I’ve always held the belief that when you’re at work, you should actually *work*—and not just by warming a seat while watching the clock, but by focusing on results.

With this mindset, I landed my first real job. I worked myself to the bone there; by the time I got home, I barely had enough energy left to sit in front of my monitor for an hour or two before bed, just staring blankly with my mouth open. My work schedule was mapped out in such minute detail that I even allotted myself specific time slots just to go pee. Naturally, an eight-hour workday was of absolutely no interest to anyone there. Management would only start acting friendly toward you if you were putting in twelve-hour shifts. If you stuck to eight hours, people—including your own colleagues—would stop even saying hello to you. The result? After I had meticulously built and polished the entire production process until it gleamed, and my contract subsequently expired, they unceremoniously booted me out the door without so much as a wave goodbye.

And so, I moved on to my second job. I’m a stubborn guy; I don’t abandon my convictions easily, and I’m not particularly cunning. In this new role, my supervisor quickly began offloading his own duties onto me—and I was more than eager to take them on. Especially since I considered his own working methods to be inefficient. After all, I felt I needed to prove myself and show what I was capable of. By the end, he was doing nothing but creating a *semblance* of frenetic activity while whining constantly about how incredibly busy he was. Eventually, my supervisor simply got fed up and bailed.

When I asked if I would be promoted to fill his position, upper management informed me that while I would indeed be inheriting his responsibilities, I was still «too young» for the actual title. Since, in principle, nothing else had really changed—aside from the fact that I no longer needed to get my decisions approved by anyone else—I simply carried on. Productivity began to climb, and six months later, management tossed me a bone in the form of a pay raise. This was presented as an act of unprecedented generosity—and, naturally, I was expected to jump up and down, squealing with delight. Naturally, management demanded that I boost productivity in return—even though, at that time, they didn't have anything resembling actual performance metrics to begin with. Oh well—we’re all about results, right? Some time later, a promising vacancy opened up; when I expressed interest, my bosses once again told me that I was too young. Instead of me, they installed an energetic tyrant—a guy whose excessive busywork and total lack of understanding of the job only served to get in his subordinates' way.

That was the moment I finally realized the truth: a workhorse will never become the chairman. The people who get promoted are the ones who know how to whisper the right things into management's ears at just the right time. It’s better to *simulate* intense activity while actually chilling out than to work your fingers to the bone. It’s better to play the fool at the opportune moment than to act like a *real* fool and saddle yourself with a mountain of obligations for absolutely no reason. So, naturally, I left for a new job. Now I just sit here, keep a low profile, do the bare minimum, and everything is just fine. Work isn't going to run away from you—and your paycheck certainly doesn't grow just because you work harder.

By the way, back at my old job, they ended up having to split my former duties among three and a half people—and their performance metrics are *still* in decline. So tell me: why bust your ass at a salaried job when you can *not* bust your ass and still end up with the exact same outcome?

Why waste your energy chasing career advancement when that advancement isn't guaranteed by the results of your labor, but rather by sycophancy and hypocrisy?

Why take on a 50% increase in workload for a mere 10% bump in pay, accompanied only by fairy tales about «future» career growth? Young people today understand that we only get one life—and they have no desire to trade it away for a carrot dangling just out of reach.