Do It for You

Back during my school days, I got a gig at a small hosting and ISP company near my university. It was very informal, and I didn’t even have an agreed-upon salary. The owner was this eccentric guy who would pay us almost nothing for months while taking us to expensive restaurants for lunch every day. Then, out of nowhere, he would hand us a cheque worth ten times what he normally paid in a month. I never figured this guy out.

In any case, the office was within walking distance of the university, and parking there was cheaper, so I would drive in early and leave my car there. Since I had the keys, I started showing up before everyone else. Work was always more interesting than lectures. One thing led to another, and before long, I was leaving home early to avoid traffic, getting to the office first, working for hours, sometimes skipping classes, attending a few lectures, and then heading back to the office until 7 or 8 PM.

I was never paid overtime, as you can probably infer from the first paragraph.

While my boss and the company were undoubtedly getting a good deal on my cheap labour, I was getting something much better: someone was paying me to learn the things I wanted to learn.

I eventually dropped out of university and dedicated myself entirely to work.

Back then, there weren’t many people with experience in Linux, networking, or system administration. Not only was I gaining that experience, but I was getting paid for it and, quite literally, getting free lunch.

As my skills improved and I got to know more people, I became involved in the Open Source Software community. I met other nerds and often felt stupid in technical discussions, but I knew enough of the lingo to pass as one of them. My knowledge improved, my network expanded, and eventually, I was referred to a better job at a bank.

The pattern repeated itself.

I got to the office early and left late. I was always interested in learning more, putting in the hours, and outworking my colleagues. Some of them were hardworking people I genuinely admired. Others were clearly not people I would have chosen to work with if I had a say.

Once again, I put in a lot of extra hours without additional pay.

But one of my colleagues from another department noticed my work and referred me to a position at IBM.

At that point in my life, IBM was where I wanted to be. In the early 2000s, the name carried a lot of weight. When I arrived, I quickly realized I was underprepared for the challenge. I put in a lot of extra hours simply to catch up.

My lack of skills and knowledge was my problem, not IBM’s. I never expected the company to compensate me for the time I spent closing those gaps. The beneficiary of that effort was going to be me.

I could keep going and describe how I repeated this pattern throughout my nearly 30-year career in IT, but I think I’ve made the point.

What surprises me is how many people see this relationship differently.

Spend enough time online, and you’ll find endless complaints about employers, pay, hours, and job descriptions. Go on Reddit, and you’ll find advice like, “Never give a millimetre more than what’s in your job description.”

I loathe that mindset.

To be clear, I’m not speaking as an employer, manager, or executive. I’m speaking as an individual professional.

All the extra hours I put in over the years were for me.

Going above and beyond, doing more than my job description required, and overdelivering whenever I could was for me.

I didn’t do it for the good of my company, for the betterment of mankind, or for society.

I did it because it made me better.

The referrals, promotions, higher salaries, consulting engagements, and freelancing opportunities that followed were the consequences of those investments. I met outstanding engineers, built relationships that lasted decades, and developed skills that opened doors throughout my career.

Of course, my employers benefited too. They got more value from me than they got from many of my colleagues. My performance reviews, promotions, and compensation generally reflected that reality. Customers received better service. Teams became more productive. The people I mentored grew in their careers.

But none of that changes the central point.

What always surprises me is how often people frame hard work as a sacrifice for somebody else.

I never saw it that way.

I wasn’t getting to the office early for society. I wasn’t staying late because I felt a moral obligation to my employer. And I certainly wasn’t doing it because I thought companies deserved my loyalty.

I did it because I wanted to become better.

Every difficult problem I solved taught me something.

Every project I took on expanded my skills.

Every responsibility I accepted made me more capable.

The primary beneficiary was always me.

Looking back, I think many people misunderstand the nature of work.

They see every extra hour as a gift to their employer.

I saw it as an investment in myself.

If I spent two extra hours learning a new technology, the company benefited for a while. I benefited for the rest of my career.

If I volunteered for a difficult project, the company got the project completed. I got the experience.

If I built a reputation for being reliable and capable, my manager benefited. But I was the one who carried that reputation into every future job, every promotion, every consulting engagement, and every opportunity that followed.

The company rented my labour for a period of time.

I kept the skills.

I kept the relationships.

I kept the experience.

I kept the reputation.

And unlike a paycheck, those things compound.

Many of the opportunities I received throughout my career came from people who had seen me work years earlier. The promotion, the referral, the better job offer, the consulting opportunity, the introduction to another engineer… every one of them was built on investments I had made in myself long before the rewards arrived.

That is why I never worried much about whether I was doing more than my job description required.

I was never working for free.

I was investing in the only asset I was guaranteed to own for the rest of my life: myself.