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Doing your job quickly vs Learning New Skills
Me and my classmate from school are in the same job, different positions so not direct rivalry yet still the same job.
In work we write how much each task took us and my classmate shared with me his tactic for promotion:
Let's say his colleagues do one job in three hours, he does it in three hours too, but he writes that he made it in one hour, he still works 8 hours at work, but when returning to home he goes for another 2 hours for example while still writing he did the task in one.
The tactic behind is that obviously he is losing money right now ( he is not getting compesated for it ) yet he is reporting quicker than colleagues which in turn makes him look more skilled, in theory giving him bigger chance of promotion.
My tactic instead is on the opposite end, I do the bigger things that will take for example 5-7 hours and when I do it in 6, I spend another hour on learning things I don't know or will use in future projects and write I did it in 7. I make sure it's untracable.
His tactic didn't sit right with me, that's because mainly, mostly the client is winning, getting his job done in 1 hour instead of 3, and because clients get billed by the hour, company loses as they don't get the money from 2 hours that disappeared, and in most other tasks, he still is on par with the rest. Even if he was far faster than others, even for seniors, they hourly billing is still not so much higher than the juniors, so it doesn't account for the 3x lower cost.
And that's not avoiding the fact that the hours are accounted for automatically, so it's not even certain anybody will find out he made some tasks very quickly.
But it still has SOME merit, I feel deep in my stomach. The same is with skills, if they don't see your better skills from learning, it's just as bad, but if you make it tactically so they see that you did it a lot of faster, you may still get a promotion.
Also, nobody can say that someone doing things faster than others is not a show of higher competence.
So I wonder, are those tactics alike? Is his a flawed one? Or maybe mine tactic is what is wrong?
If your company promotes, the geneeral rule is that you should do what's best for your company -or to be precise, your boss or whoever decides promotions-.
Your approach is also better for longer-term, which is often the best strategy when starting out.
He seems to be focusing on "looking smart", but that's seldom the best approach unless you make that people who matter profit from your smartnerss.
Also, he'd be far smarter to stay longer than to go home and from work from home.
