One Red Question - Is your company lucky to have you or are you lucky to have them?
By Trevor Stafford on March 17, 2008 - Comments (View)Do you feel that you're fortunate to have your job and employer? Or are they lucky to have your talent and experience? Or is it somewhere in between?
Last week I wondered aloud if the reason that job descriptions are so company-centric is that organizations (or perhaps their leaders) develop a kind of hubris in terms of their company being an attractive place to work.
So let me put this to you, my fellow workers in software, (to paraphrase Leonard Cohen):
Do you feel that you’re lucky to have your job…and the company that subsidizes it?
Or are they lucky to have your talent or experience? Or is it somewhere in between?
What does this mean for how we relate to our jobs and our careers?
(remember, you can log in and reply anonymously with the username ‘anonymous’ and password ‘redcanary’
Comments
mar 27 2008 17:38
3 Reputation Points
Is your customer lucky to have you or your business lucky to have them as a customer ?
Its obvious…in a market place both parties should perceive and realize value for the relationship to continue.
Edit (for another )mar 28 2008 09:44
10 Reputation Points
I think a lot of it has to do with where each of you are in your development process. So, if my company is a start-up and I’m a real entrepreneurial, adaptable guy and a top notch communicator, then I’d say we’re lucky to have found one another.
Take the same skill sets and put them in the middle of a monolith, or managing the in-house IT of an old-guard insurance company using Six-Sigma or some other choke hold management practice, and we’re probably both a bit stressed out.
Maybe it doesn’t come down to luck at all but making smart decisions about the kind of people and organizations we become involved with and what the fit is culturally?
The execs I’ve IV’ed have told me time and time again: it’s the language you speak or code, it’s the way you communicate as a teammate that they are most interested in.
Edit (for another )mar 28 2008 09:46
10 Reputation Points
That’d be ”. . . it’s NOT the language you speak or code” that matters.
Where’s an editor when you need them?
Edit (for another )may 05 2008 20:54
0 Reputation Points
I was advised some time ago to get a sense for what kind of company I would like to work. It’s taken a few years to really grasp this but I now understand. Small companies tend to have bigger jobs and big companies tend to have smaller jobs. Since I like a change of scenery and I like to pursue business problems at a high level, small to medium sized companies are more my style, and why the environment at large companies have the potential to be stressful for me.
Saravana’s statement about customers resonates with me as well.
Edit (for another )may 20 2008 21:31
0 Reputation Points
At the current time and place in my career I definitely perceive it as more luck for me then the company. They think they’re lucky to have me though, that helps!
Edit (for another )