Comment by crazygringo
1 month ago
> Somehow the idea of going to work and not trying your best
You make a great point -- let me further explain so I'm not misunderstood.
If the person is putting in the same 40 hrs/wk (or whatever is standard) but just "doing their best", then there's no problem.
But in my experience, your manager is expecting you to do all of your assigned role (e.g. write code), but then also do a bunch of stuff on top -- e.g. leading and taking ownership of new initiatives that is extra work. Usually something like 10-20 hours' worth per week. And so now people are working evenings and weekends to get that promotion, spending less time with their family. And a lot of them still don't get the promotion. For years, or even ever. This is all free labor for the company. They get away paying for a team of 4 instead of a team of 5.
That's what I'm pushing back on. In practice, it's rarely doing your existing work but better -- it's doing a bunch of extra work that takes more time. Because nobody ever says "hey show that you can take on these new responsibilities, and so do less of your original responsibilities".
Contrast this to actually being promoted, where some of your previous responsibilities are now actually delegated to others, because your job is now focused more on higher-level design and/or management.
I don't think that's how it works. Otherwise, a level 3 engineer would be working 40 hours a week but 4 engineer would be working 60 hours a week, which isn't the case.
These additional things a senior does that a junior doesn't aren't "write more code", they're "coordinate with people outside your team more", "be more self-directed", "be more reliable", etc. Things which don't take more time, but which juniors don't do.
> But in my experience, your manager is expecting you to do all of your assigned role (e.g. write code), but then also do a bunch of stuff on top -- e.g. leading and taking ownership of new initiatives that is extra work.
Aside from AWS, who's famously bad at this, my experience is that this is usually because people want a faster career push.
Imagine Jim, 8 years into his career. Jim is pretty good and his work takes him 30-40 hours a week. If he worked another 5 years in the same role it'd probably drop to 20 and be chill.
Jim wants to get promoted. If he waited the 5 years he could do it working 40 hours a week. But he wants it now, and since he's not as good as he will be he needs to work 60. What does Jim do? He works the 60.
There's nothing wrong with this choice, I made it, I'm happy with my choice. I might make it again in the future, or not.
> There's nothing wrong with this choice [to work extra hours to get promoted].
But if there are limited slots for promotion, and that's generally always the case, the resulting competition among deserving engineers makes the extra hours more or less mandatory. Say that Amy is a better engineer than Jim and gets a third more done per hour. If Jim puts in 60 hours instead of the expected 40, then Amy isn't going to beat him for a slot unless she also starts working extra hours.
In the end, promotion becomes more about grinding than being effective. That's not great for company culture or retention of top talent.
That doesn't make the promotion more about grinding because the company doesn't care about how much work you get done in a set unit of time compared to other employees in the same set unit of time. The company cares about how much you get done, period.
If the only differentiating factor between Amy and Jim is quantity of work done (this is never the case in real life), most companies will prefer a Jim that works 60 hours to an Amy that works 40 if Jim is producing 5% more.
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