Over the years, I’ve developed a mental model of how, to evaluate my own role at a company, to find harmony with it and have also advocated it in a big way to folks I’ve worked closely with. You may find it useful — here goes…

Any role, anywhere has 3 parts:

Part 1: The reason you’re in that role — the something that brought you there in the first place — domain, nature of work, location, money, timing, brand name, company type (startup vs BigCo), etc.

Part 2: Things that may or may not make sense to you, but you can influence; for instance: your manager has a bad idea, but s/he listens; the deadline looks aggressive, but you can negotiate a milestone

Part 3: Things that just don’t make any sense at all (whatsover, no matter how much you try, flat out insult to your intelligence!!!) that you inevitably “disagree and commit” to — kudos to whoever coined the phrase

The key exercise to do periodically, in your own mind, is to identify the percentage split between the 3 parts.

What that split is, that makes you happy, is your own thing, but always keep an eye on Part 3. Whatever role you’re in — Individual contributor, Manager, CXO or a Founder (most definitely!) — Part 3 doesn’t disappear. On a good day, it just sleeps. If Part 3 starts getting beyond a threshold that you set for yourself, make adjustments. Try to apply it to the least favourite role you ever had and this 3-part model should make sense.

If you’re a manager, consider asking your team members their 3-part-split in your 1:1s. A minimum viable version of the same is to ask if they are either overwhelmed or underwhelmed, in general. If they’re somewhere in between, you’re good!

PS: I'm the Founder of yugahq.com, a Career Management platform for individuals and managers. I just began exploring Hashnode and published a couple other careers-centric posts: Business awareness for engineers Career paths for developers: there's more than 2!