Comment by redbell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by redbell | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

must’ve been Tommy’s first rodeo lol

And how would an experienced cowboy handle this situation?

Drag the work out for years and fuck around while collecting a paycheck commensurate with the work completed. Let the company hire the outside contractor.

Then leave, become an outside contractor and you can be the benefactor.

Save exceptional work for small companies that will reward it or your own startup.

If it’s a small company your energy is better spent ingratiating yourself to the inner circle, which doesn’t necessarily entail being effective.

1. Do the thing they pay you to do, keep your head down and watch the company light money on fire. Bonus points if after the project is inevitably late, you step in to "help" and save the day.

2. Start a consultancy company and overcharge clients to do this work.

3. Realize that many companies will not reward you for your efforts as you expect and go back to 1

While you are consultant, #3 is different. You start charging more for more bullshit mini projects which could be part of the main project. Especially for IT, it is just a whatever-you-can-stick game. I know companies doing stuff like creating 10 page proposals just for replacing a switch. Managers feel smarter when they get charged a lot for some reason.

The manager is also playing the game. Every manager has a manager, too. The n-level manager just deals with n-1 type of metrics and information.

If you're just looking at numbers, something that costs $$$ is "harder to do" than something that costs $$. Any consultant that costs $$$ provides better work (Why would I have paid $$$ if the work wasn't better? Why would anyone charge $ to give the some quality?)

Do the work you’re assigned to do and don’t go looking for new work.

Or ask for more work and don’t be surprised when you do or don’t get rewarded for it.

"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.

This doesn't happen at FAANG either, absolutely nothing to do with gov't

Sure they do, you just haven't demonstrated that exceptional performance.

Going rate for breakthrough performance is $10K, ask the GitHub Copilot guy, and read my bio

>For better or worse, gov't jobs are basically not allowed to meaningfully reward exceptional performance.

Neither do private companies. The measurement becomes the goal. And that measurement often has nothing to do with legitimate performance.

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