Comment by lan321

Comment by lan321 2 days ago

I feel this is more true in the sense that when they don't care about money you can get them below market value and not that they are better. I find the most valuable employees to be the financially literate ones. The ones who're constantly thinking about the money aspect.

'Will we get more customers?' 'Will they be more likely to stay with us?' 'Are we screwing ourselves out of sales by offering to host a server for remote control on the PC connected to the tool, even though it's cool and we can implement it in a week?'

I'm more on the 'do it because it's cool' side and have had to be wrangled a couple times with such questions since what makes interesting work for myself often doesn't align with client needs or hurts sales, as stupid as it might be.

raw_anon_1111 2 days ago

I have had 10 jobs over 30 years and I am now at only the third company where I gave two shits about the company’s success or saw it more than just a stepping stone to my n+1 company.

I agree with you completely. They can just keep giving me cost of living raises and respect my experience and opinions (not saying they always have to go along with them) and I will be the last person here if they shut the lights off.

I work in a consulting company where I lead projects and I have an almost obsessive commitment to seeing the customer happy within the constraints of our contract that I wouldn’t even think I was capable of earlier in my career.

I pay close to attention to my employer’s goals and strategies and stay aligned. I lurk in our sales Slack channel and care very much about how I can add revenue even though I know it wont make but a little difference in my comp.

FWIW: the other two companies I cared about deeply were startups where my opinion was respected and they gave me more autonomy than I could have ever expected. The first I was leading a project for their largest customer and the second a decade later I was just kind of thrown the reigns of our cloud architecture strategy even though I had no experience at the time.

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godelski 2 days ago

I think that's an important thing to note here, where the loyalty lies. Viewing from the lens of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy it's clear you're loyal to the goals of the company more than the organization of company. Which in that case yes, I agree those are the best employees

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- raw_anon_1111 2 days ago
  
  You just made me do a deep dive on “Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy”.
  I had to think about this. The three companies I’ve actually cared about were those that I had already “won” the organizational rat race within my definition of winning. The first I was leading their largest project only because near the end, they had laid everyone else off. “Winning” was staying employed until the market picked back up after 2009. The company went out of business late 2011. I stayed until the bitter end and then did a contract with the customer that I had been working with.
  The second I was already the de facto cloud architect and I “threatened” my CTO that I would quit if they ever made me a team lead. I only got that because I volunteered for the initiatives and I stuck to it until I figured out what I was doing and did a lot of research. The company only had 60 people at its height including project managers, managers, QA, analysts, sales and developers.
  The current company, I’m already at the top IC level and have the highest bill rate as a US based consultant. I was bought in at that level. I’ve repeatedly asked my manager what my goals should be a s he said basically - keep making the customers happy and bringing in money through being billable.
  The others I was a cog in the wheel and would have had to play the politics game to get ahead. I’ve always sucked at that.
  
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