When I was in management, I can’t think of many cases where a quiet, moderate positive performer was commented upon much. They were mostly not discussed, with most of managements energy occupied by the highest or lowest performers.
I suspect you can get by in most orgs with the least energy being moderately productive. You get there by letting go and accepting dysfunction and poor quality you can’t change. You just ride with it, shrug a bit, and decide there’s more important things in life.
Actively working to be unproductive is hard. Many poor performers work hard to create a lot of theater around poor performance to make it not look as bad. It’s also a lot of stress to have managements eyes engaged on you all the time.
So I’d find a company where you can efficiently achieve moderate productivity in the least amount of effort with the maximal acceptance from the org. This means a company that:
- is very people friendly, seems to value employees work life balance
- is big enough to make a career out of one place, so you gain efficiency from all the tribal knowledge you’ve acquired
- lets you specialize in one thing, and you just do that thing. Again more work efficiency.
- has solid non salary benefits that enhance quality of life: healthcare, vacation, etc
Finally, in this job, I would:
- never volunteer for anything. Just do your work.
- almost never put in extra hours, make the conscious choice to do your time, that’s it
- avoid high engagement (empowered to fix everything!) and low engagement (complaining and hating everything). Just accept!
- remember your power in the relationship: tech is a field where there’s never enough people to do the work. If you’re performing OKish, not making huge waves positive or negative, you should be able to get another job easily enough. So don’t think you need to bend over backwards or stress at too hard about deadlines, etc if you really don’t want to.
I suspect you can get by in most orgs with the least energy being moderately productive. You get there by letting go and accepting dysfunction and poor quality you can’t change. You just ride with it, shrug a bit, and decide there’s more important things in life.
Actively working to be unproductive is hard. Many poor performers work hard to create a lot of theater around poor performance to make it not look as bad. It’s also a lot of stress to have managements eyes engaged on you all the time.
So I’d find a company where you can efficiently achieve moderate productivity in the least amount of effort with the maximal acceptance from the org. This means a company that:
- is very people friendly, seems to value employees work life balance
- is big enough to make a career out of one place, so you gain efficiency from all the tribal knowledge you’ve acquired
- lets you specialize in one thing, and you just do that thing. Again more work efficiency.
- has solid non salary benefits that enhance quality of life: healthcare, vacation, etc
Finally, in this job, I would:
- never volunteer for anything. Just do your work.
- almost never put in extra hours, make the conscious choice to do your time, that’s it
- avoid high engagement (empowered to fix everything!) and low engagement (complaining and hating everything). Just accept!
- remember your power in the relationship: tech is a field where there’s never enough people to do the work. If you’re performing OKish, not making huge waves positive or negative, you should be able to get another job easily enough. So don’t think you need to bend over backwards or stress at too hard about deadlines, etc if you really don’t want to.