Bro, I’m salaried and only really need to work six hours a day. So that’s exactly what I do. My coworkers put in 12-14 hours a day six days a week… We get the same paycheck.
Granted, I’m consistently rated at the bottom of my department by my supervisors, but I’m also the most highly requested employee by our customers. Literally no one else gets requested by name and I have to triage projects.
do you have any other advice? they got us going back to the mines soon with no additional pay, no parking, and no bus passes. so I’m looking to adjust accordingly
Honestly, if you have time and are risk tolerant, going to flight school is a great career at the moment. You take on $200k in debt though.
Why do you think there is so much disparity between your bosses and your clients?
I show up late and leave early and don’t participate in the “work culture” stuff, this makes my employer upset.
I get requested because I’m the best at my job and the customers talk to each other. I’ve had clients from other employees ask to switch to me but that’s not allowed by policy. The best I can do is look at the work they’re receiving and give feedback.
Sounds like shitty management.
It’s crabs in a bucket and they’re mad I won’t get in the water. I’m paid well and they mostly leave me alone. They’ve only once fucked up my career once by bad-mouthing me to a department I tried to transfer to in order to learn a new skill.
Crabs in a bucket makes sense for the staff, but not the management. Management should be judging with outputs in mind.
I’m consistently rated at the bottom of my department by my supervisors
Unless you miss out on raises or promotions because of this or lose your job, this is meaningless. It’s “this will go on your permanent record” but for adults. This is coming from somebody who is pretty proudly the quiet worker who stays around the middle of the pack and does just enough to keep things slightly better than just maintained, so both coworkers and bosses can objectively see that I’m neither making things worse nor just keeping things coasting. And I got a promotion last year, so I guess it’s the right strategy (here, anyway) lol.
Yep, they’re only middle management as far as the company is concerned I’m still competitive for corporate level promotions and my “bad” reputation will stay back in my current office. I’m gunning for a promotion next summer, so hopefully these dingbats will be in my rearview mirror next year.
Good luck and Godspeed! Write down every recent and upcoming success so you can cite objective improvements in your interviews/meetings. Customer feedback will help too. If you have any big clients who can vouch for you personally being the reason that your company kept their business, even better. The only risk there is that they may decide that you’re too valuable in your current role, but you can get ahead of that by pitching that you’ll be able to apply your success to bigger wins in a higher role and guide others to learn how to do what you’ve done. Worst case scenario, you don’t get that promotion but you still have it all compiled for interviews elsewhere. If you want to be at the level of that promotion, you should chase it whether it’s within the company or without! You got this!
See I’m salary but I’m forced to put in 8 hrs a day. Even if I have no work to do. It sucks.
That’s horrible. What’s the point of salary if you have an hourly requirement? That sounds like fake hourly.
The point of Salary is so they don’t have to pay for overtime. The slave labor is the purpose, forcing people to work more than 8 is just a nice little cherry on top ☺️.
Having a one way street that can only work for them seems like some serious bullshit. I’m glad we don’t track our time where I work. If I had mandatory hours I’d insist on hourly rates.
Boom shakalaka. He shoots he scores.
This is the answer. I worked for a company before the law changed where “managers have to work 60 hours a week”. You know why? Because those last 20 hours made them half of what they would have had to pay someone else. Somehow people fell for it though. “It’s a guaranteed paycheck if I git sick. It’ll work out, won’t it?”
Nope.
It ain’t for you boo boo.
“Okay but the guy who goes the extra mile will get a promotion and do better in the long run.” —a guy who has always gone the extra mile, never gotten a promotion and is doing exactly the same as everyone else
I got a new job last year. It was a massive pay cut. 1/3 of what i was making. Skip to the end for a TL/DR.
I hit the ceiling hard at the old job and people i had never worked with or worked with only a handful of times had basically all said i was uncomfortable to work with because of my pace. I’m a walk and talk guy and if i was hired for a job (I’m a long term contact worker) I was usually hired because someone else had started a project and here i am. I was a fuckin one man wrecking crew. I work amazingly well with just about everyone because i find their strengths and weaknesses and immediately (and usually subtly) just start with the weakness, get the ball rolling and by the time there’s momentum they are back in their comfort zone. Aim them and let em go. I work with management, i work with operators and I’ve worked with janitorial staff to solve really shitty problems quickly and mostly painlessly. Apparently that means I’m doing jobs other people should be doing (eg currently and actively employed) which rubs them the wrong way. I’m contact, dgaf. That’s a wall of text bitches.
TL/DR i know it’s easy to say money isn’t everything but it can definitely be a trap that promotes some bad/unsustainable life choices. Recognize its unsustainable and have a plan.
Not true in my experience, both as employee and employer
The guy that does nothing at all and whines until he gets someone else to do it, is also paid the same as you. And will never get fired.
Nah in a lot of cases the guy doing the bare minimum also makes more than you.
He’s a project manager!
Do project managers make decent money? In my field I’ve always been told developers make significantly more.
I would make more as project manager, but I don’t want to be on the phone and write mails with clients all day
When I was in college I learned I liked the idea of coding a lot more than I liked coding. Now I know just enough C++ to be able to translate dev speak into corporates speak and back, can claim to be an engineer, and get to talk to stupid people, who think they are smart, who think that I’m really smart, and I spend more of my day on social media. I had one job that in the six months I was there I think I actually did MAYBE 40 hours of work. If it wasn’t for “business conditions related to COVID-19” I’d probably still work there, though I’m making more, and working somewhat more, now.
I would rather set myself on fire than to look at budgets, billable rates, timesheets, or talk to people.
I’m hardore technically aligned, and far enough along in my career (and at a good enough company) that I can turn down opportunities to PM.
Look at this fat cat who can turn down opportunities over here!
He’s such a dick
May I ask what your field is? I am in software development.
looks around barley, I think? 🤷
Ha. Ha. Ha. Lol, sort of
Every time I’ve been promoted I’ve made more money and done less work. At this rate I’ll be 9-5 on the golf course in a few years making $500k/yr.
Kidding. Golf blows.
Whoa there friend, let’s not disparage the game just because of its association with capitalist pigs and blowhards.
I like mini golf. Good use of land competitively. If CEOs met in the mini golf course I think the world would be in a better place.
More interesting too
Just misses riding the cart
Free golf for everyone!
Can I disparage it for it’s ecological impact?
Fair
The real payment is all the traumas we got along the overtimes
Hah! You got overtime? I just got trama and toxic managers.
In a better spot now, though
At my previous job they had a special term for unpaid overtime: “Professional time”
So glad I’m no longer working there.
“Professional time” sounds like a euphemism for wanking off on the clock.
Unpaid overtime probably (which would be a hard no from me)
We got straight banked time off in-lieu. It was bullshit.
True, but better than the places that expect it for nothing in return
Yeah, that’s a crock. My first corporates job did that to us, and then never approved the paid vacation requests, let-a-lone the banked time-off we were promised for being such good cubicle slaves working above and beyond, and it is all legal because “exempt salary employee”
Hah, cubicle. Not to shit on you, but that would have been much preferable to my situation. Seasonal environmental field work - 300ish hrs a month from May to November
And neither gets enough to cover inflation.
…and the one that puts in the unrecognized effort will eventually punch a hole through several people’s chests…
…but he’ll, like, feel bad about it later.
I get paid way more than my coworkers, and even my supervisor, because when I got hired I immediately made a bunch of random tools in google sheets that only I know how to maintain, and spread them around until everyone was using them. Before long, I was essential to my department, and praised for going “above and beyond” even though I was mostly just dicking around making the tools rather than doing my actual job.
I have 0 coding experience, so the tools are absolutely horrendous behind the scenes, but that just means that they break pretty often, and people are reminded that only I know how to fix them. So, when I went looking around on LinkedIn for other offers after a few years, I eventually got one that was paying way more since it was in a major metro area, and I took it back to my manager to negotiate a 50% raise and a full-remote designation that virtually nobody else in my office is given.
You don’t get ahead by working hard, and you don’t get ahead by working smart to benefit the company, you get ahead by working smart to benefit yourself. Think about it this way - if you’re at the store to buy bananas, and you see that they’re selling bananas for $0.05 ea, you’ll likely think “Wow, that’s a great deal!” and buy a bunch of those bananas at the $0.05 price. You’re not going to pay them the price you think would be fair for a banana, you’re going to take advantage of the price you’re allowed to pay so that you can save money. Your employer sees you - working for less than you’re worth - as a $0.05 banana. You’re nothing more than a cheap commodity they were lucky to snag on sale.
You don’t get ahead by working hard, and you don’t get ahead by working smart to benefit the company, you get ahead by working smart to benefit yourself.
There is a bit too much “my situation fits all” here. Startup vs big corp, private vs government, thoughtful management vs not, etc. Other people will also recognize this mentality. Can’t say “eat the rich” because they only do what’s good for them, then do the same (yes, that’s extreme).
You should benefit the company, and they should benefit you. I take your point to mean this equation should be balanced (which unfortunately it usually isn’t), vs the specific words above.
That’s a fair point. You’re correct that my point is that the equation should be balanced, but you’re understating the reality with the statement “unfortunately it usually isn’t.”
I put in 4 hours of work last week, though my employer thinks I put in 40. In those 4 hours of work I started and finished a project for the company that will earn over $100k in gross profit. It ended up being almost exactly 1.5x my yearly salary. Just by putting in the absolute minimum effort I’m already earning my company more in a week than they pay me in a year. And I don’t even work for a large company. I’d imagine corporate giants have an even greater divide.
I’m not responsible for worrying about whether I benefit the company; most companies have gotten so good at maximizing profits while minimizing costs that even the most layabout worker earns them significantly more money than they cost to employ. My only thought is about how I can do as little as possible while still ensuring management continues to think I’m being productive.
Making yourself indispensable is a great way to never get promoted.
As long as you can get constant raises who cares about a promotion? If you got your job nailed down so much you only need to work like 5 hours a week and from home while getting raises I would turn down any promotion.
Promotion are almost always a trap. If you want a better job change companies!
It looks good on your resume when you apply for the next company, and that’s how you keep getting raises in today’s business environment.
It’s one good thing to have on a resume, sure, but another is the skillset itself. For example, I work with a highly specialized software, so I frequently get messaged with interview offers on LinkedIn because I show up every time employers search for that specific software.
I turned down the promotion they offered me. It was significantly more work, required me to come back to the office, and only offered a 10% pay raise. It doesn’t matter where your “standing” in the company is - if you’re indispensable, you can fight for good pay even outside of managerial roles.
I go the extra mile. It’s not for pay. It’s because I’m stuck at work for 8 hours anyways and I’d rather work than pretend to work.
Yeah I put in enough work to be proud of myself and not bored. I try to focus on skills and projects that are marketable
Eh, going the extra mile is how I went from customer service agent to senior server engineer in 5 years (with the same company).
There’s always a balance between the two, but the most important thing is knowing how to say no without sounding like you’re saying no.
but the most important thing is knowing how to say no without sounding like you’re saying no.
Yeah it’s a lot about how to market yourself to your higher ups. An employee is a commodity and selling commodites is more about marketing than the actual quality of the product. The biggest victims of that system are the introvert ones who do six extra miles but don’t get any recognition
Tell me about it, my inability to recognize my own achievements is almost pathological. Work extra to get a difficult but interesting project out on time then deflect any praise provided after is a sure fire way to never get noticed.
My career has also gone very well in this time period by slacking on my previous job and using the extra time to get my current job. Per minute spent, I think it’s more cost effective to look for a new job. Companies hate loyalty now.
I don’t even sugar coat the “no” anymore. When the next company calls, all they’re going to share is how long I worked there.
Here’s a Venn Diagram:
(me) [alienation] (my labor)
Eh going the extra mile is how I got so burned out I had to quit a job for the sake of my physical and mental health.
Did I get promoted? Hell no. Never did. The boss’s wife sure did though.
Yes I’m aware you said balance but I just had to share why I’m currently trying not to care anymore. Note I said trying, I’m really terrible at not giving everything to every project I’m in.
It is entirely job dependent. I have been in jobs where it was just a grind and going the extra mile simply put a smile on my boss’s face. In jobs like these the best thing you can do is carve out as many hours as possible during the work week to build new skills or apply to other jobs. I’ve also been in jobs where going the extra mile directly contributed meaningful skills to my resume/portfolio and helped me get a new job with way better pay.
I’ve been in this game for a good bit now and while I’ve seen a bunch of go getters put in ridiculous hours and slave away and actually get promoted, I have seen faaaaaaar more just get promoted for being in the right place at the right time or, most times, being the child, spouse, in-law, or friend of someone high up in the company. In my experience your social standing or just plain luck accounts for about 90% of it. The other 10% isn’t the work you do, it’s the work they think you do.
that’s capitalist bullshit
that’s why I outsource the work to other parts of the world for a cheaper price. They will do it better, cheaper, faster and won’t whine about.
Exploitation, yeah!
As if either employee is the problem. Blame the fucking aristocrats shorting both of their paychecks
Go the extra mile, not working but bootlicking your boss and you’ll ascend faster.
Going the extra mile is a good way to never get promoted because you are too valuable in your current position.
