
Help, I'm Too Smart For My Job - kenshiro_o
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130825030728-52594-help-i-m-too-smart-for-my-job
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mcantelon
Not sure who said this first, but the classic quote is "If you’re the smartest
person in the room, you’re in the wrong room."

If you're the big fish in a small pond you're not only missing out on learning
from others, and creating impressive things, but ingrained cynicism and having
an over-inflated sense of worth are also risks.

Fortunately having an unchallenging job can provide lots of time and energy
for research and side projects that can lead to jumping into more interesting
work.

~~~
jonnathanson
_" If you're the big fish in a small pond you're not only missing out on
learning from others, and creating impressive things, but ingrained cynicism
and having an over-inflated sense of worth are also risks."_

Absolutely true.

 _" Fortunately having an unchallenging job can provide lots of time and
energy for research and side projects that can lead to jumping into more
interesting work."_

You know, _in theory_ this is true. In practice, I've been in this situation a
couple of times in my career. And it sucked. Hard. It was soul crushing. It
was depressing. I found myself emotionally drained at the end of every day. I
would complete my work in a short timespan every morning, then somehow end up
mindlessly cruising Facebook (or whatever passed for Facebook back then)
throughout the day. My _latent_ productivity plummeted in direct correlation
to my plummeting mental engagement.

Maybe I'm an unusual case. But oddly enough, I find a boring, trivial,
meaningless job almost _more_ draining than a challenging and extremely fast-
paced one. In the latter, at least I am revved up, and thus I have energy for
side projects on the weekends.

~~~
weland
> "Fortunately having an unchallenging job can provide lots of time and energy
> for research and side projects that can lead to jumping into more
> interesting work."

That's not always true.

It only works if the job is both easy _and_ coming at a low enough pace that
you can do it in a couple of hours and forget about it.

However, when the amount of work itself is overwhelming _and_ the job is
unchallenging, it works out the other way: it sweeps all your energy and
leaves you burnt out at the end of the day. You get home and all you want to
do is drink a couple of beers and watch a TV series until you're sleepy enough
that you can go to bed and fall asleep, getting just enough sleep to be ready
for more bullshit the next day.

~~~
SubMachinePun
> However, when the amount of work itself is overwhelming and the job is
> unchallenging, it works out the other way: it sweeps all your energy and
> leaves you burnt out at the end of the day. You get home and all you want to
> do is drink a couple of beers and watch a TV series until you're sleepy
> enough that you can go to bed and fall asleep, getting just enough sleep to
> be ready for more bullshit the next day."

I'm on some twisted variant of that where I'm stuck trying to sift through a
backlog of tutorials or Algorithm review so I can still be considered remotely
competent enough to apply elsewhere, finding myself staying up 'til 1,
sometimes 2AM, only to wake up the next day to repeat the cycle. Only reason I
haven't 'rocked the boat' yet with my supervisor is because it's a fairly
high-profile project, but definitely starting to apply elsewhere if they
ignore my request to switch from backend to front-end after this. Glad to know
I'm not the only one.

------
deleted_account
An HR article with broad emotional appeal! It's like opening a fortune cookie
and reading, "You are destined for great things."

Of course we're all too smart for our jobs!

© Human Workplace 2013

Please sharelike this comment on TwitterLinkedBook.

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feral
I can't tell whether or not this is an advertisement.

The sentence: "You can start getting your Human-Voiced Resume™ together now
and be in a new job by Halloween" sounds like an advertisement.

It also bothers me that the title is 'HELP! Im too smart for my job', when it
isn't actually someone asking for help.

Maybe the story inside is true, and Drew is real. It's well written. But I
don't know what to make of a story like this if I can't tell whether its true
or not.

------
MrKurtHaeusler
I stopped reading when I realised it was an ad for snake oil, but lots of
people feel like Drew at work. And they are all justified, even when working
together. Drew IS the smartest guy at his job, when it comes to the things he
cares about. The trick is, most of his co-workers are also smarter than
everyone else, when it comes to the things they care about and specialise in.

People come to me at work all the time frustrated about something. "Sometimes
I am the only one who has any idea about X and is actively trying to push it
at this company". And they are right. When it comes to X, they are far too
clever for the company. But when it comes to Y and Z they are just like
everyone else, except for the guy that really gives a shit about Y and knows
its the most important thing the company should be concentrating on, and the
guy that really gives a shit about Z and knows that its the most important
thing the company should be focussing on.

We are all in our own little bubbles and have trouble considering that fact
that maybe we aren't so smart after all. We just need to start seeing things
from other peoples perspectives. Maybe X, Y AND Z are important so why not
recognise how clever other people actually are work together. Those people
that can manage to realise that they aren't in fact the only one who cares,
and get past their egos and manage to work with others and connect all those
important things are the true people who are clever enough to work anywhere.

Edit: So yeah, this smart clever things isn't really such a black and white
dichotomy. Pretty much all of us are clever at some thing, yet utterly stupid
at most things, that is just how things are. That is why we need to work
together to get anything done.

------
karlkatzke
> There's almost no focus on anything that could have impact outside a tiny
> circle of bureaucrats. It's a shame, not to mention frustrating."

> "Well, I get to be the rabble-rouser, which is frustrating at times but
> satisfying at others," said Drew.

I worked in government/academia (big public U) for a long time. This is pretty
much why I left. I agree to an extent that there's some value in the "If
you're not the smartest person in the room..." quote, but there's something to
be said for it. At least every person on my team at the BigU had the ability
to drive change.

In a more startup-like culture with obvious rockstars, it feels like only the
rockstars get to drive the change and the rest are supposed to follow along
even when they don't agree. It's something that managers should sit on, but
they often don't, and it leads to monocultures of thought that aren't
necessarily the best for the business.

------
jhspaybar
I'm not even sure this is "too smart" for your job, this feels a lot more like
"too driven" or maybe more accurately a willingness to stay complacent. If you
give any value to the personality tests that exist something like 60%+ of all
Americans have a stable personality, one that is happy with what is happening
now and doesn't want to rock the boat. This is normal, and to me what this
article is really calling out is that if you're not one of those people, don't
become one just because it's what you think is stable.

------
morgante
Disregarding the marketing bits, a good story.

But there are a lot of actually good reasons to stay in an easy (ie. stupid)
job if it's a temporary situation with an exit in sight. Specifically, when
bootstrapping/moonlighting a startup you have no energy left for an overly
intense day job. So stick with the crappy job until it's time to take your
passion full time.

So I'd suggest a modification to the old maxim: If you're the smartest person
in the room, either leave the room or start to build a new one.

------
dkokelley
Ideally any group will have good intellectual variety (not an attempt to be
PC. I mean that the group is composed of uniquely smart individuals in their
field in a complementary way). My question is what is the role of the
"smartest" person in the room? Obviously a group won't survive if the smartest
person is always moving on. Assuming there is always 1 "smartest" person, this
is an inherently unstable system. Eventually all groups will be composed of
one individual who is both the smartest and dumbest member of the group.

The way I see it, the smart people can both:

\- Satisfy their intellectual curiosity individually through their work or in
personal extracurricular activities

\- Establish a mentoring relationship with the rest of the group

Regarding the second option, I believe this is a healthy group dynamic. It
raises the groups average IQ or expertise, and training / mentoring others
helps to solidify your own understanding of a subject. Perhaps in time the
mentee will get to the point where they can challenge and expand the mentor's
own understanding.

~~~
ucarion
I'm not sure there has to be just one "smartest person in the room"; people
have different fields of expertise, so it's almost always possible to learn
something from someone. You can be a mentor in one thing and a student in
another if the room has a sufficiently diverse group of people.

------
Bulkington
The immediate and poisonous issue is not being recognized or rewarded.
Typically you're better off by moving on sooner rather than later, becuase
it's unlikely you're going to stanch the organizational entropy, no matter
that you're carrying the rest of the department to verifiably higher levels of
success.

OR, maybe you're not as smart and valuable as you believe, and you're better
off if you STFU and produce.

------
wellboy
Prove it, build a startup.

~~~
jackmaney
Not everyone is well suited to building a start up.

~~~
michaelcampbell
Indeed - nor is every startup worth building. I know _here_ the cult of the
startup is well celebrated but it's a bit of an echo chamber just like out
there.

