Comment by ljm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ljm | Hacker News Reader

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Good management and leadership is also hard to quantify because it's a bidirectional relationship. The best manager in the world is going to struggle with a direct report who doesn't want to play ball, but will do a fantastic job with those who nurture the relationship or are trying to find their feet in their career. A poor manager isn't going to succeed with either of those people.

I find the author's dry sense of humour quite amusing, and I feel for them because I've been there. Most of us have been there I expect. I would say that feeding this mindset is likely to lead to burnout in the long term.

A lot of these issues are as inevitable as they are utterly confounding and at some point in your career I think you need to find that sweet spot where you can do your best work without having to push back too hard against the organisation. If you can manage to find that peace of mind then you're golden, and if you're lucky you can stay in a positive mindset or at least delay the onset of Jaded Greybeard Syndrome.

Every talented junior and mid hits this wall at some point. This is where a new mindset and new skills have to be acquired: moving with the whole company in the same direction and improving it from the inside. Pointing out inefficiencies is important, but more important is how you do it and to who. It's easy to complain, it's hard to act accordingly.

But why should any of us bother picking up new skills and adjusting mindsets if the author has to fight for a raise after saving the company $500k?

Secondarily, why should the author continue to fix things like this when they don't benefit, but others responsible are also not facing any consequences?

Well, this is an internal driver. A person has it or not. (Just like technicall skills but in a different area.)

If you do it for yourself, that's great, but you should withhold the benefits of that from the company if they aren't going to reward you for being better.

I don't expect any reward, praising or eternal glory. I'm paid for doing the job. At some level, and to get to that level, doing a contract minimum is not enough.

Your skills and mindset are going to help boost your career when it comes time to find a new position. It's not really for your employer's benefit, but your own, and the job is just a convenient way for you to learn some new things for yourself rather than doing it at home.

Loyalty to a company isn't rewarded today the way it used to be, so you just have to take that experience to a company with a better proposition at some point.

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