Back in college, I was lucky enough to get a student worker position in my university's Computer Services department on the Enterprise Services team. This was near the top of the hierarchy in the department, and it meant I got to effectively bypass the help desk/direct end user interaction portion of my IT career. I should mention I was essentially a nepotistic hire: I mostly got it because I knew the director from a church softball team.
While it was definitely a step up from resetting passwords and troubleshooting printers all day, it also meant a lot of grimy work pulling old cable and managing the new wiring/power in the server farm. I was grateful for it, especially when I walked past one of the computer labs and saw other student workers sitting at the front desk answering the same questions over and over,
One of my best friends from high school (Brent) also went to this university and also got a job in the Computer Services department. However, he was in the Accessibility Services department, which I think meant he was doing a lot more "real world" tasks like helping set up ergonomic work areas rather than learning things like coding.
One day, we ended up talking about our jobs, and he basically complained that he was tired of being paid for what he did and wanted to get to a situation where he was being paid for what we knew. That's probably a bit too ambitious for a 19 year old with almost no real-world IT experience, but the concept stuck with me and has been extremely useful when taking stock of my career.
The idea is you are paid for a combination of what you do and what you know. That's the Pay Spectrum. Some jobs can occupy the far reaches of the ends of that spectrum (unskilled labor or a think tank position), but most fall somewhere in the middle and tend to progress from "what you do" to "what you know" as your career goes along.
Starting with the assumption that employment follows the basic rules of scarcity, it follows that your value to your employer increases with the rarity of the work you can do. In other words: if most of the tasks involved in your position can be reliably done by a random person from a temp agency, you aren't as valuable as someone who has the ability to do highly-specialized tasks that cannot be reliably done by someone else.
There are definitely fringe situations where intrinsic characteristics like physicality come into play for specific types of specialization (hello, professional athletes!), but for most of us, gaining those unique skills is about acquiring knowledge. I learned the basics of IT infrastructure at my student worker position, an apprentice bricklayer learns on the job, an aspiring chef goes to culinary school or starts as a line cook, etc. Through some combination of training and experience, we better at our jobs, and we theoretically are more valuable as a result.
Everyone knows this instinctively, but codifying it can give us useful insights in several situations, with probably the most important being raises and promotions. Like almost everyone, I have experienced imposter syndrome at points in my career, which caused me to minimize my skill set and contributions. However, after a few years at my current position, I remembered the conversation with Brent and stepped back to attempt to objectively value myself based on skill scarcity. I concluded the combination of my specialized IT knowledge, my interpersonal skills, and the organizational knowledge I'd gained in my years at the position made me rather valuable when compared to someone they could hire or transfer. As a result, I've lobbied for and been given multiple promotions, raises, duty changes, and work/life balance concessions that have made my working and personal life better.
I've spoken to quite a few friends and coworkers who minimize their skills and contributions in their jobs. I don't want this to veer into anti-authoritarian territory, but it seems many people are taught at some point to always "be a team player," not acknowledge areas where they obviously excel, and basically be happy to have whatever job they're given. I think this is toxic. If you can objectively show your value, you should own it and use it any way you can to improve your situation, whether that's job duties or pay. As your career goes along, your employer will likely be luckier to have you than the reverse, and you should be fully aware when that switch occurs.
If you've never sat down and thought about it before, do it now. How much of your job could realistically be done by a random person your employer could hire at your pay scale? How much value does your organizational knowledge give you over someone who would have to be "shown the ropes" of the company? Have your job duties expanded since you started? What things can you do now that you couldn't when you were hired? Do people seek you out for specific knowledge or tasks?
Own where you are in your career. There is nothing wrong with being closer to the "paid for what you do" side the spectrum. You can happily spend an entire career there if you're in the right situation. But if you want to move toward the "paid for what you know" side, make a focused effort to increase your value by adding specialized skills or knowledge. And if, like many, you realize you already hold significant value, develop a plan to leverage it to improve your situation.
While it was definitely a step up from resetting passwords and troubleshooting printers all day, it also meant a lot of grimy work pulling old cable and managing the new wiring/power in the server farm. I was grateful for it, especially when I walked past one of the computer labs and saw other student workers sitting at the front desk answering the same questions over and over,
One of my best friends from high school (Brent) also went to this university and also got a job in the Computer Services department. However, he was in the Accessibility Services department, which I think meant he was doing a lot more "real world" tasks like helping set up ergonomic work areas rather than learning things like coding.
One day, we ended up talking about our jobs, and he basically complained that he was tired of being paid for what he did and wanted to get to a situation where he was being paid for what we knew. That's probably a bit too ambitious for a 19 year old with almost no real-world IT experience, but the concept stuck with me and has been extremely useful when taking stock of my career.
The idea is you are paid for a combination of what you do and what you know. That's the Pay Spectrum. Some jobs can occupy the far reaches of the ends of that spectrum (unskilled labor or a think tank position), but most fall somewhere in the middle and tend to progress from "what you do" to "what you know" as your career goes along.
Starting with the assumption that employment follows the basic rules of scarcity, it follows that your value to your employer increases with the rarity of the work you can do. In other words: if most of the tasks involved in your position can be reliably done by a random person from a temp agency, you aren't as valuable as someone who has the ability to do highly-specialized tasks that cannot be reliably done by someone else.
There are definitely fringe situations where intrinsic characteristics like physicality come into play for specific types of specialization (hello, professional athletes!), but for most of us, gaining those unique skills is about acquiring knowledge. I learned the basics of IT infrastructure at my student worker position, an apprentice bricklayer learns on the job, an aspiring chef goes to culinary school or starts as a line cook, etc. Through some combination of training and experience, we better at our jobs, and we theoretically are more valuable as a result.
Everyone knows this instinctively, but codifying it can give us useful insights in several situations, with probably the most important being raises and promotions. Like almost everyone, I have experienced imposter syndrome at points in my career, which caused me to minimize my skill set and contributions. However, after a few years at my current position, I remembered the conversation with Brent and stepped back to attempt to objectively value myself based on skill scarcity. I concluded the combination of my specialized IT knowledge, my interpersonal skills, and the organizational knowledge I'd gained in my years at the position made me rather valuable when compared to someone they could hire or transfer. As a result, I've lobbied for and been given multiple promotions, raises, duty changes, and work/life balance concessions that have made my working and personal life better.
I've spoken to quite a few friends and coworkers who minimize their skills and contributions in their jobs. I don't want this to veer into anti-authoritarian territory, but it seems many people are taught at some point to always "be a team player," not acknowledge areas where they obviously excel, and basically be happy to have whatever job they're given. I think this is toxic. If you can objectively show your value, you should own it and use it any way you can to improve your situation, whether that's job duties or pay. As your career goes along, your employer will likely be luckier to have you than the reverse, and you should be fully aware when that switch occurs.
If you've never sat down and thought about it before, do it now. How much of your job could realistically be done by a random person your employer could hire at your pay scale? How much value does your organizational knowledge give you over someone who would have to be "shown the ropes" of the company? Have your job duties expanded since you started? What things can you do now that you couldn't when you were hired? Do people seek you out for specific knowledge or tasks?
Own where you are in your career. There is nothing wrong with being closer to the "paid for what you do" side the spectrum. You can happily spend an entire career there if you're in the right situation. But if you want to move toward the "paid for what you know" side, make a focused effort to increase your value by adding specialized skills or knowledge. And if, like many, you realize you already hold significant value, develop a plan to leverage it to improve your situation.
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