I think a thought experiment illuminates the difference. Two different but identical companies with unlimited vacation gets too people to do the same project.
Workaholic Walter shows up to work 7 days a week, works 10 hours days for 3 months busting his butt to write a piece of software that ultimately fails because he spends so much time working he misses the big picture.
Smart Steve does some research decides the project already exists in open source downloads it, sets it up in a week. Then decides to take a 10 weeks vacation because he just saved the company so much money.
In these two situations Steve objectively did far better, but I bet your sweet butt that he gets fired, and Walter gets promoted. The problem is no one ever really knows how much value you added, or how much work you did.
I've been on projects that were incredibly successful from a technical perspective. Objectively the product performed exactly like the stake holders wanted, the performance was great, it could run for months at the time, even while actively being configured by people completely unfamiliar with the software and not crash.
It was still a failure because no one wanted to buy it. We spent a year kicking butt and still added 0 value to the business. But I will still paid. And I wouldn't have been paid any more if the project had instead resulted in an extra $12 million in revenue.
You pay a hair stylist to cut your hair, not for the business deal you may or may not get because of it. Why someone pays you is different from what you are paid to do.
He delivered shit ton of code; managers have seen the progress pretty much daily, or at least weekly. The failure of the project can be blamed on many things - so ultimately, maybe Walter was just digging the right (albeit crude) ditch but at the wrong place. Someone else's ass may or may not get busted for the project flop (depends on the size of the company, usually).
In the meantime, Steve gets sacked because he's obviously not working - so why he should get paid?
The point is, companies would want you to focus on business goals, but in fact they pay you for the amount of code produced (and punish you if it's low).
> Noone is aware that Walter overworked because noone saw him
I know Walter. He made a big point of sending e-mails at 2 AM, CC-ing the recipient's boss, and then following up at 8:00 the next morning asking why you hadn't responded yet.
Workaholic Walter shows up to work 7 days a week, works 10 hours days for 3 months busting his butt to write a piece of software that ultimately fails because he spends so much time working he misses the big picture.
Smart Steve does some research decides the project already exists in open source downloads it, sets it up in a week. Then decides to take a 10 weeks vacation because he just saved the company so much money.
In these two situations Steve objectively did far better, but I bet your sweet butt that he gets fired, and Walter gets promoted. The problem is no one ever really knows how much value you added, or how much work you did.
I've been on projects that were incredibly successful from a technical perspective. Objectively the product performed exactly like the stake holders wanted, the performance was great, it could run for months at the time, even while actively being configured by people completely unfamiliar with the software and not crash. It was still a failure because no one wanted to buy it. We spent a year kicking butt and still added 0 value to the business. But I will still paid. And I wouldn't have been paid any more if the project had instead resulted in an extra $12 million in revenue.
You pay a hair stylist to cut your hair, not for the business deal you may or may not get because of it. Why someone pays you is different from what you are paid to do.