I work for a Fortune 100 company. Everyone reading this knows the company.
In my entire time at the company (>5 years, I think), I've written maybe 30k lines of code.
I'm terrible at responding to e-mail. Whatever you think this means, I'm worse than that.
I skip meetings all the time. Sometimes I just don't dial in. Sometimes I say I have a conflict, sometimes it's true. I probably attend a total of 4 hours of meetings in any given week.
Not too long ago, I had 3-4 weeks in a row where all I did was attend those few meetings.
I have ADHD. I dick around a lot. I spend hours and hours reading/watching random stuff. 60% tech stuff, 40% random Youtube rabbit holes. Very little of it is applicable to my work.
I take naps and often sleep in. Some days I don't show up for work at all.
For the most part, what I do is review people's stuff and tell them why it won't work as well as they hope. Occasionally, I'll tell them what to do instead but with a lot of hand-waving. I believe it's called "being an architect".
However:
I'm at the highest individual contributor level the company has. It's a tech company, btw.
I get consistently stellar reviews. My boss says she hears great things about me all the time, so "I shouldn't not even bother asking around" when we do 360 reviews.
I've gotten off-schedule, totally unexpected stock grants as thanks for "all my good work".
I make $15k/year more than any of my peers and $100k+ more than some of them. Some of that is due to regional differences (I'm in the Bay area), but it's all the US.
This year, we weren't even supposed to get bonuses. 2020 had been a shit year. The board decided to give us bonuses anyway, but "no one would get their full bonus". I got 120%.
If I ask if I can attend a conference, I've never gotten a "no". My boss even suggested a few more I should attend.
None of this would make any sense, were it not for those (on average!) 2-5 hours a week of good, actually productive time I have. The ADHD means I can't do it on command, but when it hits me, it's apparently gold.
I work for a Fortune 100 company. Everyone reading this knows the company.
In my entire time at the company (>5 years, I think), I've written maybe 30k lines of code.
I'm terrible at responding to e-mail. Whatever you think this means, I'm worse than that.
I skip meetings all the time. Sometimes I just don't dial in. Sometimes I say I have a conflict, sometimes it's true. I probably attend a total of 4 hours of meetings in any given week.
Not too long ago, I had 3-4 weeks in a row where all I did was attend those few meetings.
I have ADHD. I dick around a lot. I spend hours and hours reading/watching random stuff. 60% tech stuff, 40% random Youtube rabbit holes. Very little of it is applicable to my work.
I take naps and often sleep in. Some days I don't show up for work at all.
For the most part, what I do is review people's stuff and tell them why it won't work as well as they hope. Occasionally, I'll tell them what to do instead but with a lot of hand-waving. I believe it's called "being an architect".
However:
I'm at the highest individual contributor level the company has. It's a tech company, btw.
I get consistently stellar reviews. My boss says she hears great things about me all the time, so "I shouldn't not even bother asking around" when we do 360 reviews.
I've gotten off-schedule, totally unexpected stock grants as thanks for "all my good work".
I make $15k/year more than any of my peers and $100k+ more than some of them. Some of that is due to regional differences (I'm in the Bay area), but it's all the US.
This year, we weren't even supposed to get bonuses. 2020 had been a shit year. The board decided to give us bonuses anyway, but "no one would get their full bonus". I got 120%.
If I ask if I can attend a conference, I've never gotten a "no". My boss even suggested a few more I should attend.
None of this would make any sense, were it not for those (on average!) 2-5 hours a week of good, actually productive time I have. The ADHD means I can't do it on command, but when it hits me, it's apparently gold.