Do you feel unappreciated at work? Are you treated like a servant by the talent? Are you a support player even though you are highly educated and experienced? You might be part of the overhead.
Early in my career I needed a job, any job. I wanted it to be a Tech job since I was a Computer Science major and a very technical person, but I wasn’t picky. I was also mentally locked in to the idea of working in the New York City metro area, which limited my job prospects.
I wound up working as a developer for a credit report company, then as a web developer and IT admin for an oil spill clean up company, and then as a Windows admin for a cable company. The common thread with all of those roles was that they were technical jobs at non-technical companies. In each case their primary business, the main money maker, was not anywhere near what I was doing. In short, I was part of the overhead while other roles were the focus of the business.
It wasn’t until one day that I realized I was spending eight hours a day, every day of the week, working with software from two major companies. I had expertise in these products. I had formal training in the products. I was, for all intents and purposes, an expert in the products. So I started looking at those software companies for roles related to the products. Just like that my whole world changed.
It took the first half of my career to come to this realization. I spent years thinking I was working in Tech, when I was actually working a technical job in other industries that weren’t truly Tech. And don’t get me wrong, for some people this may be exactly what you want to do. For others it may be what you have to do. I’m not above the idea that sometimes the best job for you is the job you can get today. But after nearly a decade of being treated like a second class citizen at work, I switched to working in the Tech industry and suddenly learned what its like to be part of the product, not the overhead.
You can tailor this to whatever industry you’re in. Think about a big law office. The stars of the show are the lawyers and paralegals, not the IT team. In healthcare it’s the doctors and nurses, not the IT team. In schools it’s the teachers, and still not the IT team.
Everything changed when I joined a software company in a Pre-Sales role. Suddenly my work was customer facing. My job supported our ability to make money. Companies like to spend money on jobs that make money. My quality of life at work changed dramatically. So did my pay.
Very recently I encountered the concise way of expressing this that makes up the title of this article: “If you’re not the product, you’re the overhead.” Had I known this early in my career things may have gone very differently.
Freed by 50 