Playing the Career Game

[TopHatFox]

Pre-Game: how to successfully apply to jobs
The Game: careerism for maximizing income for expedient ERE
The Tactics: how to careerism --> promotion --> more income --> faster ERE
The Reasoning: is careerism --> promotion --> more income --> faster ERE worth it?

I figure if I'm going to spend 5 to 10 years working a job, I might as well benefit from and possibly enjoy playing the game. I'm curious how I can first get jobs--which can be hard in my experience--then maximize my time there money wise. This could be a fun and lucrative long term social experiment.

[Dragline]

Well,for the first part, more is better than less. Apply early, apply often.

Once you have a job, look at your workplace as an anthropologist would, and identify what are the traits that get you ahead there. Throw aside your normative beliefs about how things "should be done" and understand why they are done the way they are. You can give the critiques when you quit.

[The Old Man]

You don’t really say anything about yourself, so it is difficult to give specifics. I agree with what Dragline says.

For myself my education is engineering although these days I am pretty far removed from typical engineering practice. My income is good; however, my greatest increase was when I took an overseas assignment thereby increasing my pay by 250-300% relative to the USA norm.

My suggestion would be to choose a field that you would like doing and then investigate what means the top earners use to maximize earnings in their field. Then do what they do.

By putting yourself in a demanding environment and performing well you create your own opportunities. High performers are always in demand and you will be able to write your own ticket. Understand your strengths and weaknesses and play to your strengths.

Some fundamentals: Work well with people. Be diplomatic. Remember, the world is a small place. Under promise and over deliver. Don’t be a complainer.

Finally, accept that you have complete responsibility for your own success or failure.

[reepicheep]

Check out some of Ramit Sethi's products/posts.

[fiby41]

Relevant: http://redd.it/32e929

[5to9]

I think that the best advice I can give is to work on your communication and public speaking skills. Even being in a very technical field (computer programming), I find that the ability to communicate, present ideas, and work well with others gives me huge advantages over others who are probably better programmers.

[steveo73]

I think that the best advice I can give is to work on your communication and public speaking skills. Even being in a very technical field (computer programming), I find that the ability to communicate, present ideas, and work well with others gives me huge advantages over others who are probably better programmers.

I work in IT. The best skills to get ahead are in my opinion communication and public speaking skills. In stating that there is a hell of a lot of luck involved in getting promoted and earning more money that way.

I am getting to the stage that I don't really care that much because I think my spending is what is going to push me towards FI rather than anything else.

I also have a tonne of pressure on me at the moment at work and even though I really like it and I would also accept more responsibility and more money I would also be happy taking a less stressful job and earning less money.

[5to9]

I also have a tonne of pressure on me at the moment at work and even though I really like it and I would also accept more responsibility and more money I would also be happy taking a less stressful job and earning less money.

I have generally found very little correlation between the amount of effort/time I put in and the progress of my career. It's about the concept of effectiveness vs efficiency that Jacob has mentioned in many places. Finding the role that no one is filling that makes you indispensable, or leveraging your skills by collaborating, or just being the only person in the company who understands "X". If a new opportunity is a strict increase in hours for some structural reason, I don't usually consider it regardless of the money.

This reminds me to recommend the book "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport. One of the insights I took from this book is that building expertise and career capital can do more than just get you money, it can help you negotiate working arrangements that fit your life. At one company where I had worked myself into a pretty pivotal role, I went to turn in my resignation due to my wife getting a job out of state. On the spot they offered to let me keep my job working 100% remotely. So career capital has many benefits, and you can earn it through lots of ways other than pure hard work.

[fiby41]

steveo73:
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/stude ... lysis.html

[steveo73]

I also have a tonne of pressure on me at the moment at work and even though I really like it and I would also accept more responsibility and more money I would also be happy taking a less stressful job and earning less money.

I have generally found very little correlation between the amount of effort/time I put in and the progress of my career. It's about the concept of effectiveness vs efficiency that Jacob has mentioned in many places. Finding the role that no one is filling that makes you indispensable, or leveraging your skills by collaborating, or just being the only person in the company who understands "X". If a new opportunity is a strict increase in hours for some structural reason, I don't usually consider it regardless of the money.

This reminds me to recommend the book "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport. One of the insights I took from this book is that building expertise and career capital can do more than just get you money, it can help you negotiate working arrangements that fit your life. At one company where I had worked myself into a pretty pivotal role, I went to turn in my resignation due to my wife getting a job out of state. On the spot they offered to let me keep my job working 100% remotely. So career capital has many benefits, and you can earn it through lots of ways other than pure hard work.

In my job I've found that there is very little correlation between having a niche skill and getting ahead though as well. I work for a big financial institution within IT. My SQL skills were great. I could hack out some data and design a reporting solution and build a bunch of it no problems. I remember when we created a new planning application. They bought in all these guys who were meant to be fantastic and trained me up in that skill-set. I was the go to guy. It increased my wages but not by much. Yes I possibly could have earned a lot more if I left and took up a consultancy role but I don't think the best money is in those roles. If I get a senior management role at my job I can earn 150k-200k. I'm just below this level. If I get a level above that its more like $250-$500k and then $500k to 1 million. I think all of those roles are well within my capabilities. I'm dealing with 2 guys in the last pay bracket now on my project that is hell on wheels and a bunch in the bracket below that.

Getting to those roles though is not really about a niche skill. Its about luck and possibly politically playing the game. A guy at my work just got one of those roles and he isn't very good. I think though is a good looking guy who gets along with people. A lady who was also a project manager like myself got given a role like that a couple of years ago. She had never delivered a project successfully but she got along with someone in that role. Another lady was absolutely hopeless and was basically pushed out but to get the job she got along with the right people. The funny thing is that she left and came back into the same level role about 6 months later in a different team.

As for side-benefits of work I think I get plenty if work wasn't so freaken busy. I can just stay at home and not turn up. My manager who is tops went on Christmas break and took an extra week off and worked from her holiday house.

I suppose my point is that getting promoted isn't a simple issue and sometimes just comes down to luck. At the same time I don't see it as a big issue unless that is your goal in life. I prefer simply being frugal and saving money and enjoying my job as much as possible.

[steveo73]

steveo73:
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/stude ... lysis.html

I basically don't see the point of education other than in very specific situations. I often get asked to interview people for the same role that I have. They often have MBA's and I don't. They often don't get the job. I don't even have any IT or project management qualifications. I have an economics degree.

[fiby41]

I basically don't see the point of education other than in very specific situations.

Yes but you have experience. You have already got your foot in the rotating door.

There is a fourth purpose of education. This is called higher education, but what it really is is longer eduction. The purpose of “higher” education is to regulate the inflow to the job market. This happens automatically. Suppose there is a shortage of demand for a certain vocation, say, microbiology. Anyone hiring microbiologists will look over the resumes and pick those with the highest degree first. This puts pressure on the others to accumulate more education as well. Of course this establishes a new equilibrium, and so it goes.

Replace microbiology with your field and and shortage of demand with increase of supply. Now people need fancier testimonials, sexy sounding work experience, diplomas/degrees etc.
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/whats ... ation.html

[steveo73]

Yes but you have experience. You have already got your foot in the rotating door.

I agree up to a point. The thing is that I started as a bank teller. Some of the better programmers that I know had no qualifications at all.

My manager gave me my performance review and he said at one point he was looking to get his project management qualifications but when he did the course everything they taught you was the opposite of what you should do so he said stuff it.

[Stahlmann]

for some of us:

Take a work situation in which you (the autie) discover and
correct a mistake, and in this case the mistake is a setting on a
machine. You then deliver the message to a co-worker:
“production will fail because the threshold was set
incorrectly.” Now, when an autistic speaker gives information
like this without conforming to NT expectations of
communications, it does not matter whether the information is
correct or clear in a literal sense. The NT listener will hear the
content related to beliefs and influence first, then the
informational content later. The message given might be
factually correct, but the message received might be equivalent
to “It’s your fault, you moron.” If the recipient hears only
threats to his identity, he cannot also hear the literal message.
Thus you have started a conflict.

Autistic people can be mistaken as manipulative, uncaring,
rude, even dangerous sociopaths. Once this impression is
given, you are the enemy, and enemies who don’t fight will
lose.

Since you don’t deal in culturally shared symbols, you can’t
manipulate the belief system of others. Since people are
always competing for rank, they will manipulate the belief
system of others, and the general consensus in a group may
come to be that you are the cause of all the problems. If it is a
setting where people are trying to be live up to high moral
standards, you might just be the target of rumors; in groups
with lower standards, the eviction or shunning could be more
open and forceful. In either case, you lose.

Being labeled autistic can put you in the category of “not
able to care for yourself,” which is sometimes a technique of
NTs to maintain power over you. The truth is: you can do
some things, but not everything, for yourself. That’s the truth
for everyone because humans are social animals. It may
become a collective belief that you can’t do anything for
yourself, which is never true, but if you can’t manipulate
collective beliefs, then you lose.

A Field Guide to Earthlings:
An autistic/Asperger view of neurotypical
behavior

[Lemur]

Focus on mastering your craft and doing your best work first and foremost. Do politics second. The latter will be easier and may not even be all that necessary if your bases are covered from the former efforts. I find that being a showhorse is not worth its weight in the real world and takes a lot of effort anyhow..and years of experience stemming all the way from high school popularity rankings.

I will say though that the career game becomes very important in key situations in business...especially contract negotiations and re-orgs. I'm not good at these and never have been....so I have always just prioritized expert power in my work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_an ... pert_power

[nomadscientist]

I figure if I'm going to spend 5 to 10 years working a job, I might as well benefit from and possibly enjoy playing the game.

If 5-10 years is the entire working life, followed by retirement, a lot of these games are not worth it. The first five years of any career generally only offer automatic seniority-based promotions. So long as you're good enough to survive, you'll do about as well as anyone else. Over-performing can matter in the longer run, but you maybe do not care about the longer run.

Toward the end of ten years these things will start to matter more, but even so, how useful is it to increase your income significantly for only one or two years at the end of your run? It probably does not change your end portfolio size that much. If those increases would compound over another thirty five years, it would matter a lot more.

I would use the time to build capital for your retired life rather than to climb the career ladder. Connections are the most valuable thing you can get from a career job that you may find much harder to get in retirement. Make friends with everyone, especially senior people, but people your age will be senior in 15 years. Other than that, I would try not to lose your head and free time too much in work. Keep mental energy in reserve to learn other skills that will be useful in retirement.