> I just remarked to my director the other day that the only innovation we have had in the org in the last 5 years was relentless self promotion, marketing, and branding.
What was your director’s response?
Do you think there’s any chance you’re biased and blind to other innovations because you really dislike self-promotion, marketing, and branding?
They agreed, but we have a similar viewpoint on the overall technical excellence of the org, so that part is unsurprising.
I am definitely biased, but whether I am blinded to real innovation or progress is something I think about all the time.
I think I would not be opposed to the self-promotion, marketing, and branding were it in support of some significant achievement or accomplishment. Unfortunately we have a culture that seems to think showering and getting dressed in the morning is a noteworthy event.
To use a more concrete example, I ran a project to upgrade a significant piece of software in our environment that had been neglected for some time. The project went well and I moved on to more interesting work. I had multiple people tell me that we should promote it, give talks about how it was done, pound our chest about how hard of a project it was, etc. I refused. In my mind it was a normal upgrade of a system we were responsible for and frankly was disgraceful that it was in such a bad state of deferred maintenance. There was no way I would be comfortable “taking credit” for doing what should have been done years ago.
Fast forward a few years and another team responsible for doing a similar project is giving multiple presentations all around the org and all the way up to the 2nd in command of the company. I’m like wow, maybe we should have taken the opportunity when we had it to pretend like we are superheroes for doing the bare minimum of our job and not having a vendor drop our support contract.
It’s obviously not the bare minimum of the job because like you said nobody did it for years. So the bare minimum is just not doing it.
You think you’ll change from this experience or just keep doing stuff the way you like to do it?
Consider a person that never brushed their teeth, flossed, or used mouth wash for an entire year. On the night before their dentist appointment they finally decided it would be good to brush and floss. How would you describe that? Would it be fair to call it the bare minimum? After all, it is more than nothing.
I take that as a no to my question lol.
Not a great comparison because work is a deal in exchange for money and tooth brushing isn’t a deal you make with anyone.
With employment, the outcome you want is likely continued employment and/or some sort of increase in power/pay/responsibilities/etc.
Can’t really tell which it is on behalf of someone else, but in the programming case, the company agreed to pay for work. Unless people were being fired left and right whose job it was to do the thing that was left undone then the company was satisfied with their output. You can tell because they kept paying them.
With teeth brushing the outcome you likely want is healthy teeth and gums and fresh breath. Brushing once a year the night before the dentist won’t likely get you to that outcome (but if it does then it is good enough).