Comment by redbell
2 years ago
Evaluating someone’s performance, especially, software engineers by non-tech people might produce dramatic results.
Let me tell you a story about a friend of mine, codenamed tommy. Tommy was an IT guy with incredible skills in networking. He moved to an energy company, fully-owned and operated by the government. Just a few weeks from his arrival, they had to rebuild the entire network from scratch with new, modern, equipments as well as extending the network to all the buildings of the company’s headquarters. They started to look for external contractors to outsource this project but Tommy was shocked by the price the financial department was willing to pay to get this work done, obviously, some non-tech people made the estimates. Tommy interrupted the operation and told the appropriate department he can do the work and needs only the physical equipments (routers, switches, cables) and two guys who can do the cabling. They agreed, and he took the challenge and delivered the work as expected within just a few weeks within less than a tenth of the initial budget. All that he got was a ”Thank you, you did good work” oral endorsement by his boss.
What a time to be an IT techie when your boss(es) are just old-school, who will never understand your true value.
He should’ve had a friend make a company and bid for the job. Then, later on, Tommy could be brought on as a contractor for extra pay
Having some knowledge about how such contracts usually go there’s approximately zero chance of him getting it.
It’s not just about potential corruption but also about how risk averse large organizations are. The tender would definitely include revenue, employee count, and potentially other thresholds, as well as require that X such projects have successfully been carried out during the past Y years.
Serious question: isn’t this illegal? Technically the $job was paying $Tommy for his expertise in networking. If $Tommy withheld that expertise and instead entered into a conspiracy with $friend to launder his expertise for more profit from the company, it seems like double dipping.
The only way (I think) $Tommy could have done it cleanly would be to quit and instead start the enterprise with $friend before approaching $job.
Exactly, this one!
In a system that doesn’t have any forms of rewards, this should be a logical path to follow. In fact, Tommy has considered this approach as the way to go from now on but only when he got hit hard by his first experience.
Was Tommy upset?
Absolutely! But after a while he knew why there was no kind of reward whether in the form of a financial compensation, a promotion or even additional days of vacation. Simply because the law of work does not have a section for exceptional performance/achievement.
"fully-owned and operated by the government" - This is the most important reason. For better or worse, gov't jobs are basically not allowed to meaningfully reward exceptional performance. There's just no mechanism for it.
Not to say things like this don't happen in private industry too - it certainly does. But at least you've got a chance. In most companies there is room to meaningfully bonus or promote or otherwise reward exceptional performance. You may or may not get something, but at least you can ask or push for it, and if they want to do it they can.
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must’ve been Tommy’s first rodeo lol
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