Employee shares 5 winning job hacks every Gen Z working in corporate must know

Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS

An employee shared five corporate lessons he said he learned the hard way, sparking a debate online over whether success at work depends more on visibility and understanding your boss than on technical skills alone.

The employee shared his views in a Reddit post on r/IndianWorkplace titled, “5 winning corporate job hacks Gen Z must know, I learnt it at a price!”, where he argued that being highly skilled did not always guarantee career growth and that office dynamics often mattered just as much.

In his post, the employee said one of the biggest mistakes people made was focusing only on their own priorities instead of understanding what mattered to their manager.

According to him, bosses themselves were working according to the priorities of their own superiors, which meant employees who aligned their work accordingly were more likely to be noticed.

He also stressed the importance of visibility, saying it was not enough to be appreciated only by one’s immediate manager. He claimed that being known across departments and maintaining a proactive image could influence career growth, promotions and opportunities.

Another lesson, he said, was to discuss ideas and approaches with managers before investing time and energy into assignments. According to him, employees could end up doing excellent work only to find that their bosses had envisioned a completely different approach.

The employee further cautioned against relying too heavily on praise from managers, claiming that bosses often have larger priorities and may not necessarily champion an employee’s achievements in front of senior leadership.

Instead, he argued that factors such as how comfortable managers were working with an employee, how well they support their bosses’ priorities and how visible they were to other senior leaders could sometimes outweigh pure performance.

Summing up his advice, the employee wrote that career success was not about “KYC” but “KYB” – “Know Your Boss.”

Take a look at the post here:

The post quickly triggered discussion among professionals, with many agreeing and disagreeing with parts of his advice.

Several users said the observations reflected realities that many people encounter after spending years in the corporate world. One commenter argued that employees with over a decade of experience are often valued more for soft skills such as visibility, ownership and cross-team collaboration than for technical expertise, adding that qualities younger workers tend to dismiss become increasingly important in senior roles.

Another user defended the post, saying that many questions frequently asked on the subreddit had effectively been answered by someone who had “been there and done that,” describing the advice as coming from a credible source.

Others, however, strongly disagreed. One commenter argued that such thinking had contributed to many millennials becoming “wallflowers” in offices and claimed that being overly submissive only benefited bosses and upper management.

The user added that while managers may change over time, adopting a reactive approach to work could become a habit that is much harder to change.

The discussion has since left many employees divided over a familiar workplace question: whether career growth is driven mainly by skills and performance, or by understanding the people and power structures around them.

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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA