[LittleTimothy]

These frameworks serve 3 purposes. The first purpose is to have something concrete to point at so your employees don't sue you over unfair practices - they create a paper trail for management to operate and build evidence that what they are doing follows a meritocratic process (whether that's true or not is irrelevant, it's purely a legal concern). The second purpose is to motivate employees who want progression by setting up a goal posts for them to shoot for so that they try harder and don't leave, but vague and subjective enough to deny you the promotion for a least a cycle or two. The third is that there's all these bloody HR and middle management people hanging around and they need something to do.

So the only way this process is relevant to you is that your manager might want to look good to their manager by demonstrating that they're "developing" your "talent". It's a nice favour to your boss to let them pretend their job isn't totally meaningless in this respect, but I'm in the same boat as you, I couldn't care less about progression.

[0xEF]

I'm also in the same boat as both of you, but I'm not sure I agree with the idea that I need to do a bunch of extra work to prove some nebulous concept like "impact at the next level" or whatever buzzwoo we want to say in place of that. If the manager wants to develop my talent, then they need to get off their over-priced rear ends and do so.

I feel like making everyone at the lower levels shoulder all of the accountability is the exact opposite of what we need to do when it comes to improving operations across the board.

[scarface_74]

> If the manager wants to develop my talent, then they need to get off their over-priced rear ends and do so.

You are responsible for your own career. When (hypothetical) you get ready to look for another job, do you really want to only be able to say that you were a ticket taker or do you want to be able to say you led initiatives?

Even if you don’t really care about getting ahead, you still have to be able to stand out from other applicants

[sillysaurusx]

One way to stand out is to be nice, funny, and make a genuine personal connection with whoever the decision makers are. It sounds cheesy but it’s worked for me back when I didn’t particularly stand out.

I was competent though, which is always a requirement; this won’t work for smooth talkers only.

[scarface_74]

First you got to get through the HR process.

Now when I interview you, I’m not going to ask you to reverse a btree on the whiteboard. I’m going to ask you questions to see if you can “handle ambiguity” and work at the scope I need you to work at.

I’ve spent the last decade mostly as one of the early technical hires for a major new initiative and then leading cloud consulting projects (3.5 years at Amazon and now at a third party company both full time). I need to know I can throw a vague set of business requirements at you and you can take the ball and run with it.

I actually did a thumbs down to a very smart guy who had been laid off from the AWS EC2 service team because when I asked him behavioral questions, I didn’t get a sense that he could handle the type of green field initiatives I was going to throw at him.

[sillysaurusx]

> First you got to get through the HR process.

You don’t, actually. People love to be flattered, and the trick is to go find whoever is making the decisions and to flatter them.

You’re not immune to this either. No one is. Again, competence is a requirement, but flattery plus competence is a very powerful way to distinguish yourself.

[scarface_74]

I am very immune to flattery at 50 years old. While like I said I don’t do coding interviews, I am asking behavioral questions to assess whether you are “smart and gets things done”.

I don’t hire ticket takers for the most part.

[dartos]

This one crazy hack is the secret to countless numbers of fruitful careers.

[allo37]

My main motivation for impactfulness is just making my job more pleasant: Nothing is more soul-sucking than fixing the same kinds of issues over and over because the powers that be are convinced they're doing it right, and you're the one stuck fixing the issues they create.

[scarface_74]

My main motivation is for my resume to look good for my n+1 job. I don’t always know when I’m going to be looking or whether it’s by force or by choice. But I always want to be prepared

[0xEF]

I never said anything about not being responsible for my own career. There was a previous implication that we need to help the boss look good, which is BS. If I want to develop myself because I want to explore different options or expand my skill set, I am free to and generally opt to do so. If a manager wants to develop my skills, then that is their responsibility.

Again, let's not shift all the accountability to the guys lower on the ladder. It's a team effort.

Perhaps I just don't understand your mindset because I do not define myself by my career. Work is just how I exchange some of my time and effort for money so I can focus my life on the things I actually matter to me, so the "weight" of my career is perhaps different than yours. Which is fine, btw. I don't really have any issues if someone wants to make their career their life, but I'll never align with that, especially not at this late in my adult life.

[scarface_74]

I don’t define myself by my career. But I do make damn sure I stay competitive. I’ve had 10 jobs in 28 years and 8 since 2008. I stay prepared to look for another job at a moments notice.

The “team” doesn’t care about you being competitive when you are looking for your next job.

[sillysaurusx]

I’m super curious how old you are. I’m about to hit 37, so 40 is marching closer.

Love your email by the way.

[0xEF]

Mid-40's, and many lessons learned by paying attention to those who paved the way ahead of me. Don't get me wrong, I'm a hard worker with a reputation for keeping my promises in an industry that is infamous for the opposite (manufacturing, without getting too deep into my role in that sector for the sake of keeping this brief), so I can't really complain about my wages or the recognition I have gotten in the past. But it's still just a job. My real life is my family, my hobbies and my adventures. When strangers ask me what I "do," I generally like to reply with those things rather than talking about work.

As for the email, it was part of a now-dead idea that grew out of boredom one evening while chatting with some old computer friends, and definitely involved different sounding farts. Never really got past a few lines of code, but I have been thinking about using the domain for a cranky old git blog or something.

[cyanydeez]

Unfortunately, getting more for less is the point. Oncw these business are in flight, 99% of the work is "menial" and managers win by driving salaries down. A good way to do that is only raise salaries do to external challenges. Internally, do everything for minimal maintenance.

Keep in mind, the Art of War can easily be seen as a dummy's guide to product management and is just a default minimum because age managers are often selected by the peter principle.

[sabellito]

I've worked in companies with similar frameworks both as a dev and as manager, and it was great. Everything has issues, but the framework gave useful guidance.

Sorry you've worked for such terrible companies.

[LittleTimothy]

I'm not saying it doesn't work. Especially for early careers people, it works absolutely fine because the requirements are reasonable and the scope is largely within the employees control. For later stage employees, it's usefulness tales off massively. When you get to senior levels your ability to fulfil the requirements gets further and further out of your hands and often if you want to pursue the promotional criteria you're actually going to have to deprioritize delivering value to the business to prioritize engineering situations where you can meet the criteria. A lot of the senior goals are basically politics.