[necrotic_comp]

> The truth is that most companies won't pay for the extra productivity that you create for yourself, but they will happily take it for free.

Fantastic way of putting it. Know this is a low-effort comment, but that's a great way to describe why over-extending yourself outside of the context of the overall mission isn't a good thing to do.

[tobestobestobes]

I think that things like Agile are not an accurate model of problem solving and that making good software requires 'extending yourself outside', especially w agile or other modern management systems like many of us are working within. That is my experience. The actual effort is much more to make decent software that works and 'ticketing' makes it easy for devs to disown their own bad or incomplete work when it's convenient and can be disguised as working within scope. This bad work is then passed onto other devs (and the users) and/or converted to technical debt (oh look at all these bug tickets!)... When arguably the real and complete problem at hand was ignored because it was 'out of scope'. There is a 'shadow world' of work that exists outside of ticketing but is required to actually build the software. If you're not involved in that shadow work, then you may be a part of the problem. Problem solving is fluid and technical requirements and matters of approach aren't always readily available at 'groom time'. Work as a group, get uncomfortable if required, and don't go disappear with your ticket for two weeks and half solve a problem and bake the e2e tests. Most development work truly comes to a conclusion in a war room after the ticket is closed and with none of the original devs -- too much of the time these days. Reward devs for taking on more and owning parts of the codebase. AI threatens dev jobs because devs and scrum masters water down work and the system encourages shoddy, transactional work. Not really a criticism of the above comment ... But something I see a lot in enterprise software development. And I also do realize going outside of scope is risky and doesn't pay in the current management zeitgeist.

[axus]

Over-extending yourself can lead to burnout. Pacing yourself and not becoming a problem is good for both the employer and employee.

[mym1990]

Another thing to mention is that if you find a way to do 8 hours of work in 4, almost no company will just let you take the other 4 for yourself, unless you do so quietly, so you have just created more work for yourself by becoming more productive.

[hollerith]

Sure, but if you really did find a way to double your productivity, you can probably find a way to translate that into significantly higher income although probably not right away.

[nsvd]

Realistically, whoever manages you will take credit for the additional productivity and leverage it to get more money for themselves.

[mym1990]

This is probably true, but if we are talking about climbing the corporate ladder here...that is primarily done through peacocking to management and networking well enough to get to the next rung, not through being very productive. If you are a 10x employee, why would a company want to elevate you out of that and into management?

But if you're going a different, more self-starter focused path, income opportunities should be increased, yes.

[hsavit1]

yep, companies thrive when they can steal as much surplus labor value as possible. you don't have to give them anything more that what you agreed to give them