I don't regret staying at my last role for 5 years but I do regret not spending more time looking and getting a better understanding of my value on the market while I was employed there. I wasn't underpaid but I certainly could've been positioned better to leave when I finally decided to. This is all recency bias of course but relearning how to interview was a difficult and humbling experience.
I've been asked this (on a scale from 1 - 5) and have had some success referencing previous performance reviews (i.e. meeting expectations or exceeding expectations). YMMV obviously.
Some thoughts (from a very biased fan of the original article and book):
> If you own a copy, consider reading it an act of meta-anthropology, exploring why a professional anthropologist could be so relentlessly, aggressively incurious about the lives and experiences of others.
Graeber solicited testimonies from people who felt that they have a bullshit job.
> public transportation workers can, indeed, shut some cities down if they decide not to work. But this is not a characteristic of the job, but of how employment is structured: if all the workers are declining to show up at once, the term is a "strike," and their employer can't just swap them for someone else. There are plenty of people who would do these jobs, at their current pay, if that were an option, so the ability to paralyze a city like this is a function of unions, not of the job itself
Unions are intended to protect workers. If their jobs are required to keep the city running, the city (and society at large) should do what's necessary to keep these employees happy. This has nothing to do with the "structure of employment" and everything to do with corporate greed.
> In a sense, the book is a work of pathological optimism about the capitalist system. Graeber estimates that roughly half of all work fits his fake job categorization, which implies that the economy's productive capacity is roughly twice the output we actually get. It would be a pretty big deal if this were true: we could have a lot more leisure, and a lot more stuff.
I'd argue that I'd be able to produce 50% more value in my own role if my employer gave me 50% of my time back. But instead it's spent on politics, baby-sitting and duck tape. It's not their fault (nor my own) but rather a consequence of the system we're in. And I see no issue with having someone actively critiquing it.
Anecdote: I attempted to volunteer with the Microsoft TEALs Program at a local school. I'm not sure what we did wrong but the instructor never really utilized myself or the other volunteers. For about a month, he asked us to "review the syllabus" and "consider ideas" to implement with the classroom. We pitched a few ideas ranging from writing simple sorting algorithms to building a rudimentary search engine... But the school year kinda just progressed. We never met with any of the students. E-mail response time spanned weeks. And at some point, he asked us to join some "Advisory Board". So I more or less checked out since it all seemed kinda lame.
From personal experience: no it is not. This mentality leads to nothing but frustration and burnout as upper management sends you to tackle your "staff"-project.
Titles are all based on organizational politics and the macroeconomics at the moment. Were you hired during the 2021-2022 hiring spree where companies would give anything to keep engineers from getting poached? You probably were hired at Staff. If not, then what were you doing? Lol these folks were the first ones laid off.
Personally, I received my highest raises in 2021 and 2022. Multiple salary (and equity) bumps; a title bump. Life was fucking good.
Nowadays, you can just be glad not to get laid off. Instead of the promotion they promised, you get a slap in the face and some chump change.
I know I sound jaded but the fact that there are MULTIPLE books on "Staff"-level engineering (all un-ironically written by managers and executives rather than ICs) is completely laughable.
--
"A man travels many miles to consult the wisest guru in the land. When he arrives, he asks the great man:
'O wise guru, what is the secret of a happy life?'
'Good judgement,' says the guru.
'But, O wise guru' says the man, 'how do I achieve good judgement'
'Bad judgement,' says the guru"