“What is the purpose of this meeting and why do I need to be included?” is a perfectly polite sentence appropriate in any work environment consisting of mature and distinguished adults.
Do not enslave yourself to the machine, because the people running it will treat you like a slave.
That is absolutely not something to say if the meeting is pulled together by management on high. Peers? Sure you can say stuff like that, but to someone you may not know or have little interaction with that can be a death knell for your reputation.
The trick is to be so reliable that no one would conceive of getting rid of you even if you come off a little assholish sometimes. I started on the help desk at my last job (fairly large company with around ~25k employees and within a year or two I was the go to for a few of the c-levels when they had issues. I pissed off middle management types occasionally when I couldn’t do something they wanted right away because I needed more information or whatever and had to wait on something. Anytime they tried to start shit with me it never took long for a bigger fish to get involved and have my back because they were familiar with my work and knew I wasn’t just fucking around.
I often find that misappropriating an out of context Paul Rudd quote arguably condoning sexual harassment works perfectly to describe the level of effort one should put in;
“Work 60% of the time, Alllll the time”
Any more than 60% effort and it becomes a drain, any less and management will look to replace. 60% effort is the sweet spot for surviving corporate life rather than succumbing to it.
Nah, fuck this lickspittle corpo speak!
“What is the purpose of this meeting and why do I need to be included?” is a perfectly polite sentence appropriate in any work environment consisting of mature and distinguished adults.
Do not enslave yourself to the machine, because the people running it will treat you like a slave.
That is absolutely not something to say if the meeting is pulled together by management on high. Peers? Sure you can say stuff like that, but to someone you may not know or have little interaction with that can be a death knell for your reputation.
The trick is to be so reliable that no one would conceive of getting rid of you even if you come off a little assholish sometimes. I started on the help desk at my last job (fairly large company with around ~25k employees and within a year or two I was the go to for a few of the c-levels when they had issues. I pissed off middle management types occasionally when I couldn’t do something they wanted right away because I needed more information or whatever and had to wait on something. Anytime they tried to start shit with me it never took long for a bigger fish to get involved and have my back because they were familiar with my work and knew I wasn’t just fucking around.
That part can actually be problematic in many places in my experience.
I often find that misappropriating an out of context Paul Rudd quote arguably condoning sexual harassment works perfectly to describe the level of effort one should put in;
“Work 60% of the time, Alllll the time”
Any more than 60% effort and it becomes a drain, any less and management will look to replace. 60% effort is the sweet spot for surviving corporate life rather than succumbing to it.