This blog post has been living rent-free in my head for a few weeks now: If you are useful, it doesn’t mean you are valued

An excerpt:

Being useful means that you are good at getting things done in a specific area, so that people above you can delegate that completely. You are reliable, efficient, maybe even indispensable in the short term. But you are seen primarily as a gap-filler, someone who delivers on tasks that have to be done but are not necessarily a core component of the company strategy. …

Being valued, on the other hand, means that you are brought into more conversations, not just to execute, but to help shape the direction. This comes with opportunities to grow and contribute in ways that are meaningful to you and the business.

This distinction between being useful versus being valued has really stuck in my craw. Why? Because it has helped solidify in my mind something that has repeatedly haunted me over the years.

I get hired to be useful when I really want to be valued

Every time I have been hired, I have been hired to be useful to somebody else, and I have accepted every new opportunity, going as far back as graduate school, hoping to be valued. Over the months that unfold, I grow disillusioned - usually slowly and non-monotonically - until ultimately I conclude, rightly or not, that I am not valued as much as I “deserve” to be.

An (arguably) inflated sense of self-worth, and a propensity to value others (in particular, bosses and leadership) who do not share my very high assessment of my own valuableness, make for a potently toxic combination that has left me feeling bitter and disappointed more than once.

Is this simply the nature of boss-subordinate relationships? Probably! Will it happen again? Maybe! This is probably why people found startups. Maybe it just sucks to be managed?

Friends and critters

Outside of the career context, “usefulness” isn’t really a metric I use to evaluate my relationships. I do have very smart and knowledgeable friends, and I enjoy learning from them, but they are only very rarely useful to me. (Most of them live very far away and are thus incapable of being useful for, e.g., moving heavy things.) I don’t need my friends to be useful for me to value them. I know for a fact that they don’t find me useful, because mostly I just sit around vibecoding extremely non-useful pet projects and playing video games in my goon cave.

My point is that what makes my friends friends instead of friendly acquaintances is, in large part, the mutual sense that we value each other despite being quite useless.

I feel the same way about my cats, which are less-than-useless 99.99% of the time - although Mia did eat a moth today, and I am very proud of her!

And yes, I’ve deviated somewhat from the original definitions of “useful” and “valued” in the blog post I linked at the top of this post. I really don’t care, do u?

How to advance in your career????

I dunno, man. Being useful is going to help you a lot more than being useless. You probably aren’t valued as much as you think you should be valued. And you shouldn’t let that reality detract from the amount that you value yourself. If you figure out how to convince others to value you as much as you value you, it would be very useful(!) if you could let me know.

Have I have grown old and cynical? You bet! Just wait until I start blogging about romance for real.

In conclusion

I find it easy and natural to genuinely value others. And it has on several occasions made me very sad to realize that feeling is not as mutual as I initially imagined it to be.

Such is life! Best not to dwell in bitterness about it - it’s bad for the skin. A better use of time would be to think about whether I am successfully communicating to people I value that I value them, so they can blog about something else.

Is “value” just another word for “love”?

Words are a social construct!

This was an uncharacteristically sincere post

Don’t get used to it!