Welcome to part 2 in our series of workplace politics. This Take will profile the notorious myth that hard work gets you up the ladder, and how so many good employees get frustrated by the fruits of their labor not yielding enough.
As I mentioned in the first Take, the employment world is really no different than sports, politics, and school cliques. Companies and managers play with workers like checker pieces. It is not actually about how well you do the work or how good your work ethic is, it's all about what connections you have and who favors you. You will of course have a manager here and there who really does value hard work and ethics, but that is a rarity in the job world. But before we dive into that, there's one thing to understand first, and then the rest should make sense, and that is.....
Your job is not about benefiting you, it’s about benefiting a company
“What can you bring to our company?” might be a question you’ve been asked in a job interview, or one you’ve been told to prepare an answer for. How you benefit a company is almost always what comes first for them. It’s true that some places really want to make a good home for you as an employee and give you some top-dollar pay and perks, but on average this is not the case, and it mostly will ever be the case with smaller companies.
In some sense, jobs are not entirely wrong to think this way. What company wants to keep somebody hired who shows up but does no work? But then also companies will sometimes keep these types too if that person has connections or can blow the whistle on higher-ups. Businesses think with money and how they can grow and increase their profits. It’s not about benefiting you, it’s about how you benefit them. Of course, if you become an MVP for the job, that is going to be the only time they see it as important to give you significant favor. Otherwise you are just another replaceable ant on the hill.
You don’t get promoted through “hard work”
The misconception is that “hard work” will move you higher in the ranks. This is not true and many people spend years at work hoping and believing their hard work will finally pay off. In fact the harder you work - and the better you are at it - the more the bosses will just keep you right there for less pay. You’re valuable to them because you do good work and know the job very well, so they figure “Why promote this guy/girl? If we do we’ll lose this good quality work and it’ll be hard finding someone else as good to fill their spot. Let’s keep them right where they are and get great labor out of them for less pay.” Many times bosses will also make loose promises or suggestions that you’ll become a supervisor just to keep you hanging on, when they almost always choose someone else in the end.
Hard working people often get frustrated because they see others get promoted who have either worked at the job a shorter time than them, or don’t even know as much as they do, or both. The reason why? It’s almost always about connections as I said in the beginning. Like they say: who you know, not what you know. All about networking. And of course if you are a woman who is having sex in the workplace you will get up that ladder fast and I’ve seen it on jobs before. But even aside from that, it really doesn’t matter your quality of work or knowledge, who you know and how you operate with people unfortunately gets you ahead. And it is the common reason why you have employees complaining about people in higher positions being stupid - the job promoted someone who is making a massive mess because they really don’t know anything!
So what do you do?
Unfortunately, if you want to climb you have to play the game. Of course, you don't have to cheese it quite as badly as some other folks, but just engage in the team player stuff and try to know the job as much as possible so that you at least sound like an expert. These things will help you a lot, but especially "fitting in with the team." Hell, even I once had a manager who told me to just fake it for the sake of trying to advance, and he himself knew the game pretty well. You don't have to go out to lunch with your co-workers or sit with them in constant gossip groups to get anywhere, but showing that you can "be part of the team" will be a good look on you.
That's all for the myth of "hard work," our next topic will be.......the dreaded entity that is HR. Stay tuned!
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