Hi, Sebastian,
First, I really enjoy your blog, and appreciate the time it must take to keep something like it running each day. Thank you.
Sebastian, I've got pretty good at getting stuff done for my own personal self: school, business, fitness, and etc. However, I do find myself lagging at my 9 to 5 job, and not getting anywhere near as much stuff done as I would if it was for my own interests. I think it's because of these reasons:
1. I'm underpaid for a computer programmer, but that's my fault because I don't have a degree (i'm taking full-time classes :D)
2. Although I'm only working like 25% of the time, i'm blowing away everyone else in the office. When it comes to my own stuff I put in 100%
3. I find myself working on my own stuff during the day (this is bad I know)
First, I really would like to change this behavior because it is unethical to work on your own stuff when someone else is paying you to work on their stuff. Secondly, it can help me get better results at work, for example, if I increase online sales by X USD per year I will get a bonus worth Y.
I know your extremely busy, but if you could provide any advice or suggestions that would be great! Or maybe even better a blog post so everyone could learn!
It's amazing the more productive, happy, and focused you get in your life, and the more you start to care about doing the right thing.
Cheers,
C
Thanks, C. Dense email here, lots of things going on. A few thoughts --
1. You're not underpaid because you don't have a degree; you're underpaid because you've either (1) been unable to show others tangibly your ability to perform highly, (2) don't have the relevant contacts, connections, and/or hustle to look for a higher paid position (which is much easier with connections, but connections can be replaced with just hustling more, which generates connections), and/or (3) you're not good at negotiating.
I won't take one of those extreme positions and say degrees don't matter; they do. But companies don't care about their people's credentials anywhere near as much as they care about results. Even if 90% of companies in the particular space you wanted to work were very credential focused (and in programming, it's much lower than that at the best companies to work), you'd still be able to get a great position by just contacting enough people.
So, ask yourself: how's your Github look? Do you write publicly? Do you have documented work you did a good job on? Do you regularly go out and meet people, and talk about the space you work in? Those are what get you paid more highly, not a piece of paper.
2. You're probably ahead of the curve. I've seen studies that estimate the amount people work. The numbers vary, but it's always pretty low. The lowest I've seen -- and I actually believe it -- is that top executives do only 15 minutes of their best work each day on average. Your best work does orders of magnitude more than simply good work. People then fill up another couple hours with things ranging from somewhat important to mostly trivial work, and spend the rest of the day screwing around. Everyone does it, so at least stop feeling guilty about it.
3. It probably is bad to work on your own projects while at the workplace. You might consider negotiating or changing jobs or workflow so that your performance becomes based on getting specific results, not hours, and then you're free to do that without any conflicts. I know a guy who negotiated the majority of his work as telecommuting time, where the hours didn't matter and the results did. If you tend to mix and match work and projects, that might be a resolution.
So, my suggestions boil down to --
1. Document and self-credential yourself better.
2. Make more connections in the industry.
3. Buy a bunch of books on negotiation and talk to some people skilled at it.
4. Begin the search for a better-paid job.
5. Negotiate some telecommuting time if you tend to work sporadically on different things naturally.
Hope that helps, feel free to follow up if you want any more specific details in one of those areas.
SM