[dpweb]

Liked your blog post michaelochurch on meritocracy by the way..

I think generally people are not seeing the problem correctly.

There is nothing wrong itself with over-delivering or being a team player. "Meritocracy" is easily adopted as a concept (especially by smart technical people I would say), because its entirely logical and also happens to appear the "moral" thing. It is. But, it gets distorted quite often and that distortion is called company politics.

Your goal is not to over-deliver in itself or kiss your boss' ass, or emulate powerful people. Those powerful people may have gotten powerful by stabbing backs all over the place - do you really want to emulate that? I would argue maybe money and prestige ranks higher for people then the tranquility in the belief that they themselves are moral people - but tranquility is high up on the list - if you really put it to people.

Don't even listen to career advice by CEOs or your best friend. Your goal is nothing more - than to make yourself valuable.

Your value may or may not get recognized, it depends on your company environment, but I strongly believe this, it will and MUST eventually - even if you have to quit and go find it at another company or start your own, where you will be rightly compensated by the general public.