[SassyGrapefruit]

I travelled to Yellowstone National Park. I wandered into the back country office and spoke with the ranger. She was super friendly and informative. One interesting fact she shared is that Yellowstone is almost 4,000 sq. miles and receives 5 million visitors a year. 99.9% of those visitors never travel more than 50 feet from the main road. This means that most of those visitors experience less than 1/10th of 1% of the actual park.

Why do I bring this up? Because this is how most worker's experience their organization. Stay in your lane, get that promotion, best case you get your boss's job. But how did that job come to be? Who setup the training that you took? Most people can't even describe where the money in their business comes from.

It is a tremendous advantage to explore your organization fully. Visit its other offices and learn what your colleagues do and why they do it. Especially as an engineer. You can literally write your own ticket. Last year I was bored and I started to break down our cloud spend. This took me on a little detour. That detour involved a team that was following a process I could not understand. Turns out they didn't understand it either. I little reorganization yielded a $385,000/yr cost optimization. It took me just a couple days. Chances are you swim in a sea of complacency too.

[nixpulvis]

But just like at state parks, tread lightly.

I've gotten in trouble before while exploring and then being accused of putting my nose where it shouldn't be. It can look like you're wasting your time looking for distractions, or trying to dig up dirt. Not everyone in all parts of your company is going to like you poking around. You also risk picking up new responsibilities if people catch wind that you might be offering help. This can be the start to a promotion and also a good way to just make your days longer for no additional compensation. Not all managers will respond to the leverage of cross department work you took on yourself, though they probably should.

That said, if you do it well, which is an art of it's own. I agree, the potential benefits outweigh the risks.

[idopmstuff]

Agree 100% with this - I think in general people really like to talk about what they do, so if you come to them with an attitude of curiosity, they'll teach you a ton. I've had maybe a dozen people over my career ask me about what a PM does/how to become one, and I'm always happy to chat about it. In a few cases, I was able to get that person some involvement with the PM team (as an example, a couple were in customer support and became the support/PM liaison, who would present all the data on trends in customer issues to us biweekly).

But you do have those empire-building types who see everyone as trying to encroach on their turf. If you run into too many of those, I'd honestly suggesting looking for a new job - companies where a lot of people have that kind of attitude tend to be both not great to work at and also less than successful in the long run.

[HWR_14]

My friend got fired from his job for sticking his nose in other departments. Which is very strange because his boss told him to look at transferring into another department because he would have to transfer in the next six months or get fired. And the department he stuck his nose into offered him a lateral job. But because he failed to keep the bosses of each department apprised of where he was in the process, he trod on some toes and got fired before the lateral position could become official and it had to be an internal hire. Total mess.

[fsckboy]

the superficial way it played out isn't necessarily the reason, could have been on the chopping block already, and then whoever wanted him there found their excuse

[ThePowerOfFuet]

Sounds like a toxic workplace to me.

[dsq]

Unsurprising, as the standard workplace is toxic, otherwise WFH would not be so popular.

[doubleg72]

I doubt WFH is so popular solely because all workplaces are toxic. A toxic workplace is one like that at American Radium in first half of 20th century, or the building of transcontinental railroad, or Hoover Dam, or Mt Rushmore.

[dsq]

If I had to compare the standard modern workplace (I've been at a few) with the building of the railroads, of course I’d prefer the standard. Sitting n AC pressing keys is better than being crushed by stones or heavy metal bars, all in scorching heat.

[megablast]

> My friend got fired from his job for sticking his nose in other departments.

This is way too little information to be meaningful.

Was he walking around talking to people in different departments about what they need, was he stealing paper from people's desks at night time when wandering around the building. Who knows.

[HWR_14]

I mean, I had hoped the context made it apparent by explaining that he messed up the politics. He actively talked with people in other departments about what they needed during the work day, tried to help them and later inquired about lateral transfers into their departments.

[zhynn]

I had a teacher who was a ranger in yellowstone park. He would illustrate the danger of straying off the trail with this anecdote: Rangers are not allowed to wear polyester socks (or any socks made with synthetic fibers) because the geothermal activity in the park can change unexpectedly and yesterdays safe meadow could hide an unexpected layer of boiling mud without warning.

Unless you are one of the few people experienced with back-country trekking in active geothermal areas, stick to the roads and trails.

If you are unfortunate enough to be stranded in yellowstone, follow fresh game trails. They will be less likely to lead through boiling mud. On the other hand, the wildlife is unpredictable due to the massive population of stupid tourists.

Yellowstone is dangerous. Stay on the trails and roads unless you know what you are doing. And you probably don't know what you are doing.

[serjester]

I think this far more likely is influenced by your demeanor going into it. If you come off as arrogant or condescending people will rightfully be skeptical of your intentions. They'll assume you're trying to micro manage them and obviously you'll get pushback.

On the other hand if you come off as genuinely interested in what other people are doing with no ulterior motives, 95% of the time you'll get warm feedback. I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone that'd react confrontationally to a middle schooler asking about their job. Why? Because their intentions are innocent.

[eastbayjake]

Asking "how can I be helpful?" is a huge unlock: almost everyone has too much to do and not enough time, and thus almost everyone will welcome help from someone else. (And if the way you're "poking your nose in other departments" is perceived as value-destructive instead of helpful, that is probably the root cause.)

[circlefavshape]

Gotta say I've heard "how can I be helpful" once too often from people trying to poke their clueless noses in my business. Just asking about what I'm working on is totally fine though

[circlefavshape]

Or more accurately ... I've heard "how can I be helpful" too often from one particular person who is invariably the opposite of helpful, and now if anyone else says it I'm instantly suspicious

[runnerup]

Or heard it as a criticism -- the underlying implication that one is struggling.

[2b3a51]

Just an observation: decades ago in industrial companies of some size it was the practice to move newly hired managers around systematically for (say) the first 5 years so they could see how the whole company worked.

[sebzim4500]

That only makes sense when people expect employees to stick around though, in today's market you would expect the vast majority of people to not finish the 5 year program yet alone show any benefits from it.

[2b3a51]

Sadly you are probably correct.

Perhaps that is the problem (at least with some sectors: a close friend's partner's daughter has worked as a civil engineer with a couple of employers for a couple or three decades now - she can show you the roads she planned and managed the building of)?

[blowski]

Exactly. Be humble and eager to learn, but recognise others may be suspicious of your motives anyway.

Also, don’t be that engineer that tells all the other departments what they’re doing wrong, having done a couple of Udemy courses.

[pixl97]

Also don't be afraid to play dumb if it's something you partially understand. Helpful people will teach you more and suspicious people will more often feed you BS.

[mixmastamyk]

I used to attempt this often as well. Had a few minor wins, but typically I was met with polite indifference, told it was their department. Which is fortunately better than active sabotage.

One group was even bewildered I was able to integrate a department client app with their ticket database. Reduced necessary clicks by 95% or so. They didn't think it was possible. Yes, this is the caliber of folks working at a big corporation.

[samtho]

This is a good counterpoint (while not necessarily discouraging cross pollination). I ask parallel teams that I work with how best I can help them, which leads me into learning a lot about the different facets of the business. My experience with approaching this with curiosity and empathy will yield a more welcoming environment to learn more about the things you are not familiar with yet as you are clearly not being threatening and actually looking to build a working relationship that both of you benifit from.

This also goes both ways. I also offer to help people to learn more about my side of the organization, going as far as being a mentor. A former coworker, with whom I am still friends with today, I met at a previous role where she was in marketing but wanted to know more about the development side, having had no prior experience. I was able to get her started in software engineering. Fast forward 6 years, she’s now the lead automations engineer for a marketing company.

[93po]

I had this happen to me too. I started researching a solution for a different department and was told to stop and get back to my own work.

[bmitc]

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't wander off the path in Yellowstone due to the fact that there are grizzlies, wolves, and other such fauna.

[geph2021]

   Most people can't even describe where the money in their business comes from.

I find this quite remarkable, and does not match my experience. Every company I've worked for, from startups to Fortune 500, it was very clear what products the engineers contributed to, and what that product portfolio revenue stream looked like, and what it meant to the business (right down to the product margins). For startups, pre-revenue, at least the "TAM" (total available market) that the product was targeting, and/or expected revenue projections were openly/regularly discussed.

[hinkley]

I feel like I have to disagree, on the grounds that many companies mistakenly label indirect profit centers as 'cost centers' and end up cutting off their noses to spite their faces. They strangle R&D and get outclassed in the market. They strangle infrastructure and get nasty surprises that tarnish their reputation.

And then there's mistaking users for customers. If you're a McDonald's customer you might think their money comes from trading hamburgers for cash, and you'd be wrong on any number of fronts. If you're a McDonald's competitor, you would know that they make more money from fries, and way more money from selling soda (hence the discount for a meal). But if you're the McDonald's corporation, you know that you make most of your money from franchisees, who happen to sell burgers and fries and oceans of soda. You're providing logistics and real estate acumen for most of your money. The general public is their customer's customer.

I don't know if they still do but Burger King used to 'steal' McDonald's real estate acumen by building Burger Kings as close to the nearest McDonald's as they could manage. Let them get 10% or whatever higher profits by getting the correct corner lot in the right neighborhood instead of the incorrect lot in the right neighborhood, meanwhile we save tons of money on market research.

[SassyGrapefruit]

This is exactly what I'm talking about. It can surprising why a business actually exists. It can be counterintuitive(i.e. the mcdonald's is actually a real estate company conundrum). Even the "Product Engineer" guy who can probably talk up a storm about the financials of what he is doing, but in a Fortune 500 business does he really understand how that rolls up to the company's strategy? Is it a side line, is the landscape in transition and this is a existential hail mary? At one point facebook made no money, then they made all their money from placement ads, last I checked they made it from video interstitials. Of their 50,000 employees how many really know the revenue breakdown and how it has changed over time

[kridsdale1]

I used to work there. At one point, I guess the worker population got large enough that they calculated the odds of insider trading or leaking data got too big (I think they were right) and nearly everyone lost access to the dashboards that would give insight into that kind of question. Despite this, the FEC enforced trading windows persisted.

[learningmore]

Really digging your insights. Do you have a blog or newsletter? I’d love to ask you to present to Product Managers at our org. Would you get in touch? @charlesw on twitter.

[mindcrime]

Every company I've worked for, from startups to Fortune 500, it was very clear what products the engineers contributed to, and what that product portfolio revenue stream looked like, and what it meant to the business (right down to the product margins).

This sounds quite remarkable to me, and definitely does not match my experience. I've found that most engineers have an incredibly vague notion - at best - of how their companies make money. And it is, IME, a vanishingly small set of engineers who would ever use terms like "product portfolio revenue stream", or "total addressable market", etc. And discussing revenue projections?!?? All I can say is, you've worked with some folks who do things very differently than the folks I've worked with!

[ghaff]

I'd be a bit surprised if a sizable portion of engineers at a public company didn't have at least a rough notion of how their companies make money. It's right there in the quarterly and annual earnings reports. (And while reading SEC filings at a very detailed level is a skill you need to learn, the basics are pretty straightforward.) But maybe a lot of engineers just can't be bothered by any of that stuff. <shrug>

What is almost certainly true is that a lot of engineers as well as people in a lot of other groups can't conceive of why the company needs all those people in digital marketing or finance or partner management or ...

[mediaman]

My experience (not specifically with engineers) is that very, very few people read the 10K, 10Q or other public statements of the company they work for.

A friend of mine used to be a management consultant for one of the big firms. On one memorable project she worked with senior executives of a large ($1b + revenue) non-tech company that had retained the consulting firm, to do an operational diagnostic. It became incredibly clear that many of these senior execs had never really read the company's financial statements in any detail, that they did not understand that the company was cash flow negative, and that they did not know that the company's debt load was increasing over time as it financed losses with bond issuances.

At the same time they were spending incredible amounts of money on luxurious office furniture and trappings.

Stories like this were common. Most managers knew their area, but did not learn about the business more broadly. (Could be selection bias with firms that hire management consultants!)

So, kudos to the engineers who read these and have a rough idea of their company's financial position and how the business works. It's not clear that this is the median experience.

[kridsdale1]

It may be the case that those managers had no reason to care about the health of the company as long as they were able to extract personal short term value before it all blew up. I think that applies to most tech company employees over the last 15 years.

[ghaff]

And admittedly the company I work for has monthly company meetings including quarterly ones that coincide with earnings. Certainly not everyone attends or watches the recording but they lay out results in a very digestible (and not tailored for external audiences) way.

[HWR_14]

I honestly doubt most people investing their savings in companies read their quarterly reports, let alone most engineers who work for them.

[nitwit005]

> IME, a vanishingly small set of engineers who would ever use terms like "product portfolio revenue stream", or "total addressable market"

I'd agree they don't know those terms, but people do generally grasp the concepts.

People do present financials at all hands meetings. I've certainly discussed the revenue projections with people, because we all found them hopelessly optimistic. Flat line suddenly increases exponentially for no reason.

[satvikpendem]

If you've worked in startups before and then go on to big companies, you will have learned those terms, so it just depends on where your fellow engineers are coming from.

[mindcrime]

Still doesn't match my experience. Even in the startups I've worked for, engineers did not concern themselves with those kinds of details. Maybe it's a factor of just how early in the lifecycle a startup is when engineers join. Perhaps somebody who is there "day 0", before the first round is even raised, or maybe just a seed round, has a different perspective than somebody who joins after a C round or what-have-you.

[satvikpendem]

They didn't, but they should. Every employee should know how the business works, generally at least.

[mindcrime]

They didn't, but they should.

Absolutely.

[hinkley]

Or it's just damned uncomfortable.

I don't think Microsoft could just make Windows and Office and survive this long. So if you're not on those teams your chances of actually making money directly instead of being expensive advertising dollars are negligible.

Similarly if you're not working on adtech at Google. Your job doesn't actually make money. If you think about it too much you might not be that happy with how your life is going.

[kridsdale1]

I work at Google on user facing product. I’m aware that my job is to make people like going to our website enough that they make searches for things that are sometimes ads. It’s the same as writing for a sitcom on tv. My whole purpose is to attract people with entertainment so they can be suggested to engage in some commercial activity.

[SassyGrapefruit]

Maybe specifically for product engineers, but does that extend beyond the specific product that engineer is working on. Do you think a network engineer knee deep in a data center knows the margins on all the products? I don't work for a fortune 500 but our revenue scheme and capital structure are complex. I could not profess to understand it in its entirety. We receive revenue from our products, managed services and support, one-off revenue streams, channel/revenue sharing arrangements, consulting, and on and on. This is for a lowly $120 million a year business look at a F500 earning $6 billion and I think it becomes opaque pretty quickly.

I think the majority of employees in most business do not have much visibility into the financial machine that justifies their existence.

[KineticLensman]

> Every company I've worked for, from startups to Fortune 500, it was very clear what products the engineers contributed to

I joined a company that was a privatised spin-off from a large civil service organization. A new CEO interviewed each department head, asking them how their accruals were doing this FY. A couple, allegedly, said 'Our what?' and were immediately shown the door.

The next CEO, by the way, asked 'how many engineers do we have?'. The inability to answer that also led to some corporate soul-searching and eventually some major re-orgs.

[atorodius]

Out of curiosity, what are accurals and FY?

[ghaff]

FY = fiscal year

accruals: Larger companies especially do accounting on an accrual basis. So what most matters is when the service was delivered or the product sold--not when the cash was received. (Large companies care about cash flow too but cash is king at small companies.)

Basically what's being asked is "In what ways does our cash balance not reflect our income and expenses?" Perhaps more common would be ask about bookings but accruals is broader.

[HWR_14]

Is it asking for the discrepancy between cash and accrual accounting (which seems to be what you stated) or is it asking what they are booking in accrual revenue?

This is one of those annoying things where I can talk about either concept, but don't know the language that serves as a proof of competency.

[ghaff]

It probably requires some context based on the metrics that matter to a specific business. I'm not sure someone would ask the question that way where I am. (Not in finance, so may be wrong, but have been at numerous business reviews.)

Purely from the outside, I'd guess that yes they're asking for the discrepancy. Maybe they're asking for accrual revenue but I'm not sure I've ever heard the term used that way. I would expect someone would ask for bookings if that's what they wanted. (Which can get even more complicated for multi-year subscription deals.)

ADDED: It's been a long time since I got my MBA but, with all the data in front of me, if someone asked me that question, I'd have to ask what they actually wanted and, if they fired me a result, so be it.

[hardlianotion]

Accruals are revenue and costs that are not yet formally accounted for, I think (just looked it up). FY is financial year.

[ghaff]

Sorta. They've presumably been accounted for in some manner but revenue hasn't been collected or expenses paid out. (Doubtless lots of other things related to investment income etc.)

[vinayan3]

> 99.9% of those visitors never travel more than 50 feet from the main road. This means that most of those visitors experience less than 1/10th of 1% of the actual park.

I'd say that's a win. We should be preserving as much as we can which really means most of us shouldn't be exploring more of the park which is mostly off trail.

I do get your point that people are coming to Yosemite and are not even taking advantage of the trails.

One point that should be made from this is that many people who are coming to the park don't really have the fitness, skills, and motivation to explore more of the trails in the park. Similarly, many people really aren't going to go explore at their companies because of skills, motivation, and time. Time is a major blocker for me because I can do more in areas outside of my focus but there are other life obligations and the need to rest to avoid burnout.

[coffeebeqn]

I don’t think the tradeoff really exists at most companies. Sure I could make our data departments life more difficult by pointing out they do a few dumb things but what is the outcome to me and my fellow engineers? I’ll at best get a pat on the back and have the data team be at least somewhat pissed off at me. Some random executive might get a bonus.. but why do I care?

[brodouevencode]

Wow, there is so much dissent in the replies here. Here are the top three recurring themes of those:

> You'll make enemies poking your nose around.

And? You make another worker in another department angry, so what? Managers in other departments are very inviting (unless they're up to no good, in which you'll be doing the company's owners even bigger favors by exposing them) because they want to be seen as having work that's necessary to the business. The people who will see you as an enemy are at a dead end anyway and not likely to ever have any influence over you.

> Did you get any of that $385,000? Of course not.

It would be nice to get a piece of that cost savings. My previous role was largely in finops, so this is near to my heart. Companies should give incentives for any proactive cost reductions and revenue generators. But that's not the point - you did the right thing by fixing something that was broken because you were genuinely curious.

> I don't have time for all that.

You have to make time to learn your company just like you have to make time to work out, learn new skills, network with people, and grow your wealth and family. Learning the inner workings of your company does pay off just like the others, maybe even more so than some of them.

FWIW @SassyGrapefruit I commend your efforts. You're the type of person I want on my team.

[devnullbrain]

>The people who will see you as an enemy are at a dead end anyway and not likely to ever have any influence over you.

That's more idealistic than my experience. I've seen team leads with a very strong sense of ownership. Also, if their mistake is responsible for a 6-figure overspend, it's better for them for it to remain hidden than to be revealed by someone else (especially a non-expert).

[brodouevencode]

1. On a long enough time line those people will weed themselves out.

2. It's a good thing for team leads to own their work, but if they're not comfortable with people poking around then they seem to be hiding something, and in that case I'll default back to the first point.

[throwawaysleep]

> I little reorganization yielded a $385,000/yr cost optimization.

And your reward for that was? Were you rewarded? Did they give you 30K as a bonus? Or was it just the weasel words of "this will be considered favourably at performance review time."

I am aware of about a 50K a year in cloud waste. But in my org, I know I won't get anything for reporting it as I am not going for a promo (promos pay a lot less than job hopping where I am), so it is not worth it to even write a ticket for it.

[SassyGrapefruit]

I don't know how your company works but at mine we have a profit target associated with our annual bonus. By eliminating that waste I am helping to ensure we hit that target so I get paid. Imagine if I let it slip and we missed our target by $200,000 that would be dollars coming right out my pocket.

[BeetleB]

It's an effort vs benefit calculation. Can you say how much of that savings will translate to dollars in your pocket? In most large companies, we can't. And when you're in a company making tens of billions, a saving of $200K is rounding error.

Then there's the psychology of it: If enough other people work extra long hours to get those savings, they're not getting a larger bonus than me who isn't. When you scale this kind of reward incentive, what you'll get is most employees not bothering - they'll get the bonus anyway.

[throwawaysleep]

Value per hour might be a little low there, but they have certainly done more to align incentives with employees than my employers have. I do get bonus, but it is a fixed percentage based on getting above "meets expectations."

[jrochkind1]

I'm curious, would you say any of your motivation and feeling of reward in your job comes from doing a good job, or helping your organization achieve it's goals? Or does your motivation and reward (what gets you out of bed, what makes your job tolerable or enjoyable) come mostly/only from maximizing your paycheck? Or other things?

[doctorwho42]

In the chain below you are kind of talking past each other.

So let me try to clarify what the other posters are saying to you.

It's not that pay is the only thing that makes a job tolerable or enjoyable. It's the fact that compensation/rewards do not necessarily follow nor reflect the work done.

So in the above cases, you do more work outside your intended role and find some kind of optimization that saves the company 250k/yr. And you make say $80k/yr. You have now provided almost 3x your salary in terms of economic value to your company but if they do not provide an economic reward for this effort, it acts as a demotivator. Though there could be other things that make the job tolerable or enjoyable, you potentially now are dealing with a poisoned pill. Nothing can counter that poison of being rewarded for such improvement than a good job, what else have you done for us today?

[BeetleB]

The problem someone like me has with your query is the (somewhat arbitrary) separation of "job" with "rest of life".

I seek non-monetary rewards. I like doing interesting and/or meaningful work. But I define what that means to me, and short of starting my own business, it is rare that an existing job will give me more interesting work than what I can do in my spare time.

Hence, the incentive is to maximize my spare time. Sure, I could look for an interesting project at work, but once you factor in all the organizational constraints (will not have much autonomy, must make money, etc), it's not even half as interesting as my own projects in my spare time.

So I optimize for spare time.

[AstixAndBelix]

Why would I help my organizatiom reach its goals of the organization is not interested in helping me achieve mine ?

[SassyGrapefruit]

For me I hate bosses, performance reviews, meetings, etc. I'm cantankerous and angry but I have always had a knack for finding and solving major problems on my own.

From my experience if you have a track record of doing a good job working autonomously and you can demonstrate that you contribute directly to the business's financial interests people just leave you alone and if they don't there is a good chance the boss's of those people will tell them "just leave him alone". Be someone's golden goose and in most organizations you can do whatever you want.

[ianbutler]

Thats part of what you're paid for obviously. Aside from that your success in the org is tied to its success to some degree.

I understand your mentality from low wage workers but I dont understand it from people in software who clear anywhere from 100k to 700k a year.

Apart from that, doing a good job is a character thing. You should do a good job for yourself, not try to fit in with the slugs.

[jrochkind1]

Hm, I'm not sure how that answered my question? Although I see you are not the GP poster, I'm interested in your answer too, sure.

I figure people are motivated by different factors at work, in different proportions.

I could guess what you meant by that sentence, but I might get it wrong, and then where would we be.

But ok, are you meaning that sentance to suggest that what gets you going in the morning, what makes your job tolerable or pleasurable to you, is exclusively maximizing your income, and that you think this is the way everyone should be, because... uh... I'm still not sure how to relate that to your sentence/question/rhetorical question, honestly. Like, if your organization is interested in helping you achieve your goals, then are you motivated by something other than maximizing your income? Or still just by maximizing your income, either way? Are you telling us that your goals at a job consist of maximizing your income, and that's it? And this is true either way, regardless of whether the organization is interested in helping you achieve that?

[AstixAndBelix]

My income is a reflection of the value I bring to a company. If I do something extremely valuable without getting a raise or a bonus or a promotion then the company is not valuing me enough and I should look elsewhere.

If I work for a for-profit company you can't expect me to do extra work for free. If I wanted that type of life I would have gotte a job in another kind kf venture

[jrochkind1]

So, I'm curious, what aspects of your job would you say are what makes a job tolerable or pleasurable to you? Just maximizing your income, or are there other things? Getting along with coworkers? Enjoying solving programming puzzles? Anything?

Or is this a stupid question, because all jobs are equally intolerable to you, they all suck the same, there is nothing that makes one more tolerable or even pleasurable than another, at least not enough to matter, in your experience?

I'm just taking guesses.

I'm also curious how long you've been working in this field.

[throwawaysleep]

None of my motivation comes from doing a good job as defined as "increasing company profit."

I care about two things:

1. My own pile of cash. I will work until I die, as I like the technical puzzles. But I also want the ability to casually walk away at any time.

2. The technical puzzles. I care about the code and doing fun things with it. Whether it goes to prod? I do not care. Whether it brings in new revenue? I do not care. I will push interesting new tech I want to learn and find some reason to make a case for it, even if it is not a sincere case.

[ZephyrBlu]

I feel that you are conflating the GPs point. The things that make your job tolerable or enjoyable don't matter if you don't feel like you are being fairly rewarded, and vice versa.

Even if these optimizations and improvements are enjoyable, why would I spend my precious energy and focus on them if I'm not going to be rewarded appropriately? I would rather save my energy and focus for things I care more about.

Reward is also part of the enjoyment. If you are not being acknowledged and rewarded for impactful work it lessens the enjoyment of doing such tasks.

[BeFlatXIII]

Paycheck only most days. Shipping something of quality on ship days.

The employment is a means to funnel money to the valuable aspects of life.

[greedo]

Plus, if the waste is someone's pet project or initiative, you might get into trouble if you imply they had poor judgement in green lighting it.

[hiAndrewQuinn]

It's fun being a sysadmin sometimes. I tripped over a similar cost savings and instead of opening up a ticket I just spent 30 sweeping up the unneeded resources.

Later I ran the numbers and realized this alone covered about half my total cost to the company. You don't often get feedback that direct about your impact on the bottom line.

[unwind]

You spent 30 seconds? Minutes? Dollars? (Virtual) brooms? Aargh so confusing! But well done!

[flangola7]

It really is strange that the people doing the actual work don't automatically get most/all of the profits. If 10 of my friends were to dig, plant, and maintain a garden and then I gave them only them a small portion of its fruits and kept the rest for myself they would rightly be very upset with me.

[nly]

You're literally describing business. That's how all businesses work. The gardeners get the market rate for being a gardener regardless of whether they're working on a residential masterpiece or somewhere mundane

[flangola7]

Ok? I'm not sure what your point is. I said that it's strange and clearly unfair and something that's rational to criticize and want to change. Not that it doesn't exist.

[ZephyrBlu]

If you provided the tools, land, plants, etc (I.e. the ability to create a garden in the first place) then you could argue it's fair that you keep most of the profits.

[flangola7]

"Providing land" really doesn't fundamentally even mean anything, humans didn't create the surface of the Earth. Providing means making or doing something, like making a meal or providing medical care; "providing" land just means someone marked off a square on the Earth and so generously offers not to shoot others for making use of it. (Thinking about it - there would probably be a fiction of "providing" atmosphere and sunlight too, if there was an easy way of gatekeeping it like land area.)

In a broader context, if you mean preparation of an area for development by landscaping it and running utilities and roads to it, that's done by other workers, not owners.

The owners aren't providing tools and plants either, those are being assembled, grown, and transported by other workers, who again should be receiving most/all of the profit. Obviously you need other workers to organize all of this which requires both finesse and significant self-responsibility, much like a heart surgeon or a civil engineer, but much like heart surgeons and civil engineers I don't see a reason for them to make more than 5-20x as much as the person with the easiest job.

[throwawaysleep]

I get why, as the organizing of the work is a critical task for any of that to happen. This is no small task to be fair, as you may notice in how few community gardens exist. Employees also get enormous risk reduction.

But in most of the work world, I get the same pay whether the crops I grow are bountiful and valuable or scarce and full of worms. I certainly don't get more converting a wormy field into a bountiful one.

So I just won't.

[kridsdale1]

I think you just described capitalism. Or feudalism.

[flangola7]

I mean, yeah. That's what it is.

[tengbretson]

Do you find value in having a good reputation?

[throwawaysleep]

A reputation as a capable drone? Yes. A reputation as a go getter? No.

Reputation also includes playing a lot of games. You can casually claim credit in interviews for things you didn't do.

[NegativeK]

That whole situation is gross.

[throwawaysleep]

Which one?

[operatingthetan]

>That detour involved a team that was following a process I could not understand. Turns out they didn't understand it either. I little reorganization yielded a $385,000/yr cost optimization. It took me just a couple days. Chances are you swim in a sea of complacency too.

Hold on a sec, are you saying you found dead weight and then got leadership to terminate their employment?

[jrochkind1]

> Last year I was bored and I started to break down our cloud spend

I read it thinking they meant to their cloud platform bills.

But you bring up a good hypothetical regardless. This is why people are not necessarily overjoyed to have folks from other teams sniffing around... if they think you are looking for "inefficiencies" all the more so. Getting laid off isn't the only threat, making their job a lot harder/more unpleasant is also one. Or just being blamed for being bad at their jobs.

To the organizations bottom line, and perhaps to your bosses, it's all the same either way. Hey, you saved money. To your co-workers, obviously not.

You've got to build up trust, that you're looking to make their job more pleasant, not more unpleasant, or non-existent.

[foolswisdom]

It sounded to me more like they figured out a more efficient way to do their "process" that was a whole lot cheaper.

[webnrrd2k]

It's not clear, and I read it that way at first, too. But the op was looking at cloud computing costs so I'd bet that he just reduced cloud costs.

It seems like a bit of a stretch that he got anyone fired, but much more likely that they just scaled back on cloud services for that particular project.

[avalys]

I don't think that's what he was saying, but if he was, are you suggesting there's a problem with that?

[operatingthetan]

If that's the case then the people who told them to "stay in their lane" had a legitimate reason to be defensive. Was it better for the business? Who knows since we are only getting one side of the story from someone patting themselves on the back.

But yes, I would say behaving like an interloper in your org and getting people fired because you deviate from your actual job is highly problematic. After the news gets out about that behavior you can better believe they are going to get stonewalled in their actual role.

[giantg2]

"It is a tremendous advantage to explore your organization fully."

This hasn't been my experience. I've moved around a lot and have exposure to many aspects of the business and how things operate. I'm 10 years in and still a midlevel. Being more linear would have resulted in faster promotions.

"You can literally write your own ticket."

Not in many large orgs. Poking your nose in other areas is a good way to get your hand slapped.

[glitchc]

It depends on the organization's hierarchy. In flat structures, this is treated as a good thing, encouraged and will lead to promotions. In a strictly hierarchical organization, this may backfire. Other managers will not be supportive and your manager will be annoyed with your behaviour, leading instead to detailed task assignment and micro-management.

[123pie123]

back in the day when I was first starting out I had to do the odd audit (eg listing network ports or checking computer inventory numbers in offices - v boring)

one of the best things I did (which was dependant on how much spare time I had), was to ask the people I visited, what do you do? I tried to make sure I asked a mixture of low to high ranking people

The responses was amazing, with some people giving up loads of their time up to explain their jobs. I even made some good friends ouside the computer dept

[crazygringo]

> It is a tremendous advantage to explore your organization fully.

No, generally speaking it's really not.

That takes time and effort away from the job you're actually getting evaluated on, and if your workplace is at all competitive (as most are), it's an incredibly easy way to waste your time and not get promoted.

Is it interesting? Sure. Is it to your advantage in that workplace? Almost never.

The main situation where it's a smart thing to do is when you intend to start your own company (or franchise in certain industries) and you're trying to learn as many best practices as possible. But then you're treating your employment as school, rather than looking for reward or promotion within.

[JustSomeNobody]

You can also start by making sure you're in all the meetings with other teams where your project and their project meet. Ask pointed questions in those meetings to gain understanding. Be friendly and courteous and helpful and they'll make sure you are in those meetings from now on. From there you'll get invited to other meetings that may be only slightly adjacent to your project. Again, be friendly, courteous and helpful. You will eventually get known for being someone with understanding and you'll find yourself in some rather important meetings after that.

[cphajduk]

The thing is... Pushing outside your lane is VERY often discouraged. The manager sees that any time outside of your lane is less time in "your managers" lane, where you help buml his KPIs/goals.

[Aeolun]

> Chances are you swim in a sea of complacency too.

It’s a unique organisation that’s both complacent and willing to change that fact. More likely you’ll find resistance at every step along the way.

[senttoschool]

>It is a tremendous advantage to explore your organization fully. Visit its other offices and learn what your colleagues do and why they do it. Especially as an engineer. You can literally write your own ticket. Last year I was bored and I started to break down our cloud spend. This took me on a little detour. That detour involved a team that was following a process I could not understand. Turns out they didn't understand it either. I little reorganization yielded a $385,000/yr cost optimization. It took me just a couple days. Chances are you swim in a sea of complacency too.

If you work in a corporation, this is a surefire way to create enemies inside the organization. No one likes a random employee from another team to poke into what they're doing and tell them what they're doing wrong.

[SassyGrapefruit]

maybe, but I'll keep doing it anyway.

[lifeisstillgood]

Ah, the days when you didn't have a manger asking for status updates daily on your deliverables that are vaguely defined. Having time to investigate interesting detours

I get it. But sometimes there are people focused on their 1% and see you as part of that.

[Zetice]

Er, isn't that kind of the point? That you should be aware of the real cost of you "investigating interesting detours"?

[lifeisstillgood]

Hang on. I am not sure which side of the argument we are on now.

Yes I love interesting detours - and frankly they almost always result in something useful - however converting that something useful into something that is used by the organisation is a different kettle of fish - that requires an organisation that is willing to see its failures and change on a significant level - which if were true probably would mean I could not spot the low hanging fruit.

Not sure where I am going except to say the Schumpter is probably right and that it's incredibly hard to move jobs thus any signalling via job market is muted.

[Salgat]

I have a backlog of tickets and limited time for my family and personal life and interests. This isn't happening unless my manager is willing to lower my other workload.

[gardenhedge]

Wow, what are you going to spend that $385,000/yr on? /s

I don't see the point of your recommendation.

[SassyGrapefruit]

Corporate finance doesn't work that way. If someone sets something up that costs $500K a year and it can be done for $150K a year. $150K is the baseline thats how much it should have cost in the first place. Otherwise why wouldn't I set it up to cost $10million a year then retract to $150K then say "Oh gee I saved you millions of dollars you owe me!" We as employees have a responsibility to our organizations to ensure they are trim and healthy. It's how we grow and achieve bigger things.

I have been rewarded in the past and am confident I will rewarded in the future. The individuals that set it up kooky will be retrained to avoid that situation in the future. I feel bad for all the jaded folks they must live very depressing existences.

[gardenhedge]

Your passive aggressive remark at the end made me laugh. Enjoy your life working as hard as you can for billionaires and being rewarded peanuts. That's the only depressing existence in this discussion.

[SassyGrapefruit]

I don't know man. The attitude comes off as defeatist to me. I think most people with this outlook are engaging in self-sabotage. It's easier than putting themselves out there and risking failure.

They don't try then claim "even I did try what would it get me? making some richy richer, no thanks". Ok so what the alternative? I'm just not willing to sit around complaining. Right now I don't feel like I'm being grifted and if I did I would quit.

[giantg2]

CEO bonus

[megablast]

> 99.9% of those visitors never travel more than 50 feet from the main road

Leaving the road sounds like something a communist who doesn't love their car would do.