Unpleasant Truths About Work
INTRODUCTION
Our daily work has many unwritten truths that often feel unfair and unpleasant. We know this is not how things should be. So we avoid these truths, we do not talk about them, we hide them, we deny them, we pretend.
The main purpose of this article is to share with you these hidden pitfalls, so you protect yourself from a tremendous amount of unnecessary psychological pain. I want to arm you with this knowledge so you can instead do meaningful impactful work, be paid fairly, or game the system.
DISCLAIMER
This article is interested in the common patterns that usually happen. This article is not about how ideally things should be. This article also recongnizes that every common pattern has exceptions and your experience may vary.
The truths here apply best to big companies that manage the flow of millions of dollars. If you work on a personal project, a cooperative, a family business or a small startup, you may be an exception.
DATA SIZE MATTERS
This article started as a list of observations from personal experience but is currently backed by the feedback of numerous colleageus from numerous companies. Key contributors to this articles are managers on Director position or higher.
ALMOST NO-ONE WILL FORGIVE YOU IF YOU CRITICISE THEM
We may talk about personal growth and accountability and maturity and professionalism, blah blah blah, but deep down, underneath the fluff, we are all emotional insecure animals.
If you criticize a colleague, especially in direct language, especially in front of other people, usually you make an enemy.
DO NOT JUMP OVER YOUR BOSS
If you talk with the boss of your boss, especially about the work of your boss, he will not like that. He may not talk about it or retaliate immediately, but it will make a strong negative impression.
CONNECTIONS ARE EVERYTHING
Your salary depends on the amount / value / necessity of the work you can do. But this has a different meaning than you may expect. In companies with multiple teams, cross-team collaboration is an exceptionally difficult task. For almost all tasks you depend on other people, from multiple teams, but getting their collaboration is mind blowingly slow and hard, harder than writing cool code.
It may take a grunt like me a few weeks of negotiations to get the information and credentials I need, in order to do a task that may boil down to a few lines of code. Or I may have numerous blockers and clearing them may require the help from other teams which may require weeks of negotiations.
My competency matters, of course, but my competency may need weeks to do a task, where the connections of my Director may need hours to do the same task. He just knows who to ask and has the authority to get what he wants.
As you rise in the ranks of your company, you get authority. Authority contributes strongly to your connections. Your connections determine what impact you can make. Your salary depends on your impact (your connections). Your competency matters, but less
THE SYSTEM DOES NOT CARE IF YOU LIKE IT OR NOT
What if you do not want to be a manager? What if you do not want to deal with politics? What if you just love tech and want to write really cool code? Well, the system does not care if you like it or not. Why? The truths here are results of cognitive and behavioral psychology, deeply rooted in our subconscious. We are only human, after all.
If you are a responsible and competent grunt, but without connections in the company, you are fodder, meat, (easily) replaceable
Instead, if you want to be someone who affects important / impactful work and be paid accordingly, you need to rise in rank.
The truths here are ugly. I do not like them. I do not endorse them. In fact I am disgusted by some of them. I feel tainted. No, the system does not care.
SOME PROBLEMS ARE NOT WORTH FIXING
As engineers, we are often tech and result driven. So this truth is very counter-intuitive to us. We understand that sometimes a fix may require so much time and money that it is prohibitively expensive. But this is just the smaller piece of the puzzle
There is a key reason why managers will sometimes ignore critical problems
Fixing a problem may burn political capital (favours). It may burn connections. You may need to get into a bad conflict in order to get something done or (maybe unknowingly) you may step on someone’s toes.
If fixing a problem burns connections, it is not worth doing. Connections are more valuable, your primary asset.
CONNECTIONS ARE NOT FRIENDSHIPS
Sometimes we grow fond of people we work with, so I need to make this clear. Connections are not friendships. Connections are people who love or need to work with you, who would do shit for you because they love or fear you, whom you would do shit for in order to extract value later. Please note the word ‘love’ is used twice in the previous sentence. You do not need to be an asshole to play this game successfully. It just so happens it is invaluable for some strategies.
WHAT MAKES YOU A CHEATER IS GETTING CAUGHT
Climbing in ranks, you will have opportunities to be a bastard in order to achieve your goals. You may lie, cheat, follow various unethical practices. As long as you are efficient and bring more money into the company, many bosses will keep a blind eye and some will even encourage you. Don’t get caught.
PEOPLE ARE RARELY FIRED
I have often heard from my boss that he would not hire a particular person but would also not fire him either. Unless catastrophically incompetent, people are rarely fired. This means that if you escalate a conflict with someone, even if you are right, you create an enemy. Enemies create other enemies. Chances are these enemies will stay in the company and even turn into dependencies.
This also means that you should be extra careful who you hire.
DEPENDENCIES ARE THE OPPOSITE OF CONNECTIONS
Dependencies are people who you need to collaborate with in order to do your job. Imagine you need the help of a colleague from another team. Maybe that person is the only one knowledgeable about a particular code piece. If you do not like each other, he will not help you willingly. He may just happen to be busy. So you need to ask your boss to push his boss. Bosses do not consider this a normal part of their responsibilities. Bosses consider this you wasting their time. This is why dependencies are dangerous for your growth.
If connections are assets, dependencies are liabilities.
YOUR BOSS IS DANGEROUS
A natural consequence of all this talk about connections and dependencies is that you must make sure your boss is not an enemy. Imagine you are right and he is wrong. Not just wrong, he may be an evil bastard that fucks the company. If your boss is your enemy, your best case scenario is you are not fired, but your career growth is dead.
STAND YOUR GROUND
Imagine you think the system is vile and you will not follow its rules. Imagine you want to be the good guy, the hero, the altruist. You want to have friends, to help colleagues, to be accountable, to make compromises. You want everyone to be happy.
Cool, this makes you a person I would like to work with. But there is a catch. Inevitably your decisions will be challenged by people around you. In your effort to be the good guy everyone loves, maybe you say YES too often, you avoid conflict, you allow to be pushed around, you forgive everything.
What happens if you do not stand your ground?
Everyone, but especially people under your management, on some subconscious level, consider this as weakness, unreliability, cowardice. People will not value you as a connection and will turn into dependencies.
Everyone dies, but angels die first.
MANAGERS THINK IN PERCENTAGES
Most companies have a default percent for annual raise. If you do an excellent job, you will get the default, lets say, 5% increase. Imagine your base salary is X and my base salary is 5X. I do an excellent job and get the default 5%. You do an amazing job, exceed all expectations and impress everyone. You will get the rare super-boosted 10% increase. You will most likely not get it the next year, because it is kind of impossible to exceed all expectations all the time. My 5% from 5X is a lot more than your 10% from X. No-one will care how humble and modest you were when you negotiated your salary when being hired.
WOMEN ARE PAID LESS THAN MEN
I am not a feminist, but women are indeed paid less than men. There is a very strong reason for it. It is not sexism, it is much simpler. Not always, but on average men are just better at playing this game of being ruthless, cold hearted, emotionless, calculating.
Is this fair? No.
Is this good? No.
Is there something we can do about it? No, system doesn’t care, remember.
Is this something to be proud of? Of course not, but the average person prefers to cry about how unfair and cruel life is from a luxury house than a homeless shelter.
THESE TRUTHS CONTRADICT ONE ANOTHER
Yes. You need to balance them.
YOU CAN BE HAPPY
This article is dark. The good news is that you can be happy. Work in a big company to save some cash. Make a personal project. Write the cool code you always wanted. Make a small company. Keep it small, a few friends, nothing more. You will not make a lot of money. You will not make a huge impact. You will not be the hero. But you will keep your sanity and your integrity. Most importantly, you will keep the True Love that fills your heart with passion.
Fuck the system.
