I Quit Being So Accommodating (1922)
If someone had shown me this 1922 article a decade ago, I&#x27;d have labeled him&#x2F;her as cynical. In the present day however, this article surmises so much of what I&#x27;ve experienced in the past few years.<p>Another comment in this thread linked to a decade old discussion on HN around the same post, where folks discussed the 1922 article being possibly fictional (a &#x27;business parable&#x27; as 1 comment mentioned). I couldn&#x27;t prove or disprove either (and neither can any of us) but what I can do is - Create an account on HN after lurking here for close to 2 years and finally state my plight as truthfully and in as detailed a manner as possible (Advance apologies for long wall of text&#x2F;rant ahead, please refer TL;DR at the end):<p>I started my career at a US-based Big 4 Consulting firm from their Offshore Tech Consulting subsidiary based out of a 3rd world South-East Asian country. At the risk of sounding arrogant - but please bear with me (arrogance is absolutely not my intention - I simply wish to provide background context so that folks from western countries with better Work-Life balance don&#x27;t jump to conclusions about my situation): As per my workplace&#x27;s performance metrics, I&#x27;ve been in the top 5-7% of Corporate performer (to be frank, Corporate Slave) for them throughout my stint there and while I admit, it is possible to game your way to the top (somewhat) mostly through glib talk and low technical knowledge, based on my self-awareness of my own shortcomings, in my own case, appraisals were simply a consequence of my ability to <i>GSD (Get Shi..errm.. Stuff Done) and go above and beyond whenever needed</i> - instead of massaging the egos of my corporate overlords.<p>Despite these efforts, I&#x27;ve found that getting so much work&#x2F;automation done relative to my peers (specifically peers at my workplace, I am not comparing with peers at startups or FAANG-level orgs) only resulted in - surprise - <i>more work on my plate!</i> Also, most of the additional work was of equal or worse quality (I expected more impactful work as my role grew).<p>My reputation as the GSD guy caused several (not all) Senior Managers to over-commit to our Clients and pass on all the extraneous programming work to me. Several peers from different teams would reach out to me regarding questions they had regarding Client Data transfer from OLTP to OLAP systems using Jython programming (most of my work amongst other things) and I helped out almost all of them (The ones I couldn&#x27;t help out - were asking for solutions that was out of bounds for the OLAP software.) 
Mind you, helping peers and other teams wasn&#x27;t completely out of the goodness of my heart but more based on a famous quote via Reddit - &#x27;Today you, Tomorrow me&#x27;. Unfortunately, when I needed help for an obscure problem in my software suite, I did not get similar levels of help. It&#x27;s not that these same people who I had once helped turned their back on me, it&#x27;s that their replies ranged from: &#x27;Wow! I&#x27;ve never encountered this scenario&#x27; to &#x27;What insane demands is your Client&#x2F;Snr Mgr making? This is too complex for our OLAP software to handle performance-wise, request the OLTP team to send the data in a different format.&#x27;<p>For the first 2-3 years, I kept my head down and kept doing what I did best. But as I started raising my voice around deserving better and more impactful tasks - tasks that lateral hires often got to work on as soon as they were assigned their first project, I was given excuses (sounded valid at the time) one after the other. At first, I gave my corporate overlords the benefit of the doubt - but with each passing month and increasing over-commitments, I slowly started realizing that I&#x27;m being taken for a ride. This part is the only part where it differs from the 1922 write-up - I was sinking my entire waking hours (and most weekends) into my workplace commitments and helping workplace peers - not helping random strangers - all this without seeing much in the way of returns - esp with regards to quality of work.<p>The last straw was when, despite burning myself out over frequent 60-85 hour work-weeks for close to 5 years, receiving accolades from the Client &amp; my Project members post implementation and Go-Live and ending the previous 2 years at the top of the Corporate Slave charts , I was neither assigned the OLAP software that I had politely been requesting since the previous 2 years nor was my request for accelerating my promotion by a year acknowledged - the request was neither accepted nor declined, simply unacknowledged (or so I was told after the closed door appraisal - I have no way of knowing what actually transpired in that meeting)<p>Supplementary info: For those of you unable to ascertain why I put up with workplace mental stress for so long, workplaces like these (with very few exceptions) are more-or-less the norm in my country (I live in a 3rd world South-East Asian country in a megapolis heading towards an awkward sight of faux-1st world luxuries constructed adjacent to slums - basically *&#x27;Slum Lords&#x27; &amp; &#x27;Millionaires&#x27;* - you get the drift)<p>Of course, looking back, I should&#x27;ve left sooner but in classic &#x27;Sunk Cost Fallacy&#x27; style, I erroneously kept holding out in the hopes that my situation would improve soon. After all, I thought - Why would my corporate overlords decline one of their top Corporate Slaves from career progression&#x2F;impactful tasks since that would also benefit them in the long run ? It is far too late that I&#x27;ve realized that humans can have a bunch of irrational reasons to behave in weird self-justified ways - Perhaps in my case (speculating at the risk of sounding boastful), maybe my corporate overlords were simply afraid that I might leave for greener pastures if they allowed me to work on impactful tasks or accelerated my promotion.<p>I&#x27;m close to entering my 30s so I still have time to course correct, just as Bert finally nudged himself in the right direction.<p>TL;DR - Whether the 1922 article itself is fictional or not - is irrelevant, the advice in it is anecdotally timeless - since I have been the real life embodiment of that Bert - naïve, erroneously believing in the better angels of human nature and mostly (but not completely) a pushover - who despite excelling in my corporate work, saw the short end of the stick.