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How many people here have seen colleagues getting loads of praise for doing something while you work hard and get little reward.
I think in my company they just have such a small understanding of the Internet and give this little importance that whatever I do does not matter.
I have managed to increase the number of referrals this year from Google by 1000%, from MSN/Ink by about 600% - but basically they dont seem to care :( - fed up or what.
Sounds to me like you made yourself indispensable, they can't promote you. Never let yourself become indispensable in a position otherwise you will never be moved.
If they don't care I am sure you will be able to find somebody else who will care very quickly.
Keep the chin up...
menton
I think you'll find the reasons you cite are high on the list of reasons why many of us here quit office politics for the relative sanctury of their kitchen table!
Keep your cool and don't let it get to you too much.
I hear ya!
You just need ot make the best out of a bad situation.
You could highlight the success youve had and suggest that your team expands.
Even if your team only consists of you at the minute! ;)
Sell the fact that more web presence means more money, etc and try to get a pay rise and job role created for you.
Scott
just look at the world round us, the people running it are NOT the best people for the job, but someone decided they are the "right" people for the job :)
my 2 rupees worth
Shak
Agree with things you don't agree with.
Work on a project that you feel is a waste of time.
And of course, kiss some a**
And if you're in a postion where you can't get promoted, well go and ask very nicely for a pay rise. If your 1000% increase in Google traffic is resulting in a 1000% increase in sales, you'd surely deserve it. Go get it before some a** licking B****D takes the credit for your work and gets promoted.
I don't have that problem. There's 2 of us. The owner and me, so I can't get promoted!
I am not really after Promotion - the status quo is OK - but when someone else rises then you start to think :(
Anyway - that is why I have decided to put a few of my own sites out and see how they do.
There's your problem, dude. You're too modest! Got to push yourself sometimes. Tell the bosses it was hard work and you're brilliant and they might believe you. If you smile quietly and say "Oh, it was nothing, no trouble at all", they'll take you at your word.
You deserve a reward, not for doing the migration per se, but for knowing that that was what was needed. Experience and knowledge command just as much (if not more) economic OOMPH than graft
Would I be right in thinking that
1) Someone you percieve as being less than brilliant just got a plum job, or
2) You just had your annual review? With a web newbie
Neither of those two.
More like that someone is getting so much praise (and resulting benefits) from a manager for doing there job while what I do tends to go more unnoticed.
I honestly think it is that they dont understand what I do - which makes a farce of annual reviews, targets, just about anything really.
How many people here have seen colleagues getting loads of praise for doing something while you work hard and get little reward.
Well that strikes a chord with me! How about seeing colleagues getting the praise for work you've done? With what I've learned at WebmasterWorld, I've managed to bring in a fair wedge of sales and some important new customers and repeat business for my company. I get the leads, pass them on to the sales team. Sales team closes the deal, gets the commission, and the sales person concerned gets a bonus for every new customer they bring in. Increasingly they're making out that web leads they've closed have come from their own cold calls. I have no problem with them getting the commission and me being paid the same however much business I bring in. I do have a problem when they try to take the credit for my work.
And don't even get me started on what the 'marketing' team get up to.
I've come to realise that its a fact of life, at least in hard-nosed sales environments. Trust and cooperaton are in very short supply. Now I've wised up a bit and I've started a list of all the customers I've brought on since I re-did the company's site, and will be running reports so I can show exactly how much business I've brought in over the last year and where it's come from. I think if you don't do this the decision-makers will never know how much business you do bring in. You certainly can't sit back and expect them to find out for themselves. Personally I think my time would be much better spent bringing in yet more leads but there you go.
Sad as it is, you just have to fight your corner in these situations or you'll be overlooked.
promotions are very "rarely" done on performance, and more on "if you fit the picture" that they want...
I feel your pain Dayo - unfortunately I think that situation is the norm rather than the exception.
I honestly think it is that they dont understand what I do
there are three type of employee
1) a person who needs constant praise to do their job
2) a person who needs constant bollocking to do their job
3) a person who does their job
Has an employer i always want number 3's , number 1's are nearly always sales type people insecure and need reassuring al the time
Dave
Rocket science is not hard when you know how to do it. You knew what needed doing. Dont sell yourself short, you do yourself a huge dis-service
Ive had to put up with comments such as, "doesnt matter how long pages take to load, users can just wait" and "ok our site isnt well optimised but at least it looks good...".
But, 2 months down the line we have 7 sites (had 2 before) and they do look dam good, but bring in less traffic than the original 2 i was running. The latest Google strangeness hasnt helped though.
And now the boss is asking questions about our traffic reduction....and I dont have to answer them! ;)
I think I spoiled the boss with decent traffic when I started - it was his first site and he took our traffic levels as being the norm. :)
Scott
It ain't fair, but it's certainly true.
Knowledgeable & hard working individuals deserve all they get, i.e. nowt. :(
R.
Dont worry work dont know - just selling myself short on here, after all compared to some of the members on here I know nothin'
PPG - know what you mean - wondering if we work for the same company ;)
DaveN - I would normally be a 3 but when managers start treating some people as 1 then 2s and 3s tend to become 1s - or at least have the attitude towards managers of why are they behaving to 1s like that ;)
If you work for a large UK company (eg: a bank) they are FAR too stupid to understand what you are actually giving them.
Go in there with a smart suit, with the slimy sales guy attitude and front, and you will fly, despite having nothing between your ears.
That's how they work.
I left a UK bank last year because I couldn't live with it any longer. I was making them more money than anyone, and was the only person there who had any idea at all of what web marketing was, yet they didn't really want to know. I guess they were nervous of the unknown (so much for entrepreneurs) and were too fat to need the money. They were totally into their own internal procedural crap (never ending contracts, reviews, etc etc) and zero into making the business more successful or generating income. I could have made them a fortune.
In the end I could take no more.
It sounds like you may end up taking the same road Dayo...
>> I was making them more money than anyone, and was the only person there who had any idea at all of what web marketing was, yet they didn't really want to know.
Yep, rings a bell or ten.
Actually, I am surprised how popular this thread has become - it does look like Web Marketing, Publishing, SEO etc are still largely under appreciated in a large number of companies (and we are probably talking about major PLCs etc)
"there are three type of employee
1) a person who needs constant praise to do their job
2) a person who needs constant bollocking to do their job
3) a person who does their job"
Might I add :
4) a person who does their job and more.
In a fair world this person gets rewarded. In the real world they are often dumped on ("Give it to Bob, he's a sucker, he'll do it for you and not complain")
I'm undervalued, under-paid, and I've probably made myself indespensable. And the next job I get offered I am out of here... Its just getting that job offer...
How about doing it yourself... if you can promote their stuff you can promote your own (or someone else's you bring on board).
That's what I did. It's scary, in that if you muck it up you're in trouble, but it's more rewarding in EVERY sense. And of course you don't have to put up with the morons any more.
The original principle states that in a hierarchically structured administration, people tend to be promoted up to their "level of incompetence". ;)
The computer technician at where I worked was on a hourly rate almost three times my rate - plus travelling expenses. But, in just over one and a half years, he still could not get a network of 14 computers to print to one printer. He only had a budget that ran well into the tens of thousands to buy equipment to do this. His idea? - buy new computers (14xLaptops), a wireless network and state-of-the-art equipment (that was never needed). Did the printers work? No. Did he get sacked/disciplined? No - the boss asked me to fix the problem (I ignored her).
But the best laugh was when I was told he had been across to defragment 14 laptops hard drives. This took him three hours, plus travelling expenses. Then he came back the next day to turn the computers off, another hour plus travelling costs. So I showed the boss how to defragment the laptops.
Office politics are simple - move job often, get good skills and get good references. Then make it out on your own.
One thing you should focus on is being sure your managers recognize your accomplishments. For example, distributing a graph of site traffic for 24 months, with the spot where you implemented the new design highlighted, could get some attention.
The other thing that's important in business is to identify the bottom-line implications of your work. 100000 additional page-views per month might be great from a webmaster standpoint, but a typical business manager wants to hear something more like, "which resulted in $____ more web orders" or "netting an average of 40 new dealer inquiries per month". These kind of stats take your work out of the realm of techno-babble and into the boardroom.
Don't sell you yourself short - you are your best promotion. Look at it this way...you need to get yourself number 1 ranking. ;)
Becoming an evanglist for search marketing, I've gotten several raises in three years - moral of the story is it works.
