The Incongruence You Learn | Career Angles

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One of my high school teachers repeated something to me that I heard quite a few times before.

“You will be rewarded if you work hard. Your boss will see you and appreciate your efforts. You will move up.”

Sometimes it would be said differently but fundamentally it was the same message.

“Hard work will help you advance in an organization.”

Nothing could be further from the truth than that.

Usually, hard work is rewarded with more work, not a chance to move up. Often, the hard worker is seen as the person who is not promotable or who they don’t want to promote because they are indispensable in the role.

Thus, you become beholden to the annual salary review and the institutionally approved percentage increase, rather than the opportunity to take a step up in the quality of your work in the big step up and pay.

When recessions (or worse) occur, you are often among the first people to be shown the door because what business values is not hard work but the ability to think about how work should be done and do it better. There is always someone available to do the hard work.