The workplace is full of currencies: politics, favoritism, seniority, and shiny buzzwords ("impact," "influence," "visibility"). Most of them are fake money — valuable only in the small casino of your current employer. Merit, on the other hand, is real currency. It travels with you. It compounds. It outlasts the hype cycles, the reorganizations, and the VP who built their empire on PowerPoint decks. If you want long-term leverage as an operator, stop trading in optics and start trading in merit.
What Counts as Merit?
Merit isn't about working hard, being "passionate," or caring the most. It's about delivering repeatable, demonstrable outcomes that others can depend on. Think:
- Competence on demand: You get things done without creating a mess for others to clean up.
- Judgment under pressure: You don't melt when things go sideways — you make calls that age well.
- Raising the floor: Your work makes it easier for others to do their work (better docs, better tools, clearer decisions).
- Consistency over charisma: People can bet on you because you're boringly reliable.
That's merit. Everything else — networking, brown-nosing, being "seen" — is counterfeit.
Why This Matters
- Politics fade. Your manager today may be gone tomorrow. Merit survives reorgs.
- Metrics lie. OKRs and KPIs can be gamed. Merit is harder to fake.
- Visibility doesn't scale. Chasing credit works in a single meeting, not over a career. Merit scales across companies and decades.
The Operator's Playbook: How to Trade in Merit
- Anchor in Outcomes, Not Effort
- Stop bragging about hours worked, Jira tickets closed, or Slack presence. Nobody cares. Deliver the outcome, full stop.
- Example: Don't say, "I worked all weekend on this migration." Say, "The migration completed with zero downtime and no rollbacks."
- Build a Track Record, Not Theater
- Theater = demos, slide decks, and exaggerated "impact" statements. Track record = a string of successful launches, fixes, or designs that hold up.
- When someone asks about your value, you don't need a pitch — you've got receipts.
- Make Others Better
- Operators who hoard knowledge are liabilities. Operators who document, automate, and teach are force multipliers.
- That kind of merit spreads your reputation faster than any status update.
- Detach from Expectations, Commit to Outcomes
- Launching the website = outcome. Expecting a 20% traffic increase = fantasy. Don't tie your merit to someone else's marketing funnel.
- Merit lives in what you control, not in externalities.
Scenario: The Startup vs. the Enterprise
- Startup Operator: You join a 12-person startup, and instead of bragging about working 100-hour weeks, you quietly refactor the payment system so it doesn't break every Friday night. The founders might not notice immediately, but investors and future engineers will. That's merit.
- Enterprise Operator: In a Fortune 500, everyone's busy "managing up." You ignore the KPI theater and ship a critical security patch with zero customer disruption. Six months later, when the company dodges a breach, the real merit of your work shows up. Visibility fades, but the record of your judgment stands.
Old Playbook vs. Merit Playbook
- Old: Inflate OKRs, cherry-pick metrics, chase "visibility."
- Merit: Deliver outcomes, document them, and let your record do the talking.
- Old: Optimize for "impact statements" in performance reviews.
- Merit: Optimize for repeatable, verifiable delivery that outlives the review cycle.
- Old: Cling to a manager's favor.
- Merit: Build competence that earns respect regardless of who's in charge.
Takeaway: Politics, optics, and "impact" points don't cash out beyond your current gig. Merit does. If you want to build a career worth anything, treat merit as your only real currency — and spend it wisely.
