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Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

Just FYI. I had a friend that had a similar issue.

In his case, he was deliberately thrown at an underperforming team, because his boss knew he was (still is) a “fixer.” He can Get Stuff Done.

It worked. He got the underperforming team into shape.

He no longer works for that company, but that was because Amazon tossed a big bag of money at him, and hired him away. His old company would gladly hire him back.

Might want to consider that. May very well not be the case, here.

I just remember my friend saying almost exactly the same thing. In his case, he brought his concerns to his manager, who explained what was going on.

The reward for good work, is more work.

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This can be a great opportunity, but it can also be a trap. I was labeled a "fixer" at a past job, I was the one who Got Stuff Done, and so I was hand-balled a succession of train wrecks to fix, while the people creating the train wrecks continued blissfully on, train wrecking every new project they got their hands on. They, of course, had plenty of time to advocate for themselves and got to work on every interesting new project coming through, while I was flat out attempting to remediate their previous shenanigans.

This may be true, but remember that my friend also got hired by Amazon, after a year or two of "fixing."

"Fixers" are incredibly valuable, and only a moron manager would squander them (sadly, there are a lot of terrible managers out there).

I remember watching an episode of the new American version[0] of HPI[1], and thinking that it is a SciFi story, because her manager is a smart, fair woman that believes in her, has her back, and takes personal risks on her behalf.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26748649/

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14060708/

It's not good enough just to be the fixer, your friend has the skill to advocate for themselves even to the degree of impressing an uninitiated third party. IMO the parent comment sounds like they're not doing this yet.

It's also up to their managers.

Bad managers can destroy or hamper just about anyone's career. I've seen exactly that, many times.

There are a ton of bad managers out there. For some reason, they never seem to have to account for their terrible performance.

I suspect that bad management may just be the single biggest issue in tech (and many other industries), today. Much as everyone wants to rag on managers, good ones can make a huge difference.

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