this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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Yea, that certain level that comes with more responsibility but no increase in pay.
I can mean pay increase, but its rarely a direct consequence. If nothing else, you can usually use this as a pivot to doing less work you don't like and more work you do like.
If you're getting enough of these "jump on a quick call" situations, you can reach out to your boss and say "I'm getting reached out too often and its taking more time away from the tasks you want me doing. Which thing do you want me focusing on, these important tasks you've communicated already, or some rando phone call/teams chat? Are you okay with me telling them I'm busy?". Alternatively say "I'm getting reached out to on this important work, and I think $TASK1 and $TASK2 that I'm currently responsible for should be handed off to someone else. I'm fully prepared to do a info handover to get them up to speed".
I don't even get to the point where I ask ask my manager about priorities, I just tell people that my plate is full and they need to go talk to my manager and have them let me know if I'm to work on your problem. I've got enough on my plate that I don't want to waste time figuring out if I care about this task I barely understand at the moment when you can just go to him directly and better explain why you think you need my time.
I've definitely hit that fun point when you're impacted by the curse of competence and are constantly getting asked to assist other teams. I'm just also at the point where I'm actively developing processes to minimize upcoming pain (fuck you CAB forum...) and can't always drop and pivot.
The danger here is you're letting someone else frame the situation and present their own narrative. They could just as easily go to your boss and say "Passerby6497 wouldn't help me when I needed it". Sure, your boss can and should shield you, but you're creating more work for your boss.
Nah, he knows how much I help people (I constantly joke about being addicted with the curse of competence), and he's even told me in the past to send people to him so he can tell them no.
Yea, good communication definitely improves any situation. Especially when things start to conflict.
in my case, it did come with increased compensation
until one day when it didn't, and now I don't do that extra work