I’m being honest here, I’ve done things like this at prior jobs. It was mostly a reflection of unfortunate business decisions than personal preference or skill set, per se.
If my raises and promotions are contingent on me achieving a goal like “use a reactive JavaScript framework in public facing component” or “develop an application in NodeJS”, then you better believe I’m going to do both of those things regardless of whether the right project comes my way or not. I will find a way. Q3 comes around and I haven’t been given an appropriate project to achieve my goals? Yes, I’m absolutely going to integrate an LLM component into the project search function of our business reporting system so I can check off the arbitrary “AI” goal I needed to complete in order to qualify for the top tier raise percentage.
I’m being honest here, I’ve done things like this at prior jobs. It was mostly a reflection of unfortunate business decisions than personal preference or skill set, per se.
If my raises and promotions are contingent on me achieving a goal like “use a reactive JavaScript framework in public facing component” or “develop an application in NodeJS”, then you better believe I’m going to do both of those things regardless of whether the right project comes my way or not. I will find a way. Q3 comes around and I haven’t been given an appropriate project to achieve my goals? Yes, I’m absolutely going to integrate an LLM component into the project search function of our business reporting system so I can check off the arbitrary “AI” goal I needed to complete in order to qualify for the top tier raise percentage.
This reads dystopian to me.
When your daily quests don’t line up with the story but you make it work anyway.
That…made me feel kind of sad actually.