The hidden risks of over-performing in your role… Star employee does the bare minimum, then quits, when a manager's new system unfairly alters his bonus payout making his wage unlivable: '[That] bonus put me above $20 per hour'

Can being too much of an over-performer actually hurt your career progression?

We think that if we work hard enough for long enough, one day a cosmic beam of light will shine down on us from the heavens and grant us everything that we have been so desperately wanting. The reality is that’s not necessarily how things work, as was exemplified in this Reddit post that a frustrated employee shared, arousing dialogue on the subject.

As much as we’d like to think otherwise, progression in your career is a very binary thing. You either get the job, or you don’t—you get the promotion, or you don’t. It happens in quantum steps and complete units, not in gradients. It’s not as if simply grinding for “experience” like it’s World of Warcraft or any other RPG actually contributes to 

Further, when you’re spending all of your time and energy every single day excelling at a single repetitive task, you’re not really learning other skills or growing towards a possible career move; you’re simply getting better at doing that one single task. And there is value to this—it’s not entirely a waste—but it’s not contributing to your career like you think it is.

Sure, you might get increased compensation in the form of bonuses in the short term for your production, but there’s no guarantee that that will keep up. Money comes and goes: it’s there one minute and the next you’re out of work and probably wishing you had worked on other skills rather than trying so hard to get that bonus. And… there’s nothing to keep your employer from just changing the rules of the game when they grow tired of always paying you more money at the end of every quarter.