The Relief of Earning

The Setup

Work has been crazy for months, and I haven't written too much about it, a few notes here and there but nothing substantial. The craziness is sourced in a pretty cliched-scenario where we have lofty goals and important things to build but the foundation on which we are building, like architectural decisions, is basically wet sand. So as I've been trying to find my footing in the mud I feel like I end up spinning my wheels moreso than making any progress. The chaos led me eventually to approach my manager about my compensation - I make a nice living but for the stress I'd been feeling I could certainly go make more. My manager successfully fought for me up the chain and I was given a slightly bigger carrot, but that's not the point of this post. I started to feel even more anxiety after I was told about the raise because, just like with AI and agentic coding, now I was sure the expectations would be even higher. I didn't think anything would actually come from me asking my boss about a raise, but now that it did I was afraid the ceiling of expectations was just going up up up.

The Carrot and the Anxiety

That's where the relief of earning comes in... I mentioned this to my project manager, and we have candid conversations regularly, and he told me something that I think some people might have been offended by but I was genuinely relieved to hear it. He said he's glad I got a raise, and that he told our boss to not really pursue it for me until I had actually delivered something. So even though I feel like I'm spinning my wheels a lot, my direct leadership sees real value - and the relief is that I can rest in confirmation that the carrot is a response to work I already did, not a quiet elevation of expectations.