The Devastating Price Developers Pay for Working Hard

The dilemma of an excellent programmer: the imbalance between efforts and returns

You are an excellent developer, conscientious, clear and easy to understand, helpful and three times more efficient than your colleagues. However, this has become your trouble. The boss and colleagues are naturally looking forward to you to achieve the best work results, but few people tell you the price behind outstanding performance.

Core points:

• Excellent performance and hard work often lead to a surge in workload, which can reduce developer job satisfaction, especially when salary and position cannot match the workload.
• There are usually two types of people in the workplace: patriots (actively engaged, caring for the organization) and mercenaries (focusing on their own interests, often stealing other people's results, and damaging team morale and efficiency).
• Developers can protect themselves by sharing success with others, establishing achievement archives to record personal achievements, and learning to refuse others to pass on their work.
• As long as developers can effectively manage workload and colleague relationships and ensure that their efforts are recognized and rewarded, hard work does not have to pay a heavy price.

The heavy price of hard work

Excellent performance and hard work have many negative effects, and the most frustrating reward is: more work.

This is devastating for developers in the long run, for the following reasons:

1. The vicious cycle of Price's law: Information scientist Drake Desora Price found that in any field, only a square root member completes 50% of the work in the field. In a team of ten people, three people completed half of the work. These efficient employees are often A-level employees, and they undertake far more work than their colleagues.

This can lead to a vicious cycle: organizations usually reward you with more jobs, but your salary, position, and income are stagnant. This means your employer is actually stealing your future, reducing your income potential and the possibility of getting the right salary and position.

2. Mercenaries Corrupt Patriots: Gallup and former Nationwide CEO Steve Rasmussen pointed out that your colleagues are either patriots or mercenaries.

Patriots are actively engaged, trust management and colleagues, and gain their trust, and they focus on serving the organization because they believe that colleagues will support them too. Mercenaries are self-centered, frequently change jobs or pursue promotions, focusing only on maximizing their own interests, and ignoring the interests of the company.

Those employees who are willing to let others work for themselves are usually mercenaries who do only the most basic jobs to get their salaries. If not stopped, these mercenaries will seriously damage the company's morale, causing A-level employees to leave or become B-level and C-level employees.

3. Crab bucket mentality pulls A-level employees into the bottom of social rank: mediocre employees do not like high-achievers, and high-achievers do not like mediocre employees. If you are an A-level employee surrounded by mediocre B- and C-level employees, your excellence will be your punishment.

Specifically, your colleagues will try to destroy the confidence of any employee who has succeeded or performed well due to jealousy, malice, resentment, conspiracy or competition. This is not groundless: tall syndrome, crab barrel mentality, and commons tragedy are examples of such behavior. If you are a good developer but are surrounded by mediocrity, you will pay the price for it.

"I don't care what others think!"

But you should care. People are not isolated islands, you always need help from others to complete the work. Want to change jobs? You need a letter of recommendation from your manager and colleagues.

4. Mercenaries destroy patriots: Their method is simple: have A-level patriots work for them and then steal the results of A-level employees immediately. Mercenaries use various strategies to achieve this.

They use Machiavelliism (using interpersonal manipulation to gain and maintain social status) to gain advantage or disrupt relationships, allowing management to fight against the A-level employees they consider threatening.

They use indirect attacks (bullying, slandering, gossiping, humiliating or exclusion of others) to destroy reputation. This is common in office settings and is often difficult to prove and refute unless you have a clear understanding of its nature and how it works.

They use everything as leverage: past mistakes, secrets shared privately, insecurity – anything that allows them to make you do what they want you to do when they want. For whatever reason, they have to win and you have to lose.

Successful patriots use their abilities and achievements as leverage to fight against bad behavior of mercenaries. But they also rely on good relationships with others to deal with conspiracy. Unfortunately, this is the exception, not the rule.

Do you understand?

Working hard can cost a heavy price. So, what are the alternatives? Just complete the minimum task? Work hard and get a stable salary?

Many employees have done this.

But this is even worse because it brings a series of painful problems. It's hard to find and keep a job. Mediocre employees are not well paid, and if the company lays off employees or fires on a large scale, they are the first to be eliminated.

How do developers avoid paying the price?

You can take some strategies to protect yourself from abuse, toxicity, or misconduct. These strategies are most effective in both sincerity and truth.

Strategy 1: Share success with others

Follow colleagues' positive contributions to the project. Is your project manager serious and responsible? Is your account manager held your client accountable if he failed to perform his project duties? Do front-end developers on your team make it easier for you to get the job done?

Write it down.

Then express your gratitude. If this person has an impact on others on the team, you can express it publicly; if the other person is an introvert, you can express it privately.

The advantage of doing this is:

This can counter the crab barrel mentality that many people have, and in some cases it can actually reverse it. Sincere gratitude works because others can share your success.

But be aware:

Your colleagues can feel your sincerity and authenticity; if you are not sincere or untrue, your colleagues will know that you will intensify the crab bucket mentality mentioned above.

Strategy 2: Establishing an Achievement File

Record your achievements regularly, no matter how big or small, including praise from other department managers, the number of bugs fixed, libraries and tools created, etc. Don’t doubt your work, don’t exaggerate it, just record the facts.

This helps you build an impressive list of achievements for cover letters, resumes and interviews. You need to record specific information so that you can use it in the future:

• Achievement: What you did and why it matters.
• Date: When and how it happens (such as January 15th to March 31st).
• Result (e.g. "Reduce website loading time by 23%, increase conversion by 19%").
• Add a dollar value to each achievement based on reality. Don't make up or guess. Use the real dollar amount from your company, third-party tools, research or data to prove your statement.

The advantage of doing this is:

Recording this data can prevent your colleagues (or managers) from stealing the fruits of your labor. You need to be recognized for your hard work. Your achievement profile is the reason you win the coveted promotion, salary increase or bonus. Your achievements archives protect your present and future.

Strategy Three: Learn to say no (tough or tough)

You can politely or toughly refuse colleagues asking you to do their jobs.

Euphemism:

College: Can you help me fix these bugs?

You: I can help you after I finish X.

College: Can you teach me how to do X?

You: Of course, this is the training material I used to solve X.

This statement seems to be a request, but it is actually manipulative. If a colleague wants you to take on their job, they ask for “help” and then let you do everything.

Tough:

College: I need you to help me fix Y.

You: What's wrong with Y?

College: [Boss] said you need to help me fix Y.

You: [You cc to the boss and colleagues] Of course, I can do it. [Boss] Do you want me to stop working X to handle Y? We may miss the deadline.

This statement seems to be an order, but it is actually an implicit coercion. If you don't do it, there may be negative consequences. And this is the secret to dealing with these manipulative and mandatory requests.

You ask a question or (temporarily) agree to the request, but you explain the consequences of their request. These consequences can be missed deadlines, poor quality of work due to lack of experience, or increased costs.

Hard work does not have to pay a heavy price

If you are a good developer, your efforts may be punished. In fact, not everyone really cares about you. Many colleagues wish you failed - to prove that they are better or smarter than you.

You can fight this behavior.

If you choose to come early and leave late, you should be rewarded. If you write high-quality code that is clear and easy to understand, you should have your achievements.

You are a good developer, and it has become your problem.

Your colleagues expect you to deliver high-quality work. This is an unwritten workplace expectation. The good news is: you are ready for the negative consequences of a great job. You have strategies and strategies to deal with mercenary colleagues. Pay close attention to colleagues’ signals and you will find that hard work will really pay off.

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