This won’t be a massively long post, but I wanted to alert on a few things. First off, my man Paul Millerd has a very good newsletter about work and life and balancing the two. Here’s the most recent edition. Go ahead and subscribe. You’ll dig it.
In that edition I linked, he talks about his friends in London referring to a concept called “side of desk” work, which means all the stuff you need to take on apart from what you believe your core job to be. That means rah-rah meetings, engagement events, baseball games, happy hours, holiday parties, etc. But it also means cross-silo work where another silo was led to believe “Oh, Barry knows these data points,” so they ping you 212 times even though you, Dear Barry, have other pressing stuff on your plate.
That’s “side of desk” work.
I had one job where we called it “TOTF,” or “Turds Over The Fence,” but that more commonly referred to managers dropping no-context projects on you with a 2-hour deadline. That’s a version of “side of desk” work, but a bit different.
So why is “side of desk” work dangerous?
Well, there are a couple of reasons.
First: there’s two ways to get promoted in a white-collar, for-profit business. The first way is to be a complete asshole but have amazing returns, i.e. 10x sales. Then you can play grab-ass, openly use the n-word, and a bunch of other stuff — and no C-Suiter will get rid of you. So if you’re gonna sell ice to the eskimos, that’s the first path.
Second path is to be seen as someone capable and competent who maybe doesn’t “deliver returns” but makes trains run or takes projects off the plates of supposedly more-important people. If you’re chasing this path, though, you absolutely need to do every single “side of desk” project that comes down the pike. Happy hour? “I’ll help set up.” Baseball game? “I bought the tickets. Can you guys Venmo me back?” Another silo pings you? “Honey, start dinner and feel free to eat without me.”
If you’re scoring at home, then, you have two basic paths through a white-collar enterprise-type existence:
- Be a complete asshole but deliver revenue.
- Burn yourself to the ground on tasks and projects.
If someone can notify me of a third path, I’d be open to that discussion. I haven’t really seen one.
Basically: be really good, do whatever you want, and often just don’t show up for an entire day as people are looking for you. You’ll be protected because you deliver. Or take on everything under the sun and get burnt out and exhausted.
Is there a path around this?
Not entirely. You can try to make work less about tasks, but most managers can only conceptualize work as tasks, so it’s a bit hard. You can try to set professional boundaries with your supervisor, but that often signs you up for a layoff list. (It sure as hell doesn’t get you advanced.) You can job-hop like a crack fiend until you find the right mix of culture and direct boss, but you might be hopping for a bit. (I still am.)
What else ya got?
