Money At Work
Benefits are priced by the employer, which is why headline value misleads
Some benefits are worth considerably more than they cost the employer and some are worth almost nothing…
· 4 min read
Devika writes the explanatory pieces on first months, managing up, money at work and reads the small print so you do not have to.
13 articles
Moving On
An internal move and an external move solve different problems
The two options are usually weighed as if they were the same decision at different prices, and they are not.
· 3 min read
Managing Up
A new manager resets almost everything you had built
When the person you report to changes, the informal credit you had accumulated does not transfer…
· 4 min read
Managing Up
A skip-level meeting is not a shortcut past your manager
Meetings with your manager’s manager exist for a specific organisational purpose, and misreading that…
· 3 min read
Money At Work
What a job title is worth, and to whom
A title does three separate jobs — internal grading, external signalling and personal identity — and they…
· 4 min read
Skills
Specialising and staying broad are both bets, with different failure modes
The choice between depth and range is usually framed as a matter of temperament, and it is better…
· 3 min read
Managing Up
Politics at work is information, not a character flaw
Refusing to pay attention to how influence moves is usually described as integrity, and it mostly functions…
· 3 min read
Managing Up
The things your manager is not allowed to tell you
Some of what reads as evasion is a genuine constraint, and knowing which categories are closed changes how…
· 4 min read
Managing Up
Praise is feedback too, and most of it arrives unusable
Positive comments are pleasant and rarely actionable, which means the most valuable thing you can do with…
· 3 min read
Moving On
Telling burnout apart from a bad few months
The two produce similar complaints and call for very different responses, and mistaking one for the other…
· 3 min read
Moving On
The administrative tail a departure leaves behind
Leaving a job generates a set of loose ends that nobody chases on your behalf, and most of them are far…
· 3 min read
Skills
Learn the domain, not only the tool
Tool knowledge is what gets you shortlisted and domain knowledge is what makes people listen to you, and…
· 4 min read
Managing Up
When the brief changes after you have started
Requirements move for ordinary reasons, and the damage comes almost entirely from the change going…
· 3 min read