> Ultimately what "they're paying you" for is not so specific.

I think you'd find in most organizations, roles are well-defined, but not articulated to those assuming those roles, because it helps morale to let employees define themselves, and also keeps them from getting too complacent. A manager's job is not to lead but to manage, i.e. get the greatest possible output from the employee.

If you want to know what your defined role is, a simple way to do so is to simply stop doing your job and seeing what people complain about first.

You're right in that leadership can not know the intricacies of your domain, but you're wrong in assuming there's something special about that state of affairs as it concerns technology. Leadership does not know the intricacies of, say, human resources, that's why they hire a specialist. Even in areas where the leadership does know how to do the grunt worker's job, their attention isn't focused on that area, so they're not going to know about problems until someone, typically a manager, brings it up.

A company's leadership is typically engaged outward, towards the broader market. Our CEO handles big deals with other service providers and retail outlets. If you think about medieval Europe, the petri dish that modern organizational methods evolved in, it makes sense. Someone needs to keep tabs on what the neighboring states are doing, that someone needs all the resources of the nation at his disposal at his command so he can deal with regional situations.

Individual contributors, when they try to "rock the boat", are perceived as unnecessarily taking time away from the much more important job of keeping tabs on the broader world / market. It's not directly making the company more competitive, so it's just noise, is the attitude.

The attitude / culture I described above is the norm, everything else is an exception. You can take this paradigm, and use it carve out a little fiefdom in any traditional hierarchical organization. Essentially, you figure out your defined role, do only the minimum required to not get fired, and devote the rest of your time to company politics. As you come to understand the organization and its needs, you'll be able to position yourself as someone who can meet those needs. If a company needs it, then that means it can't get it with the current resources it has, otherwise it would have it already. So you will need a budget and staff.

> If you want to know what your defined role is, a simple way to do so is to simply stop doing your job and seeing what people complain about first.

Whenever I've done something like that in the past, the complaint is always some variant of "I noticed you goofing off".

Historically this was a source of incredible frustration because it basically acknowledged I was undertasked; the complaint would never be some variant of "Why isn't X done yet?"

I suppose that means I had no defined role in the company?

> the complaint is always some variant of "I noticed you goofing off".

OK, there's a political status-quo you have to learn how to internalize. If you work at the front desk, you can fuck around on the computer, but you can't take a book out and read. One looks like work, the other looks like fucking around. You can't make your organization look bad. The perceptions are more important than the substance. If you can't get the perceptions right then you were never going to make it in corporate America, and should probably stick to contracting.

So the way to actually do this is, to look like you're working, but actually be producing nothing. When they complain, you can say you were busy on X, where X is some obviously unimportant meaningless detail. That forces your boss to clarify what he expects you to be working on.

That your boss never asks you about specific tasks means that your defined role is to be a repository of knowledge and not a cog in a machine. This is a good thing, knowledge workers can bullshit their way to perks that the rank and file could only dream of. My current job is just such a thing.

The key to this is understanding that nobody actually knows what you do. Management can only guilt you into being productive, they have no way of actually knowing if you are being productive or not. Perception is reality and you control the face you put out to the organization.

Pretty much. And there definitely are jobs like that out there. I once had a job where literally no one would have complained if I didn't do any work except for sitting at my desk, replying to e-mails, and attending meetings (which I don't consider "real" work). Because I was part of a management training program, I was not expected to produce any output, I was just "there to learn." In reality, that meant I was a professional internet surfer and no one cared. I was miserable and left that job as soon as I could afford to.