get jaded and stay in their position, then work less and less until they effectively get an hourly rate promotion.
I feel it gets harder at higher levels where companies prefer to promote internally and/or want previous experience at that level (ie: lead a cross-functional project with 20+ engineers, etc.).
The job I want is one that is often filled internally.
For years I'd take a lesser title and then work my way into that position, but any time that doesn't happen, you're stuck not being where you want to be.
When they don't fill that position internally, the first question is, "why are none of their people up to the task? What sort of dysfunction will I be walking into at this place?"
It's sort of a weird, sideways version of "I wouldn't want join any club that would have me as a member."
There might be another side on this. There might be a decent manager who knows that the current employees don't have the skills to do the job. Being 5-10 years in the company does not necessarily mean you are a good leader or manager to be promoted and become team lead, VP of engineering or CTO. Companies do that same mistake all the time.
This true; at least in the US; where I am - in my experience. If you are at Sr. Manager or Director level (leading group of 10+ HR reporting to you or cross functional team lead), it gets increasingly difficult to change jobs frequently.
Yes, it works well at the lower levels, but this strategy falls apart if you want to work your way into the upper levels of an established company. These companies want someone who has proven that they can deliver results within the company, understands how the company operates, has built enough relationships within the company to have sufficient influence, and isn't going to establish a team and then leave for another job in a few years.
Haha, love this. There's a lot of truth in there for sure. I think some people definitely get promoted like that, while some others legitimately do so by being really good.
For me, the standing part though which I have observed is that: "An organization cannot commit suicide." In that sense, most companies have an accretion problem.
And what people don't realize is, that's true of your manager, their manager, and up all the way.
It would take someone external to put the breaks, which only happens if the company starts to do bad, then the shareholders expect change, and so a garbage collection takes place, and accretion starts again.
This is probably the part I disagree with the most. Feigning sincerity is pretty easy, I think. The trick is to believe what you’re saying, while you’re saying it, but no longer than that.
The answer to everything is “yes”- if you mean it you follow up. If you don’t mean it, something more important will mysteriously present itself.
Ooph, and here I was hoping it was going to be something that I've lately found: "Get under the right manager and manager's manager." But now I see it's a bit more cynical and ... well ... real. :(
> So your job isn't to make good decisions to improve company metrics. It's to look good. That means you must understand basic tenets of human nature and learn to manipulate them.
This feels like the real tl;dr. Anyone who has worked at multiple dysfunctional companies will probably know this though. Applies for IC and management tracks AFAICT.
> The work will invent itself. Your job isn't the work— it's to grow headcount and make it appear well-managed. That latter part is nearly entirely performative.
Ugh. Kill me, man, I just got back from my two week vacation. I formulated this recently as I started being quite cynical with a peer over the phone - and we just realized the fact we can't figure out what the hell management is doing is exactly their goal. And then it kinda clicked once you realized they were acting in bad faith as nothing made sense with good faith intentions. Growth for sake of getting large promotions. In the sense of a startup - you can have some title but what matters is how many people are under you. So, they are trying to explode the amount so that when they do leave - they will get a larger compensation package at the next place because they can say they managed X people.
Lol I was on the floor with this one. It's funny because it's true. My super went from being my super to one level above skip, while I was trying so hard to get a measly raise/promotion after 4 years of dedicated work. It was always "This year, we are going to work on getting you ready to operate at the next level."
Want to get a promotion, just add the number of people you manage.
> If I am at my limits for direct reports, I can start having people report to one of my reports, and my status grows. Just like multi level marketing.
Absolutely it also makes it way easier to argue that you should get a promotion when you are a manager of managers. Inflating the title's of the people under you is the quickest way to get your own title boosted.
This kills me. I used to work at a fast-growing startup where recruiting could never keep up with headcount, but most projects never shipped. Managers shuffled around, accumulating direct reports, then ascended to higher levels of managing and eventually jumped organizations.
Ironically most people didn't want to be managers. Unless you made it to the Director level the salary raises were dwarfed by the stock grants. It was way more stress and visibility to play the game than to float around on nebulously defined projects and spend 4 years vesting
Didn't have time to read the article yet. But here's my quick thought about the topic. Assuming you're a valued employee (not necessarily top 10%, just good enough that the company wouldn't want to lose you) the best way to get promoted is to optimize for it. That means not being shy about it and raising it during 1:1 with your manager on a regular basis. Then if your manager is not helping you getting the promotion or if they cannot come up with a reasonable plan, immediately start looking for a new team/job. Don't threat to leave but let them understand you're a flight risk. If it doesn't happen the right way then it'd happen once you have an offer. Then you can chose. But never tell your employer you have an external offer if you're not OK accepting it if needed.
Then how do you know you're not offering the exact same messaging that the author wrote?
Can't imagine the conceit required to see the headline and think you don't have time to read the article but you do have time to write up a full comment because clearly YOUR opinion MUST be more valuable and insightful than whatever was posted.
This is so depressing and cynical. And fairly accurate in a lot of cases.
The trick, if you don't want to debase yourself, is to find a manager who is good at all of these things, but is also good at passing credit down and blocking blame going up.
When things go well they will take credit for their great management and then highlight the IC who was responsible. When things go sideways, they will take the blame without naming names and then propose a 2 quarter solution to fix it.
Ah, the Loyalty Model. You protect me and do good work, and when sh*t goes sideways, we blame someone else together, and then I'll put you in charge of their team.
>when sh*t goes sideways, we blame someone else together
The parent comment literally said "they will take the blame without naming names". Taking the blame pretty much always implies "taking the blame upon themselves" when used in this context. So I don't see how you get "blaming someone else" from the person saying "the blame is on me".
yes! the #1 and #2 thing you should optimize after getting paid as much as you care to be paid are "does my manager have my back" (protect you internally) and "will my manager go to bat for me" (advance you externally). It doesn't matter if your manager is your friend, an asshole or not, or a good person, or even to some degree, an honest person, or anything else.
Couldn't agree more. The most important thing for me as a manager is always exposing the work of my subordinates upwards so that they are known to my managers when opportunity comes.
The best bosses I've ever had were fairly staunch servant leaders. It's a shame that the opportunist ruin the servant leadership model fairly easily though since a servant leader is very easy to mislead and manipulate by nature. There is a level of trust required to be a good servant leader that also lends itself to exploitation by the opportunistic middle manager described in the OP article.
One place where the original article goes off the rails was when it mentions a walk with a misguided botanist who only sees a forest in terms of competition -- and then the author builds out that idea into the theme of their approach to business. I was in a PhD program in Ecology and Evolution myself (studying with Larry Slobodkin and others), and here is something I wrote long ago drawing from that knowledge reflecting a world of both competition and cooperation (as well as both meshwork and hierarchy in Manuel De Landa's terms):
> "... I agree with the sentiment of the Einstein quote [That we should approach the universe with compassion], but that sentiment itself is only part of a larger difficult-to-easily-resolve situation. It become more the Yin/Yang or Meshwork/Hierarchy situation I see when I look out my home office window into a forest. On the surface it is a lovely scene of trees as part of a forest. Still, I try to see both the peaceful majesty of the trees and how these large trees are brutally shading out of existence saplings which are would-be competitors (even shading out their own children). Yet, even as big trees shade out some of their own children, they also put massive resources into creating a next generation, one of which will indeed likely someday replace them when they fall. I try to remember there is both an unseen silent chemical war going on out there where plants produce defense compounds they secrete in the soil to inhibit the growth of other plant species (or insects or fungi) as a vile act of territoriality and often expansionism, and yet also the result is a good spacing of biomass to near optimally convert sunlight to living matter and resist and recover from wind and ice damage. I try to recall that there is the most brutal of competition between species of plants and animals and fungi and so on over water, nutrients (including from eating other creatures), sunlight, and space, while at the same time each bacterial colony or multicellular organism (like a large Pine tree) is a marvel of cooperation towards some implicitly shared purpose. I see the awesome result of both simplicity and complexity in the organizational structure of all these organisms and their DNA, RNA, and so on, adapted so well in most cases to the current state of such a complex web of being. Yet I can only guess the tiniest fraction of what suffering that selective shaping through variation and selection must have entailed for untold numbers of creatures over billions of years. To be truthful, I can actually really see none of that right now as it is dark outside this early near Winter Solstice time (and an icy rain is falling) beyond perhaps a silhouette outline, so I must remember and imagine it, perhaps as Einstein suggests as an "optical delusion of [my] consciousness". :-)"
Yeah it's interesting how good mil officers handle this, as its true. Usually it's a blend of being a servant leader, yet asserting a form of dominance upwards/downwards that indicates you're a good person, but not to be stepped on. Tricky balance as the servant part is easy enough, dominance part is not.
I'd like to remind people the writing of the article.
It's quite a convincing and vivid depiction that I see most engineers lacking. Quite comprehensible, and yet still full of concrete details that plagues a lot of non-technical writing.
Knowledge might be power, but the writing is the tool to project that power!
I’m having the same reaction as many here - it’s ugly but often true.
BUT - if everyone followed this advice, I believe the org will fail eventually. Promotions aside, I think it takes enough people with real long term responsibility and care to actually keep things moving up and to the right.
So is there a less cynical framing here? Are there long term strategies to do good work and also get promoted? It might be harder (or less lazy) than jumping teams every 18 months and ignoring OKRs, but I’d like to hold on to some hope that we don’t have to secretly become a complete and total drain in order to succeed. I’ve done okay without stooping, and my current manager is a good counter-example IMO (though may be rare). Surely there are some ways to encourage true engagement over feigned work and to discourage leechy behavior?
I've found there are two really tough and visible dividing lines in a typical tech company: 1. the line between individual contributor (IC) and first level manager and 2. the line between the top managers and the executive class (directors, VPs, etc). These two lines define the three basic tech castes: ICs, managers and execs. While it's pretty straightforward to be promoted internally within these castes, it's difficult to jump from one to another, particularly from "normal manager" to "Director/VP". Thinking back to the last few companies I've worked, I'm having trouble remembering more than 1 or 2 director-and-above level people who actually started out as not-directors. Maybe the list of companies I've worked at is not representative, but in my view, execs tend to get hired as execs and don't promotion their way up to the title. So, following the "work hard - performance review - feedback" treadmill is great for climbing a small part of the ladder, it's not sufficient for making the big jumps that represent major career growth. Moving from caste to caste takes some different wizardry I haven't figured out yet...
If anyone here could chime in with anecdotes or generalized advice about moving “up” castes, I would be interested to hear it. In my limited experience, being early at a growth company (e.g. Uber in 2014) increases the probability that you’ll be able to grow headcount under you and accumulate initiatives quickly enough to go from IC or line manager to director. Have seen it happen with a couple of friends. This approach requires a bit of timing and divination, though.
I have a friend who skipped castes with impressive speed; his trick was getting a Harvard MBA, which put him in the club. First job with the MBA was a VP position at an SF tech firm.
He's super smart but I have a feeling this would be a generally applicable strategy, if you can afford it and really do want to be in the executive caste.
That's probably because the 3 paths are orthogonal: becoming a better IC would make one a worse manager; and becoming a better manager wouldn't make one a better exec. Just like an exec wouldn't turn into the business owner no matter how hard one tries. The ladders that connect ICs with execs exist, but they are outside of the building.
(That's critique presented as satire in the form of advice genuine advice. Author sounds like a Marxist, and Machievlli was a republican, tortured by the incoming Medici.)
This is going to sound a little touchy-feely, but I'm going to write it anyway.
There are a lot of games in the world, and what the author describes here is one of them. And you can play this game if you want to, and you might even win at it. But it's worth remembering that you have one existence, one set of time and energy to spend in this life. If you decide to look at the world this way, and operate with this mindset, then that's how you're choosing to spend it. You will not "make it" some day and suddenly reverse course.
More and more these days I think that people who are unhappy in the modern world live in prisons of their own making. Yes, a lot of people think this way and work this way. I think it's good to know the game is out there, and that you'll encounter people with this mindset. But you do not have to play the same game. Yes, you probably need a job. Yes, your material rewards might be lesser if you don't engage in this kind of stuff. But you can still live a perfectly good life—perhaps even a better life—by building it around other principles.
I don't mean this to be a lecture, or condescending, or anything other than a reminder that just because you have to work, it doesn't mean you're stuck playing the games other people are playing.
Reminds me of the sound advice I am glad I got early in life (whilst still in college) from a book called "Work Less, Play More" by a petroleum geologist named Steven Catlin[1]. Play the games on your terms if at all possible. And save yo monnay!
1: http://www.swt.org/play.htm (brief and pithy overview there; should be all you need but I recommend reading the whole thing in a weekend)
Usually it’s good. It means short and to the point in most contexts. Maybe things can be too pithy, if they’re so short that they’re incomprehensible. But it’s much better than meandering and off topic.
I wouldn't say it's necessarily good. If you think of TV when a character says something as they're leaving a room and everyone goes "ooohhhh". That's a pithy comment. Something like:
"Hey baby, you looking for a real man for tonight?"
"Yeah, let me know if you see one!"
Good to be pithy when you're dealing with obnoxious drunks in a bar. Maybe not so much when talking with your boss.
This rings true. There's a YouTube channel where a man with a campervan goes out camping in the nature and cooks food, sips whiskey and looks into the horizon. So simple yet so attractive and there's many comments of older people saying they can no longer do that but live it through these videos. I'd rather be doing that on my weekends than busting my back to get that promo.
Well put. I completely agree. One thing I'd like to add though is that choosing to not play this game does not mean there's no path to large impact / success by conventional metrics. I came away from this article with the distinct feeling that it is focused on big corporate jobs. That certainly is where a large segment of workers are at, but it's not the only place you can be. In particular, I think that in the early stage startup world you don't get a lot of what the article is talking about. In early stage startups decisions made by rank-and-file employees can have very tangible and significant impact on the time scale of weeks to months, not quarters to years like this article seems focused on. Does this early stage startup world have its own set of issues? Of course. But there do exist good opportunities where culture is healthy and good work gets rewarded.
I'd really like to believe this.
Thus far, I've seen the same kind of ruthless self-interest in startups as well.
If you know of anywhere this is NOT the case, please share as I would love to work in an environment of people with good character who are genuinely seeking to do good. This is more important to me than money.
Is it really? In the startup world you don't "switch projects" every 18 months. Instead you pivot to a different business plan or start a new company. Grow headcount faster than baseline applies as well.
The company I'm currently CTO at I had founded when I was 23. It's now a multi-hundred million dollar company, growing very quickly, and about to cross 100 employees. I've learned a lot along the way, but I've especially learned from managing parents. As I started managing parents and realizing how much they base their own values on how their children would think of them and their life principles, it became apparent to me that this is how I want to live my life too.
I have struggled with depression and anxiety from an early age, so, when I start attaching to an overly-cynical view of how the world operates, I ask myself "Do I need to believe this is how the world operates? How does this serve me? Would I want my children to embody this world view?". If the answer is no, then I try to have my world view serve me and end up much happier and actually much more effective in the long run.
I've come to realize you have to be a bit of a pessimist when understanding how things "really work", but going about your life as an optimist and working around the structures is just as important if not more so for people like myself who were born with a broken operating system.
"I ask myself "Do I need to believe this is how the world operates? How does this serve me? Would I want my children to embody this world view?". If the answer is no, then I try to have my world view serve me and end up much happier and actually much more effective in the long run."
It's a nice thought, but proves to be difficult to implement long term. Sure you might convince yourself for a few months that things are like X, ignoring the evidence that they are Y. That's your prerogative, you can operate in whatever reality you wish. Eventually reality catches up to you and you have to pay the piper.
It works the other way too. You can bullshit and operate politics without the skill, until one day reality catches up to you and people see your ”work” for what it really is.
I've seen this happen to people. They couldn't get another job -- ever. They happily lived in their massive homes and retired early. One sails boats. Doesn't seem like a cautionary tale, as long you can stomach being a fake.
> It's a nice thought, but proves to be difficult to implement long term ...
It's actually the only long term approach -- literally. It's not ignoring reality, rather, it's choosing not to lose hope that we can create a better future.
Because, as we've seen, the world is what we make it, for better, and for worse.
Sure, you can choose to filter out certain things from your reality. Eventually you'll get railroaded because you failed to factor in certain things which someone whose able to adopt a realistic frame of mind would've captured.
If we look at WW2, you see Neville Chamberlain, the optimist, pursuing a policy of appeasement giving Hitler the benefit of the doubt and proclaiming "peace for our time" after signing of the Munich agreement. Meanwhile, Churchill, a realist, realizes that Hitler is not going to stop until he's dominated all of Europe.
So who do you prefer to be in this story, the naive optimist Chamberlain, assuming everything will be okay? Or the realist Churchill who recognizes the threat, and takes the necessary evasive action.
One method to distinguish between the things we think are real, but are not, is to see what you can change by pretending things are actually like X. Whatever doesn't change - that's evidence that's "real".
To paraphrase, "reality is that which, when you pretend otherwise, continues to be the way it is."
> The company I'm currently CTO at I had founded when I was 23. It's now a multi-hundred million dollar company, growing very quickly, and about to cross 100 employees. I've learned a lot along the way, but I've especially learned from managing parents. As I started managing parents and realizing how much they base their own values on how their children would think of them and their life principles, it became apparent to me that this is how I want to live my life too.
I feel like I'm now a father to my hypothetical children.
You bring up a fascinating subject. The tricky part about pessimal realism is that too much of it becomes a self-fulfilling and agency yielding prophecy. And so the challenge becomes this: how does one pragmatically engage with optimal realism?
I guess another way to say this is path dependence is a real problem. Finding the solution is not trivial. Perhaps the most painful place this reality becomes evident is in the interpersonal and societal sense. It's a trope that as we get older we realize "we can't save everyone" or "we can't fix everything." And so the question becomes how do we determine a) what's in our control b) what really matters and c) how we orient ourselves for the future?
I don't have a great answer, but I think part of the practice is learning to become whole with your pain, your emotions, your hopes and your intuitions in a balanced manner. And I think another part of the practice is figuring out how to build your own tribe along the way to make it practical for you to find support in a trustworthy community.
I would love to hear about other models of the world that are employed to think about it. My view is that there's about 5 mental models given how mundane human life is in general (I'm speaking in hyperbole of course).
Also important to remember that winning this game results in a massive difference in income and purchasing power.
Two promotions at a FAANG can be the difference between 200k and 600k in pre-tax compensation. That might translate into a difference in retirement age from 70 to 35, depending on your life goals and rate of spending.
The tremendous amount of ink spilled over FIRE leads me to believe few who play the game well enough to snag those two promotions will manage to escape their golden handcuffs.
The more the press talks about it, the more unusual it is. See shark attacks vs automobile fatalities.
That's the thing about FIRE. It is always a guy in his late 30s with 2 kids and a big house in a metro city trying to sell FIRE to new grads.
IMO, fire becomes impossible the second you have kids. Because all parents I know have some kind of super natural urge to provide better for their children. A house in a better school district, university education and the knowledge that they can have more if they work more, will inevitably stop people from making that early exit they so yearn for.
This becomes even more evident once you get used to roaming in 'high achieving' circles, because the second you RE, you and your children get pushed to the bottom of that social structure (in terms of material possessions)
FIRE also has a wierd hypocrisy to it. It advocates for avoiding life style creep. But, if you avoid lifestyle creep then you can pursue any of the things you would have after retirement as a primary source of income anyways. Especially if you don't expect to take on fresh debt. (new house, new car etc)
That being said, I live a FIRE esque lifestyle too. Because the core tenents make sense even without wanting to FIRE. But, every tech guy in their 20s seems to want to Fire, but I haven't met a single person in their 40s that actually has.
I know a few people in their 50s who managed to FIRE. I think a lot of people want to do it earlier but then life gets in the way. The ones that I know who actually retired early did so when their company got acquired or ipoed (most were director level, one of the people was a very high level IC/eng fellow @ unicorn). Basically there was a push and instead of staying in re-org or finding yet another opportunity they said "retirement!" and had the money to make it reality. The guy who was IC actually still codes/commits to OSS; I guess he just doesn't code for money anymore.
You are right, but there is a sober middle ground.
There is a famous quote by Hungarian writer Mikszáth saying "It is not enough to be honorable, one also has to appear so".
You don't have to go all-in in "the game", it's enough to strategically adjust even minor things to make sure your work doesn't go unnoticed, that you aren't spending effort and emotional energy on things that will ultimately not lead to anything. If you're doing it for your own enjoyment, to feel good about accomplishments or just scratch your problem-solving itch, great. But if you're naive and want to be a "good boy" who helps others because and who just naturally takes on work that is unrewarding in itself, but you feel you need to play nice etc, then perhaps this view can help. People will step over you and you will not understand why things are happening. You will feel betrayed when it's not really betrayal, just "the game" being played.
Be aware of it and make a conscious choice of when to play it and when not to play it. But when you don't play it, be aware of the trade-offs.
With all due respect to Mikszáth, you don’t have full control over how you “appear” to others. Sure, we can influence our appearance with our actions but it’s also impacted by things outside our control. People will always view our actions through their unique lens biased by their own experiences, thoughts, mental models etc.
I think the Stoics would argue it’s better to just focus on what’s the right thing to do regardless of how it “appears” externally
People are simpler and more predictable than you'd think. There are techniques (as outlined in the article) that can predictably improve how other people see you.
> I think the Stoics would argue it’s better to just focus on what’s the right thing to do regardless of how it “appears” externally
That quote is often referenced in political corruption cases, where the politician argues he's innocent but acknowledges they might appear suspicious because they weren't careful enough to be sure to also "appear honest", not just "be honest". It's also how you have to collect paper trails and documentation if you expect that some case of yours may go to court, even if you're innocent.
Anyway, I see that people are misunderstanding what I was pointing at.
Yes the right thing is important, but it's important because it's the right thing, not because it will lead to promotions and money and fame. Don't confuse it. My qualms are with people who declare that they will stick to their principles, out of principle and not at all because they expect anything in return. And then they get upset when they get nothing in return. My problem is with this second part, not with the first.
> My qualms are with people who declare that they will stick to their principles, out of principle and not at all because they expect anything in return. And then they get upset when they get nothing in return.
If one were a touch cynical though, loudly complaining about not getting credit with a pretended naivety is also one way of playing ‘the game’ , as you put it (even if it’s not to your taste).
Now that's a classic! I mean the way you argue, not the quote. Very nice, very classic moral relativism and postmodernism. People should never trust themselves and their understanding of the world.
What I'm saying is that understanding the game that others play is necessary, whether you want to play it or not. If you don't play it because you're ignorant and don't even see that this is going on then you allow yourself to be exploited, you will expect things to happen to you that won't happen, then you become bitter and envious. On the other hand, if you consciously recognize that this game exists, you can navigate it better and still live the way you want, without being surprised by the consequences. For example, you can spend a lot of invisible effort on a project, because you hold the principle that you will not produce bad work even if nobody is looking. That's fine. But then don't go expecting that someone will reward you and don't be upset when promotions don't come. If you consciously understand this, you will know ahead of time that that "manipulative jerk" office mate will get promoted, so when it happens, you don't get angry and disappointed. You can stay calm and concentrated on your own journey.
By realizing that you do that invisible hard work (that leads to other people's promotions and enriches others) for your own spiritual sake or for a higher cause or for the order of the universe or whatever other reason, you can live in a balanced way, because you're consciously going in with this trade-off. You live up to some principles that you won't play games, you will play straight up, with high quality work without boasting and playing it up or telling anyone about it, but you also don't desire the riches and the status, that's okay.
My issue is with people who do wishful thinking. They set some principles first and declare that this is how the world operates. When it doesn't operate that way, they don't update their model of the world, but shut their eyes and deny the dark side of getting ahead, but then still complain that the world doesn't conform to their ideal.
This is far from postmodernism. I say look at the objective cold facts: who gets ahead and how, understand the rules, then consciously play it or don't play it, but know each trade-off involved and don't be surprised when your choice leads to the predicted result. And that predicted result could be perfectly fine! You don't have to get promoted out of technical work. Many people explicitly hate managing people and budgets and playing politics and love working with concrete technical things, and will happily trade those promotions and high-class life for an honest, principled, simple life working on interesting problems for decades without climbing a career ladder or keeping up with the Joneses. Nothing wrong with that! But then know that this is the deal you're subscribing to.
If you really think about it, in a zero-sum game, those who are born with an inability to experience affective empathy have a competitive advantage.
Over time, they will outbreed those who are constrained by conscience.
What happens when an ecosystem accumulates too many predators?
The ecosystem destabilizes.
Does this not explain the present state of the world?
In my experience, a lot of people play the game so they can go play other games outside of work.
Most of us are stuck working in some form of organization-pays-for-our-labor employment. As long as you're there, you might as well learn and play by the rules as they actually are, not as you wish them to be. For the 8 hours when your butt is in the chair at work, make them effective 8 hours, such that you can maximize your remuneration according to whatever system the company has set up to evaluate performance. Then you can go take that money and buy freedom to do other stuff in the rest of your time - or even opt out entirely for a few years.
I know a few people for whom work is their calling. The crucial thing to remember there is that they're still playing in somebody else's game, who oftentimes can pay them less because it's not a game to them. There's perhaps less psychic stress in this, but also less financial remuneration, which can foreclose on some other things in life that you may care about.
>This is only relevant if you need a lot of money to play other games outside of work. Most people don't.
I didn't downvote you but you misinterpreted what he wrote. The end of the 2nd paragraph explained that "other games" means the other more desirable non-work activities people would rather do:
"play other games outside of work" == "buy freedom to do other stuff in the rest of your time"
Maybe I'm still misinterpreting it, but to me it seems like he was talking about activities after work, not instead of work. So if you want to, say, regularly dine at the finest restaurants, buy expensive toys, and live in a big mansion, then sure you need to know how to play the game, but if you're an average Joe, and just want to go to a bar to hang out with friends, or watch a movie, and maybe have a hobby like restoring vintage cars in your garage, then you probably don't need to make that much money.
Also note: the author isn't actually advocating playing these games. Just describing how they work.
-----
"[These rituals] are macro-useful in a sense that they allow humans to generate billions of dollars of productive activity. But that doesn't mean that you should be spending your time on them."
"Assuming you're good, if you choose to work in a big company the right strategy is to work 9-5, not stress about anything, and collect your paycheck. Climbing the ladder seems extremely suboptimal to me."
“There are a million ways to make money.” I’m a highly skilled, highly experienced individual. I never have to do anything I don’t want to in order to keep a roof over my head, food on my table, and even a handful of expensive hobbies.
I once played a different game, for about five years. I became really good at it, and I made a lot of money playing it. Like you describe, I was in a modern prison of my own making.
Similarly, for some of us the game that the author describes is way more appealing than a more straightforward 'work hard and earn your way up'. Not everybody in tech cares about software; I'm just in it for the money. Reading stuff like this makes career development actually sound exciting.
What looks like prison for you can be freedom for someone else
I don’t intend for this to sound judge-y but I’m curious if not being internally motivated for the work impacts your motivation, particularly with work that is essential for the goal but not particularly high status/visibility. Do you find motivation waning?
When X allows you to achieve goal Y, you can get a lot of X done even if you have no personal interest in X. If you're poor and have few options, most of the time you're gonna do whatever job you can get because you just don't have a choice (speaking from earlier life experience). For some people it's being a waiter, janitor, working at mcdonald's, etc. Very few people breaking their backs on construction or 16 hour catering gigs grew up fantasizing about being a laborer, but they still manage to pull off incredible feats of endurance and work. Why would software or other office jobs be any different?
In short, I work in software to get paid well to retire asap. I've never needed work to find fulfillment and growth in life, so I'm never short on motivation because I can't wait to stop having to work.
To extend your analogy, I’ve found a vast difference in quality between construction contractors who view their work as a profession/craft vs those who view it as a job/means to an end. The irony is those in the latter category have complained to me that they find it hard to find work, those in the former always seem to be in demand and making money. That’s to the heart of my question, I was wondering if that kind of motivation inadvertently can affect the ends you’re aiming at.
Regardless, I’m happy you don’t need work to be fulfilled and seem to be on a good path for what you’re after
My point was that to me, being able to do construction at all is remarkable, and an example of how you can do a lot without personal interest.
It's important to distinguish between excelling at X, and excelling at a career in X.
IMO to really excel at a career in X you need passion and career skills. But your passion doesn't have to be in X directly. You can have passion for early retirement, income, or even just competition, and still out-perform most people who do care about X. Per the article, all a contractor has to do is work enough to move up the ladder and I can easily imagine them having their own company and out-earning the passionate contractors within a decade, while I can also see someone passionate at a craft just stagnate because they're happy doing their thing, not realizing that the career side needs work too. And of course, to excel at X itself is its own story. But since we were talking about a career perspective, I just wanted to illustrate how excelling at X itself is irrelevant to someone who's just using X as a means to an end Y, beyond what's needed for career progression.
So I wouldn't agree that motivation for X is a problem for getting to Y. I would see that as a weakness with career skills and not knowing how to utilize motivation for Y itself. But I would say that motivation for X can actually be detrimental for pursuing X itself, for example by being so fixated on pursuing quality that you neglect skills like marketing and networking, which are almost always needed to do anything beyond whatever you can do at home. Being a passionate artist alone usually won't get you far. Being a passionate musician who knows people in the industry can get you gigs in movies, shows, musical events, etc.
And thank you, I also wish you luck in pursuing your goals
> being so fixated on pursuing quality that you neglect skills like marketing and networking
This is a really good point. I think people can be so target fixated on one area that they neglect other areas that could actually have a systemic effect of improving their main domain of expertise. You’ve given me some important things to think about
> But it's worth remembering that you have one existence, one set of time and energy to spend in this life. If you decide to look at the world this way, and operate with this mindset, then that's how you're choosing to spend it.
One other perspective:
Yes, the ideologies we subscribe to will highly influence what we see and experience.
However!
You can choose to experiment / experience quite the many ways or living and being in the decades you're likely to he here.
Each day is a new opportunity to act differently if whatever you were doing yesterday doesn't serve you and those around you.
As a counterpoint, I believe that I essentially behave the way you are describing, frequently doing things like going to meetings and saying "this big project won't work, it will harm the end user" which doesn't make you well liked. While I may firmly believe what I am saying, I'm sitting there getting passed up by promotions. Eventually I'll be the lowest ranked engineer with 50 years of experience in the world.
I guarantee you, playing by the rules will not make you happy.
Saying something like that in a work meeting is a bad idea even if you don't want to play any games. That's just basic human psychology, and if you can't deal with it perhaps you shouldn't be promoted.
What I think you're getting at here is that it's up to each person to choose whether they want to chase the promotion and higher pay or whether they want to focus on just doing meaningful work.
Perhaps not everyone will come to this cynical of a conclusion for themselves, but in my own experience this way of thinking is almost always a false dichotomy. There's no law that says pay vs meaningfulness of the work is a zero-sum trade-off, but a lot of people giving career advice take it as almost a given that this is true. There is exciting work to do and problems to solve in the higher paying, higher levels in a big company (by that I mean, senior or staff engineer, manager or sr manager. I don't have any hands-on experience at the higher executive levels, I'm still chasing those promotions myself). And there are endless things to be frustrated with at the smallest of startups even when there's no bureaucracy or perceivable "office politics" to worry about.
My own takeaway has been, at the end of the day this is still a job. In almost any job I can find positive ways to contribute, opportunities to learn, and make my own self fulfillment. So I might as well do that at the job that pays 3x more.
In tech that difference in pay between a couple of bands of promotions or between a startup and big co, can be absolutely massive. Don't feel bad about chasing the higher paying roles, that increase in income can buy you a lot of optionality. Maybe you can retire early, or take long years of sabbatical in the middle of your career, or devote a year or two to starting your own startup in the future without worrying about not taking a paycheck. This may ultimately be a lot more satisfying than shuffling through low-paying jobs searching for roles where you'll be perfectly happy in spite of that, because you may never find it anyway.
Note sure if you read the article the same way I did -- but I saw it as something that people do -- not something the author was necessarily recommending. He's saying that is how people get ahead.
I agree with you that it is a game. It isnt a game that I play, but it is a popular game. Denying that many people do this seems like wishful thinking or denial of reality.
The easiest way to see this is the typical corporate track -- you're told that if you work hard, every 2 or 3 yrs you get promoted. You do the math internally in your head and realize you'd get to -- say SVP at age 50. Then you look around and there are a bunch of 35yo SVPs. Once can see that and realize there are shortcuts/cheats in the game, or one can ignore it and hope for advancement (only to get to age 50 and realize it was all for nothing.)
I think what the author provides is of great value -- they are trying to show you a reality you may not see. The value is not to encourage you to do it, but perhaps
- to get you to step off some hamster wheel of death
- to get you to realize you need to be an entrepreneur and your own boss
- to get you to weed out these types of players if you are already an entrepreneur and your own boss
- to get you to find companies where these things are not the case (hint: check out the executive team on Linked In -- are they under qualified? run away from this company. Are they hired from outside rather going up the ranks? be careful)
I want to second what you're saying here. I used to feel pretty down about my work because I felt like even though I was making good money and progressing career-wise, the things I was working on were not contributing anything positive to the world, and would also be scrapped for a new iteration using the tech-du-jour within a year or two, and nobody would ever see them again.
If I wanted to have a more lasting impact and more reach, I'd have to compete with thousands for a spot somewhere like Yahoo or Google, and again, whatever I was working on would still be scrapped within a year or two.
This is why I dropped out of working for money and started working on my own passion projects. I'm very lucky, because I remember what it was like working on passion projects before I entered the workforce, so I at least knew roughly what I was looking for.
This comes from someone who threw away a decade of my life because I didn't want to play the academia game - there's a sweet middle spot, play the game as long as:
1. It's fun at least on some days
2. You don't win at the expense of someone else's undeserved loss
3. You can actually switch off from it
You have to play the game no matter where you are, even foraging in the forest. There's no concept of living life without rules, so might as well embrace the reality and keep it under your control instead of the other way around.
> You will not "make it" some day and suddenly reverse course.
There's a bunch of ways this effect shows up all across life:
"How things start is generally how they continue"
(rails feels like rails in basically every part, from the stuff a rank beginner does to diving into the guts for advanced usage)
"A hippy in motion stays in motion, a hippy at rest stays at rest."
(the mindset with which you start a thing tends to persist)
And, I don't know if there's a name for it, but the game of Go is legendary for players being able to replay games exactly as long as they can remember the first few moves. If the conditions and players remain the same, why would the game go any differently?
> live in prisons of their own making
I have found nothing more painful or exhausting than fighting oneself; when we hold ourselves back - put ourselves in prisons of our own making - we're both the occupant fighting the bars and the bars fighting the occupant. IMO something like RSI also shows up if you do that long enough.
One way I've found out of it is - and this might sound a little weird - apply a bit of Flatland. A circle is only a wall while you're in 2d; add a dimension (a direction orthogonal to the current ones) and walk around it.
(another way is talk therapy; and meditation trains the "muscles" (and more) that you use for any of this)
Also this is another reason why we need UBI or other policies to shink the workforce / total person-hours.
While the opportunists leverage the system, their insatiable desire for more headcount makes actual automation and the defeat of drudgery nigh impossible.
I think this title should be suffixed with "past the standard ceiling". And it's often quite cozy to stay below that ceiling, you can ignore most of the corpspeak and office-warfare and still prosper.
That's also where all the intellectually stimulating things happen, there's nothing of interest to a real hacker in upper management. There's only money and status there (and often lots of it), but no real puzzles.
The corporate management players know very well about the one thing they have to avoid - significant failure - thus they will never cross a truly competent person. Their entire career depends on it. Just make sure to push back from time to time to not take too much on your shoulders.
This piece does a nice job of narrating opportunism as a pathology. But I'm more interested in hearing about opportunism as a survival strategy. That is, when opportunism "wins" and becomes the default and not the abberation.
When the opportunist gets to the top (or is already at the top) and sets the rules to make themselves look good.
When the executives design the KPI's and OKRs around those rules to make their boss look good, themselves look good, and their org shuffle along.
When the directors begin adjusting their own internal metrics to focus on work that makes their boss look good, while at the same time, confusing their subordinates who assume those metrics reflect performance.
In that environment, I've seen the average mid-level manager seriously adopt the posture that article jokingly suggests. They have to for their own survival. If they're not opportunistic, they're out of a job. Their team is out of a job. Even if they know the metrics are misleading or false, or why the meetings don't matter, they're have to fight for attention, or else they risk losing vital resources for the team.
How cancer metastasizes across the organization's body and then becomes the body, would be a really interesting case study to read.
336 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 410 ms ] threadBoy were they right about that.
Also, unfortunately, I can assure you that your astute perception is exactly how (some parts of) the world works, especially at senior executive levels. There are complex, interlocking systems of “make me look good - take down that guy - do what’s good for us, not what’s good for the company” that can make this mentality legitimately powerful. At the C-level, correct but slightly misphrased statements can create a fired-in-90-days failure (literally the difference between “but” and “yes, and”). It’s _insane_.
Anyway, you’re doing gods work here lmao
EDIT: grammar, is -> are
He wrote the book as much as a warning as as a reason for the prince to invite him back to Florence.
...and then chew it.
I've quit taking steps. I'm tired of getting screwed so now I'm coasting.
"The kinds of opportunists who are attracted solely to wealth and status have no principles at all beyond accumulation of these two objects." Well, yes, by definition, but it's not clear that the definition is useful. Iff those people exist, that's how they'll act is used to not-so-subtly suggest that these people actually exist and they're taking "your" promotion unless you defend.
"I can do anything I want for three years and it won't show up in the metrics!" No, you can do anything you want and it won't show up in the SEC/Wall Street reported metrics, but you better believe Amazon has faster-acting internal metrics than that.
'"the codebase is such a mess this team can't ship anything until we spend three months refactoring" is really bad delivery. An opportunist would say "we need to work toward paying off the technical debt"' A pragmatist or realist would also say the same thing rather than demand an embargo on shipping features for three-months for what might be seen as (and might be) navel-gazing.
It's an enjoyable read, but in a similar vein as Harry Potter is an enjoyable read. Maybe it will provoke some thinking that's applicable to your work life, but it's more entertaining than educational, IMO.
How would amazon metrics be faster? The main point is that a lot of large/systemic changes ("pay off tech debt") can take a long time to show up in any metric, giving you cover to get promoted as people don't think of timestamped metrics as time-delayed as they actually are.
If that number is getting ugly, you might be able to get some tech debt projects going. If you spend 3 months just on tech debt, ship 0 features, and then still have just as bad a feature cycle time in the 3 months after that as in the 3 months before... that can get noticed. And it's not gonna look great.
Whether or not your org does notice that or not is a question about the sort of company you're working for. The original article here assumes you're working at a fairly inefficient and unmotivated one.
Part of the problem here is the place in the blog ascribes value to where you are rather than what you did. If nobody is asking how you influenced the current state of being but is instead just evaluating the person presiding over current success, then the behavior described is unsurprising.
That's the unfortunate reality with a lot of Substack type newsletters.
The real world truth is often so boring and simple that it can be summarized in a short blog post. Want to get promoted? Work on important projects for the company, build rapport and relationships in the company, build a reputation for getting things done on time with high quality and low drama. You'll either get promoted, or build a foundation upon which you can pivot into a promotion at another company.
That's boring to read, though, so much pop-business advice turns into ego-stroking stories about how the reader is morally superior to all of the other unprincipled ladder-climbers around them. There's a large appetite for stories about how the world is unfair, and there are many writers happy to deliver those stories.
I'm part of a mentorship program for junior developers. These kinds of articles have been detrimental to a lot of impressionable young people who are growing up convinced that the world is thoroughly corrupt and therefore the only way to win is to become corrupt yourself. In reality, if anyone finds themselves at a company where people are promoted based on lies, nepotism, and general corruption then you don't want to get promoted there anyway. Get out while you can, because any company that rewards people who play games over people who deliver results is doomed to go downhill. In the real world, the good companies really do identify and promote those who consistently deliver results.
This article isn't saying "be evil or be out-hustled by evil", it's saying "avoid high growth companies because they are full of charlatans".
Find a nice job at a small company growing organically.
This will not get you promoted beyond the middle rungs.
People get promoted not for what they do, but what they appear to do.
> Want to get promoted? Work on important projects for the company, build rapport and relationships in the company, build a reputation for getting things done on time with high quality and low drama. You'll either get promoted, or build a foundation upon which you can pivot into a promotion at another company.
Did you answer the question posed in the article: Which of the top leaders in your company get there by doing this? The only common theme seems to be "build rapport and relationships in the company".
This article is a satire, similar to Starship Troopers movie
~~~
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers_(film)#Criti...
"too damn well-made for its own good" and said that it confused audiences and critics.
~~~
Similarly, "How to get promoted" may be confusing. But you may also use these "tips" to identify [and fire] employees which try to abuse your corporate promotion system.
Or maybe it's not obvious why Alice got promoted and Bob didn't, so Bob asks his manager. Hopefully the manager can explain the reasoning in a way that Bob can understand, and Bob can get to work to level-up or can accept that he's just not as good as Alice. (If the manager can't come up with a good reason...well...that's a problem. For the manager.)
If no one's getting promoted, then there's not much point in asking for a promotion. May as well keep your eye on jobs at other companies if you'd like to get ahead. Sometimes companies try to keep the promotions quiet, in an apparent effort to suppress the masses clamoring for a promotion. I suppose it works, as much as suppressing salary discussion works. ("Here's your annual raise this year, you did a _great_ job, this 3% shows that, almost _no one_ gets 3%, this is super high. Great job, Bob! Oh, and don't worry about that promotion, it's super rare to get promoted within your first x years at the company, it'll come...")
The bit I found useful in there is the idea that the people who don't care about quality still might care about promotion - for some people it's just a job, and for others skipping on quality is a way to be seen to produce a lot of quantity. It's easy to see how 1000 lines per day is probably going to get you promoted in a hurry, regardless of whether there are twice as many bugs in that code than the average of the code base and twice as much code as there needs to be. Those multipliers make a massive difference in the long run, but are probably too small to detect in individual commits.
I can't speak for Amazon, but what he said is true in my company. We have metrics, but a 3 year horizon sounds right. Rarely do bad endeavors get killed quicker than that.
Two teams in the same building, same dept. can be night and day different.
The longer people hang around, the less of this is possible.
I saw a lot of this at a fast growing company that got 'very huge' and then failed, partly due to this reason, I have so little respect for CEO's that promote hustlers.
If the entire pie is expanding at a breakneck, nearly unsustainable pace, there's so much whitespace that modest performers can get quick promotions. If the entire pie is static, even strong performers will be promoted far more slowly.
Because the first few promotions are (mostly) about the individual ability/capability, it can be tempting to assume that mid-career and late-career promotions are "more of the same". They're not.
I had a story with incorrect requirements where the business and the tech lead would not listen to me, even when I explained it in multiple ways. It wasn't until I spent 3 weeks building it and had a consultant raise my same concern that they realized their mistakes. In my opinion it came down to them being classist assholes - don't listen to a midlevel dev, only the highly paid consultant.
I'm actually not that well versed in the nitty gritty. I tend to be more of a big picture and concepts guy. I had at least some respect from other tech leads on that project, just not my own. Perhaps my tech lead felt threatened or just enjoyed talking down to me and talking shit about me. I had two other tech leads find out that I was only a midlevel dev and they both said that wasn't right and I should have been a senior (technically the role I was filling was supposed to be for seniors).
Oh well, that's life.
For years I'd take a lesser title and then work my way into that position, but any time that doesn't happen, you're stuck not being where you want to be.
When they don't fill that position internally, the first question is, "why are none of their people up to the task? What sort of dysfunction will I be walking into at this place?"
It's sort of a weird, sideways version of "I wouldn't want join any club that would have me as a member."
Pretty much a luxury problem though.
For me, the standing part though which I have observed is that: "An organization cannot commit suicide." In that sense, most companies have an accretion problem.
And what people don't realize is, that's true of your manager, their manager, and up all the way.
It would take someone external to put the breaks, which only happens if the company starts to do bad, then the shareholders expect change, and so a garbage collection takes place, and accretion starts again.
The answer to everything is “yes”- if you mean it you follow up. If you don’t mean it, something more important will mysteriously present itself.
> So your job isn't to make good decisions to improve company metrics. It's to look good. That means you must understand basic tenets of human nature and learn to manipulate them.
This feels like the real tl;dr. Anyone who has worked at multiple dysfunctional companies will probably know this though. Applies for IC and management tracks AFAICT.
> The work will invent itself. Your job isn't the work— it's to grow headcount and make it appear well-managed. That latter part is nearly entirely performative.
Ugh. Kill me, man, I just got back from my two week vacation. I formulated this recently as I started being quite cynical with a peer over the phone - and we just realized the fact we can't figure out what the hell management is doing is exactly their goal. And then it kinda clicked once you realized they were acting in bad faith as nothing made sense with good faith intentions. Growth for sake of getting large promotions. In the sense of a startup - you can have some title but what matters is how many people are under you. So, they are trying to explode the amount so that when they do leave - they will get a larger compensation package at the next place because they can say they managed X people.
Lol I was on the floor with this one. It's funny because it's true. My super went from being my super to one level above skip, while I was trying so hard to get a measly raise/promotion after 4 years of dedicated work. It was always "This year, we are going to work on getting you ready to operate at the next level."
Want to get a promotion, just add the number of people you manage.
If I am at my limits for direct reports, I can start having people report to one of my reports, and my status grows. Just like multi level marketing.
Absolutely it also makes it way easier to argue that you should get a promotion when you are a manager of managers. Inflating the title's of the people under you is the quickest way to get your own title boosted.
> Third, while you shouldn't take performative rituals at face value, you must still perform them— enthusiastically and with gusto.
Ironically most people didn't want to be managers. Unless you made it to the Director level the salary raises were dwarfed by the stock grants. It was way more stress and visibility to play the game than to float around on nebulously defined projects and spend 4 years vesting
Then how do you know you're not offering the exact same messaging that the author wrote?
Can't imagine the conceit required to see the headline and think you don't have time to read the article but you do have time to write up a full comment because clearly YOUR opinion MUST be more valuable and insightful than whatever was posted.
Shaking my head...
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/
The trick, if you don't want to debase yourself, is to find a manager who is good at all of these things, but is also good at passing credit down and blocking blame going up.
When things go well they will take credit for their great management and then highlight the IC who was responsible. When things go sideways, they will take the blame without naming names and then propose a 2 quarter solution to fix it.
The parent comment literally said "they will take the blame without naming names". Taking the blame pretty much always implies "taking the blame upon themselves" when used in this context. So I don't see how you get "blaming someone else" from the person saying "the blame is on me".
https://www.pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-P...
> "... I agree with the sentiment of the Einstein quote [That we should approach the universe with compassion], but that sentiment itself is only part of a larger difficult-to-easily-resolve situation. It become more the Yin/Yang or Meshwork/Hierarchy situation I see when I look out my home office window into a forest. On the surface it is a lovely scene of trees as part of a forest. Still, I try to see both the peaceful majesty of the trees and how these large trees are brutally shading out of existence saplings which are would-be competitors (even shading out their own children). Yet, even as big trees shade out some of their own children, they also put massive resources into creating a next generation, one of which will indeed likely someday replace them when they fall. I try to remember there is both an unseen silent chemical war going on out there where plants produce defense compounds they secrete in the soil to inhibit the growth of other plant species (or insects or fungi) as a vile act of territoriality and often expansionism, and yet also the result is a good spacing of biomass to near optimally convert sunlight to living matter and resist and recover from wind and ice damage. I try to recall that there is the most brutal of competition between species of plants and animals and fungi and so on over water, nutrients (including from eating other creatures), sunlight, and space, while at the same time each bacterial colony or multicellular organism (like a large Pine tree) is a marvel of cooperation towards some implicitly shared purpose. I see the awesome result of both simplicity and complexity in the organizational structure of all these organisms and their DNA, RNA, and so on, adapted so well in most cases to the current state of such a complex web of being. Yet I can only guess the tiniest fraction of what suffering that selective shaping through variation and selection must have entailed for untold numbers of creatures over billions of years. To be truthful, I can actually really see none of that right now as it is dark outside this early near Winter Solstice time (and an icy rain is falling) beyond perhaps a silhouette outline, so I must remember and imagine it, perhaps as Einstein suggests as an "optical delusion of [my] consciousness". :-)"
It's quite a convincing and vivid depiction that I see most engineers lacking. Quite comprehensible, and yet still full of concrete details that plagues a lot of non-technical writing.
Knowledge might be power, but the writing is the tool to project that power!
We must work in radically different parts of security.
BUT - if everyone followed this advice, I believe the org will fail eventually. Promotions aside, I think it takes enough people with real long term responsibility and care to actually keep things moving up and to the right.
So is there a less cynical framing here? Are there long term strategies to do good work and also get promoted? It might be harder (or less lazy) than jumping teams every 18 months and ignoring OKRs, but I’d like to hold on to some hope that we don’t have to secretly become a complete and total drain in order to succeed. I’ve done okay without stooping, and my current manager is a good counter-example IMO (though may be rare). Surely there are some ways to encourage true engagement over feigned work and to discourage leechy behavior?
I would say that there are, but they involve also getting lucky.
But it's not optimistic about the compatibility of middle-management success and your soul.
He's super smart but I have a feeling this would be a generally applicable strategy, if you can afford it and really do want to be in the executive caste.
(That's critique presented as satire in the form of advice genuine advice. Author sounds like a Marxist, and Machievlli was a republican, tortured by the incoming Medici.)
There are a lot of games in the world, and what the author describes here is one of them. And you can play this game if you want to, and you might even win at it. But it's worth remembering that you have one existence, one set of time and energy to spend in this life. If you decide to look at the world this way, and operate with this mindset, then that's how you're choosing to spend it. You will not "make it" some day and suddenly reverse course.
More and more these days I think that people who are unhappy in the modern world live in prisons of their own making. Yes, a lot of people think this way and work this way. I think it's good to know the game is out there, and that you'll encounter people with this mindset. But you do not have to play the same game. Yes, you probably need a job. Yes, your material rewards might be lesser if you don't engage in this kind of stuff. But you can still live a perfectly good life—perhaps even a better life—by building it around other principles.
I don't mean this to be a lecture, or condescending, or anything other than a reminder that just because you have to work, it doesn't mean you're stuck playing the games other people are playing.
1: http://www.swt.org/play.htm (brief and pithy overview there; should be all you need but I recommend reading the whole thing in a weekend)
I've seen people using "pithy" around here a lot lately.
Is being "pithy" a good thing?
My main previous exposure to the word is in regards to woodworking, where the pith is generally weak wood that you want to avoid when making things.
(This response was not pithy)
"Hey baby, you looking for a real man for tonight?"
"Yeah, let me know if you see one!"
Good to be pithy when you're dealing with obnoxious drunks in a bar. Maybe not so much when talking with your boss.
It might be slightly pejorative. I usually take it to mean slightly hyperbolic, not necessarily meant to be taken completely literally.
such as a pithy Vonnegut quote.
One life so we might as well just live it.
I really like this article's take on this general notion. http://www.samkyle.com/work-for-yourself/
I actually work at one of those companies. At the moment we're not hiring, although we may be in the future.
The company I'm currently CTO at I had founded when I was 23. It's now a multi-hundred million dollar company, growing very quickly, and about to cross 100 employees. I've learned a lot along the way, but I've especially learned from managing parents. As I started managing parents and realizing how much they base their own values on how their children would think of them and their life principles, it became apparent to me that this is how I want to live my life too.
I have struggled with depression and anxiety from an early age, so, when I start attaching to an overly-cynical view of how the world operates, I ask myself "Do I need to believe this is how the world operates? How does this serve me? Would I want my children to embody this world view?". If the answer is no, then I try to have my world view serve me and end up much happier and actually much more effective in the long run.
I've come to realize you have to be a bit of a pessimist when understanding how things "really work", but going about your life as an optimist and working around the structures is just as important if not more so for people like myself who were born with a broken operating system.
It's a nice thought, but proves to be difficult to implement long term. Sure you might convince yourself for a few months that things are like X, ignoring the evidence that they are Y. That's your prerogative, you can operate in whatever reality you wish. Eventually reality catches up to you and you have to pay the piper.
It's actually the only long term approach -- literally. It's not ignoring reality, rather, it's choosing not to lose hope that we can create a better future.
Because, as we've seen, the world is what we make it, for better, and for worse.
If we look at WW2, you see Neville Chamberlain, the optimist, pursuing a policy of appeasement giving Hitler the benefit of the doubt and proclaiming "peace for our time" after signing of the Munich agreement. Meanwhile, Churchill, a realist, realizes that Hitler is not going to stop until he's dominated all of Europe.
So who do you prefer to be in this story, the naive optimist Chamberlain, assuming everything will be okay? Or the realist Churchill who recognizes the threat, and takes the necessary evasive action.
Churchill was a combination of a realist and an optimist / idealist.
To paraphrase, "reality is that which, when you pretend otherwise, continues to be the way it is."
I feel like I'm now a father to my hypothetical children.
The way I like to say it is, I choose not to live in that world.
I guess another way to say this is path dependence is a real problem. Finding the solution is not trivial. Perhaps the most painful place this reality becomes evident is in the interpersonal and societal sense. It's a trope that as we get older we realize "we can't save everyone" or "we can't fix everything." And so the question becomes how do we determine a) what's in our control b) what really matters and c) how we orient ourselves for the future?
I don't have a great answer, but I think part of the practice is learning to become whole with your pain, your emotions, your hopes and your intuitions in a balanced manner. And I think another part of the practice is figuring out how to build your own tribe along the way to make it practical for you to find support in a trustworthy community.
People problems are hard!
Easy to say when you're a millionaire that never has to work again
I don't know the others :)
Two promotions at a FAANG can be the difference between 200k and 600k in pre-tax compensation. That might translate into a difference in retirement age from 70 to 35, depending on your life goals and rate of spending.
The more the press talks about it, the more unusual it is. See shark attacks vs automobile fatalities.
IMO, fire becomes impossible the second you have kids. Because all parents I know have some kind of super natural urge to provide better for their children. A house in a better school district, university education and the knowledge that they can have more if they work more, will inevitably stop people from making that early exit they so yearn for.
This becomes even more evident once you get used to roaming in 'high achieving' circles, because the second you RE, you and your children get pushed to the bottom of that social structure (in terms of material possessions)
FIRE also has a wierd hypocrisy to it. It advocates for avoiding life style creep. But, if you avoid lifestyle creep then you can pursue any of the things you would have after retirement as a primary source of income anyways. Especially if you don't expect to take on fresh debt. (new house, new car etc)
That being said, I live a FIRE esque lifestyle too. Because the core tenents make sense even without wanting to FIRE. But, every tech guy in their 20s seems to want to Fire, but I haven't met a single person in their 40s that actually has.
Yeah, it's quite touchy feely. But quite possibly completely right too.
- Nobody has more than 24 hours in a day.
- Nobody escapes death.
There is a famous quote by Hungarian writer Mikszáth saying "It is not enough to be honorable, one also has to appear so".
You don't have to go all-in in "the game", it's enough to strategically adjust even minor things to make sure your work doesn't go unnoticed, that you aren't spending effort and emotional energy on things that will ultimately not lead to anything. If you're doing it for your own enjoyment, to feel good about accomplishments or just scratch your problem-solving itch, great. But if you're naive and want to be a "good boy" who helps others because and who just naturally takes on work that is unrewarding in itself, but you feel you need to play nice etc, then perhaps this view can help. People will step over you and you will not understand why things are happening. You will feel betrayed when it's not really betrayal, just "the game" being played.
Be aware of it and make a conscious choice of when to play it and when not to play it. But when you don't play it, be aware of the trade-offs.
I think the Stoics would argue it’s better to just focus on what’s the right thing to do regardless of how it “appears” externally
But Stoics also do not pursue "fame and fortune." The advice is fundamentally not directed at Stoics.
> I think the Stoics would argue it’s better to just focus on what’s the right thing to do regardless of how it “appears” externally
That quote is often referenced in political corruption cases, where the politician argues he's innocent but acknowledges they might appear suspicious because they weren't careful enough to be sure to also "appear honest", not just "be honest". It's also how you have to collect paper trails and documentation if you expect that some case of yours may go to court, even if you're innocent.
Anyway, I see that people are misunderstanding what I was pointing at.
Yes the right thing is important, but it's important because it's the right thing, not because it will lead to promotions and money and fame. Don't confuse it. My qualms are with people who declare that they will stick to their principles, out of principle and not at all because they expect anything in return. And then they get upset when they get nothing in return. My problem is with this second part, not with the first.
Good point, I’m tracking you now and agree 100%. Thank you for clarifying
If one were a touch cynical though, loudly complaining about not getting credit with a pretended naivety is also one way of playing ‘the game’ , as you put it (even if it’s not to your taste).
By realizing that you do that invisible hard work (that leads to other people's promotions and enriches others) for your own spiritual sake or for a higher cause or for the order of the universe or whatever other reason, you can live in a balanced way, because you're consciously going in with this trade-off. You live up to some principles that you won't play games, you will play straight up, with high quality work without boasting and playing it up or telling anyone about it, but you also don't desire the riches and the status, that's okay.
My issue is with people who do wishful thinking. They set some principles first and declare that this is how the world operates. When it doesn't operate that way, they don't update their model of the world, but shut their eyes and deny the dark side of getting ahead, but then still complain that the world doesn't conform to their ideal.
This is far from postmodernism. I say look at the objective cold facts: who gets ahead and how, understand the rules, then consciously play it or don't play it, but know each trade-off involved and don't be surprised when your choice leads to the predicted result. And that predicted result could be perfectly fine! You don't have to get promoted out of technical work. Many people explicitly hate managing people and budgets and playing politics and love working with concrete technical things, and will happily trade those promotions and high-class life for an honest, principled, simple life working on interesting problems for decades without climbing a career ladder or keeping up with the Joneses. Nothing wrong with that! But then know that this is the deal you're subscribing to.
Most of us are stuck working in some form of organization-pays-for-our-labor employment. As long as you're there, you might as well learn and play by the rules as they actually are, not as you wish them to be. For the 8 hours when your butt is in the chair at work, make them effective 8 hours, such that you can maximize your remuneration according to whatever system the company has set up to evaluate performance. Then you can go take that money and buy freedom to do other stuff in the rest of your time - or even opt out entirely for a few years.
I know a few people for whom work is their calling. The crucial thing to remember there is that they're still playing in somebody else's game, who oftentimes can pay them less because it's not a game to them. There's perhaps less psychic stress in this, but also less financial remuneration, which can foreclose on some other things in life that you may care about.
I didn't downvote you but you misinterpreted what he wrote. The end of the 2nd paragraph explained that "other games" means the other more desirable non-work activities people would rather do:
"play other games outside of work" == "buy freedom to do other stuff in the rest of your time"
This does apply to most people.
-----
"[These rituals] are macro-useful in a sense that they allow humans to generate billions of dollars of productive activity. But that doesn't mean that you should be spending your time on them."
"Assuming you're good, if you choose to work in a big company the right strategy is to work 9-5, not stress about anything, and collect your paycheck. Climbing the ladder seems extremely suboptimal to me."
https://twitter.com/spakhm/status/1310583419756187653?s=20
https://twitter.com/spakhm/status/1310584277650739200?s=20
I once played a different game, for about five years. I became really good at it, and I made a lot of money playing it. Like you describe, I was in a modern prison of my own making.
What looks like prison for you can be freedom for someone else
In short, I work in software to get paid well to retire asap. I've never needed work to find fulfillment and growth in life, so I'm never short on motivation because I can't wait to stop having to work.
Regardless, I’m happy you don’t need work to be fulfilled and seem to be on a good path for what you’re after
It's important to distinguish between excelling at X, and excelling at a career in X.
IMO to really excel at a career in X you need passion and career skills. But your passion doesn't have to be in X directly. You can have passion for early retirement, income, or even just competition, and still out-perform most people who do care about X. Per the article, all a contractor has to do is work enough to move up the ladder and I can easily imagine them having their own company and out-earning the passionate contractors within a decade, while I can also see someone passionate at a craft just stagnate because they're happy doing their thing, not realizing that the career side needs work too. And of course, to excel at X itself is its own story. But since we were talking about a career perspective, I just wanted to illustrate how excelling at X itself is irrelevant to someone who's just using X as a means to an end Y, beyond what's needed for career progression.
So I wouldn't agree that motivation for X is a problem for getting to Y. I would see that as a weakness with career skills and not knowing how to utilize motivation for Y itself. But I would say that motivation for X can actually be detrimental for pursuing X itself, for example by being so fixated on pursuing quality that you neglect skills like marketing and networking, which are almost always needed to do anything beyond whatever you can do at home. Being a passionate artist alone usually won't get you far. Being a passionate musician who knows people in the industry can get you gigs in movies, shows, musical events, etc.
And thank you, I also wish you luck in pursuing your goals
This is a really good point. I think people can be so target fixated on one area that they neglect other areas that could actually have a systemic effect of improving their main domain of expertise. You’ve given me some important things to think about
One other perspective:
Yes, the ideologies we subscribe to will highly influence what we see and experience.
However!
You can choose to experiment / experience quite the many ways or living and being in the decades you're likely to he here.
Each day is a new opportunity to act differently if whatever you were doing yesterday doesn't serve you and those around you.
I guarantee you, playing by the rules will not make you happy.
Perhaps not everyone will come to this cynical of a conclusion for themselves, but in my own experience this way of thinking is almost always a false dichotomy. There's no law that says pay vs meaningfulness of the work is a zero-sum trade-off, but a lot of people giving career advice take it as almost a given that this is true. There is exciting work to do and problems to solve in the higher paying, higher levels in a big company (by that I mean, senior or staff engineer, manager or sr manager. I don't have any hands-on experience at the higher executive levels, I'm still chasing those promotions myself). And there are endless things to be frustrated with at the smallest of startups even when there's no bureaucracy or perceivable "office politics" to worry about.
My own takeaway has been, at the end of the day this is still a job. In almost any job I can find positive ways to contribute, opportunities to learn, and make my own self fulfillment. So I might as well do that at the job that pays 3x more.
In tech that difference in pay between a couple of bands of promotions or between a startup and big co, can be absolutely massive. Don't feel bad about chasing the higher paying roles, that increase in income can buy you a lot of optionality. Maybe you can retire early, or take long years of sabbatical in the middle of your career, or devote a year or two to starting your own startup in the future without worrying about not taking a paycheck. This may ultimately be a lot more satisfying than shuffling through low-paying jobs searching for roles where you'll be perfectly happy in spite of that, because you may never find it anyway.
There's also something in between: Work as a means to other ends, not seeking personal fulfilment in one's day job.
All these discussions and articles I read here about career advancement and what not seem so incredibly foreign to me.
I agree with you that it is a game. It isnt a game that I play, but it is a popular game. Denying that many people do this seems like wishful thinking or denial of reality.
The easiest way to see this is the typical corporate track -- you're told that if you work hard, every 2 or 3 yrs you get promoted. You do the math internally in your head and realize you'd get to -- say SVP at age 50. Then you look around and there are a bunch of 35yo SVPs. Once can see that and realize there are shortcuts/cheats in the game, or one can ignore it and hope for advancement (only to get to age 50 and realize it was all for nothing.)
I think what the author provides is of great value -- they are trying to show you a reality you may not see. The value is not to encourage you to do it, but perhaps
- to get you to step off some hamster wheel of death
- to get you to realize you need to be an entrepreneur and your own boss
- to get you to weed out these types of players if you are already an entrepreneur and your own boss
- to get you to find companies where these things are not the case (hint: check out the executive team on Linked In -- are they under qualified? run away from this company. Are they hired from outside rather going up the ranks? be careful)
If I wanted to have a more lasting impact and more reach, I'd have to compete with thousands for a spot somewhere like Yahoo or Google, and again, whatever I was working on would still be scrapped within a year or two.
This is why I dropped out of working for money and started working on my own passion projects. I'm very lucky, because I remember what it was like working on passion projects before I entered the workforce, so I at least knew roughly what I was looking for.
You have to play the game no matter where you are, even foraging in the forest. There's no concept of living life without rules, so might as well embrace the reality and keep it under your control instead of the other way around.
There's a bunch of ways this effect shows up all across life:
"How things start is generally how they continue" (rails feels like rails in basically every part, from the stuff a rank beginner does to diving into the guts for advanced usage)
"This was my last job. Every job was 'my last job'." https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OneLastJob
"A hippy in motion stays in motion, a hippy at rest stays at rest." (the mindset with which you start a thing tends to persist)
And, I don't know if there's a name for it, but the game of Go is legendary for players being able to replay games exactly as long as they can remember the first few moves. If the conditions and players remain the same, why would the game go any differently?
> live in prisons of their own making
I have found nothing more painful or exhausting than fighting oneself; when we hold ourselves back - put ourselves in prisons of our own making - we're both the occupant fighting the bars and the bars fighting the occupant. IMO something like RSI also shows up if you do that long enough.
One way I've found out of it is - and this might sound a little weird - apply a bit of Flatland. A circle is only a wall while you're in 2d; add a dimension (a direction orthogonal to the current ones) and walk around it.
(another way is talk therapy; and meditation trains the "muscles" (and more) that you use for any of this)
While the opportunists leverage the system, their insatiable desire for more headcount makes actual automation and the defeat of drudgery nigh impossible.
That's also where all the intellectually stimulating things happen, there's nothing of interest to a real hacker in upper management. There's only money and status there (and often lots of it), but no real puzzles.
The corporate management players know very well about the one thing they have to avoid - significant failure - thus they will never cross a truly competent person. Their entire career depends on it. Just make sure to push back from time to time to not take too much on your shoulders.
I am not condoning that game, but it's simply not entertaining for a lot of people (myself included).
When the opportunist gets to the top (or is already at the top) and sets the rules to make themselves look good.
When the executives design the KPI's and OKRs around those rules to make their boss look good, themselves look good, and their org shuffle along.
When the directors begin adjusting their own internal metrics to focus on work that makes their boss look good, while at the same time, confusing their subordinates who assume those metrics reflect performance.
In that environment, I've seen the average mid-level manager seriously adopt the posture that article jokingly suggests. They have to for their own survival. If they're not opportunistic, they're out of a job. Their team is out of a job. Even if they know the metrics are misleading or false, or why the meetings don't matter, they're have to fight for attention, or else they risk losing vital resources for the team.
How cancer metastasizes across the organization's body and then becomes the body, would be a really interesting case study to read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Mazes