11 ms·

Not My Job

195 points by sebg 4y ago

beckingz 4y ago
This is good advice. Sometimes fixing things requires not fixing them yourself before getting people to agree that it's a problem
- mianos 4y ago
  Yes. And, sometimes when the standard is so low, it's impossible to convince anyone that it is broken. Specially when you indicate the effort to fix things. Sometimes 'struggling by' is the modus operandi. What comes with this is the toxic culture, high staff turnover and disrespect of anything new by the people who have suffered through it all for a long time.
- ZainRiz 4y ago
  This article seems to be advocating sticking your head in the ground when something goes wrong Yeah, sometimes all you can do is raise awareness. And if the ongoing issue is going to affect your deliverables, then you better be raising awareness! Saying “that’s not my job” isn’t for anyone in a leadership permission
  - beckingz 4y ago
    The phrase "It's not my job" is never good to say, Often, focusing on the things that are explicitly your job and intentionally ignoring bigger problems is a good move so that the people who are responsible for those issues will allow you to fix them.
    - dilyevsky 4y ago
      I had this theory a while ago that accumulation of this sort of thinking is why big corps without regulatory capture stop innovating and then wither and die - “if it was so important someone would surely tell me to do it”
- TameAntelope 4y ago
  I work very hard to avoid working with people who think like this. Have the guts to stand up and own something.
  - jcims 4y ago
    Some things have never had an owner, others can’t keep one. In the latter case, at least in my experience, it’s because the ‘thing’ is actually composed of several things that clearly have different owners but the link was lost in the composition. The furthest I’d go with pat advice is own finding the owner. If it’s truly homeless then feel free to take it in as a rescue. If it’s a rat king, grab your side cutters and get to work.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - itsgrimetime 4y ago
    Should someone do this when they're not going to be amply rewarded for doing so?
  - beckingz 4y ago
    I own plenty. There are more things than I can own sustainably, so somethings need to go unowned until the powers that be decide they need ownership.
    - TameAntelope 4y ago
      Sure, but then be open about that. Silently watching as something fails at your business so you get to feel superior is toxic as hell.
  - robocat 4y ago
    Trying to own 100% of problems is as toxic as trying to own 0%. Agreement is often critical: https://sharedphysics.com/everything-is-important/ https://sharedphysics.com/everything-is-important/
    - 4y ago
- bluedino 4y ago
  This works with hobbies and your wife as well. Don't bring up buying a new boat/whatever until she does. "Honey, your boat really looks bad and has so many problems, maybe you should think about getting a new one"
  - scruple 4y ago
    If I owned a boat and tried that with my wife it'd be more like, "Honey, your boat really looks bad and has so many problems, it's time you got rid of it."
infamouscow 4y ago
I'm can't be the only one exhausted from all these pointless bloggers trying to point to how their promotion to hierarchical title N is justified because it's arbitrarily different than N - 1 at their org. Let's just acknowledge these things don't actually map across different organizations and therefore have no meaning. Hierarchical titles are for engineers that hide their mediocrity behind HR appointed titles.
- pm90 4y ago
  > Hierarchical titles are for engineers that hide their mediocrity behind HR appointed titles. Disagree. The motivation is more around the financial benefits that come from it. Which, honestly, I wouldn’t blame anyone for wanting, considering the CoL in most major US metros. I do think its worth attempting to create a technical career path for engineers though. The current iteration may not be perfect, but its an improvement over the previous thing, which was that you had to move into managerial positions to make “career progress”. In fact one of the criticisms I have of the upper levels of this rat race is that it devolves into more managerial work anyways, reducing the amount of time engineers spend in the trenches (so to speak) contributing to the decline of their skills.
- dasil003 4y ago
  Like a lot of things in life, judgement is required. To dismiss levels as "having no meaning" is to misunderstand their purpose and limitations. Someone being promoted to Staff, Senior Staff, Principal, Distinguished at top tech companies says a lot. On the other hand, getting hired into Staff means less. In all cases though, the specifics depend on a lot of (usually) nameless, faceless individuals who also are subject to their own biases. I'll tell you this though, having interviewed hundreds and hired dozens over the last 25 years: someone unilaterally declaring levels to be bullshit for the mediocre is a pretty strong negative signal about their ability to succeed in a large organization outside of specialist positions in research or other isolated roles that don't require cross-team or cross-functional influence.
chasil 4y ago
Someone recently replied to me with comments by Dave Cutler, designer of the kernels for Windows NT/XP(...) and (Open)VMS: “I have a couple of sayings that are pertinent. The first is: ‘Successful people do what unsuccessful people won’t.’ The second is: ‘If you don’t put them [bugs] in, you don’t have to take them out.’ I am a person that wants to do the work. I don’t want to just think about it and let someone else do it. When presented with a programming problem, I formulate an appropriate solution and then proceed to write the code. While writing the code, I continually mentally execute the code in my head in an attempt to flush out any bugs. I am a great believer in incremental implementation, where a piece of the solution is done, verified to work properly, and then move on to the next piece. In my case, this leads to faster implementation with fewer bugs. Quality is my No. 1 constraint – always. I don’t want to produce any code that has bugs – none. “So my advice is be a thinker doer,” Cutler concluded. “Focus on the problem to solve and give it your undivided attention and effort. Produce high-quality work that is secure.” https://news.microsoft.com/features/the-engineers-engineer-computer-industry-luminaries-salute-dave-cutlers-five-decade-long-quest-for-quality/ https://news.microsoft.com/features/the-engineers-engineer-c... Unfortunately, I do not have this level of talent, but I do what I can.
- patrck 4y ago
  Though, if your bias is towards action, how do you avoid stepping on toes? These discussions seem like MBA brain-teasers, ie. there can't be any hard and fast rules, so each case needs to be individually worked out. There's probably a sub-reddit for this.
  - kinos 4y ago
    Delegate the prioritization by using a template similar to this one. > "Hey, I noticed [this thing that I think might be a problem]. Would you like me to [do a specific action that would probably fix it] or move onto something else?"
  - chasil 4y ago
    True to form, Cutler had a break with DEC, and they gave him a carte-blanche VAX "skunkworks" with Prism/Mica. DEC eventually shut this down, which prompted his departure for Microsoft. This is unfortunate for DEC, as they eventually poured the company into their Alpha RISC processor, which did not live as long as DEC hoped. Prism might have been a superior design. At this time, Microsoft was maintaining a UNIX kernel in their Xenix product, so they knew a good kernel engineer when they met one. Microsoft was the leading UNIX vendor in the early 80's. Cutler famously disparaged the UNIX kernel (his notable saying was "Get a byte, get a byte, get a byte byte byte" to the tune of the finale of Rossini's William Tell Overture). Microsoft dumped their Xenix onto SCO about this time. What is more interesting to me was Cutler's involvement with Azure. He must have had some sway over CBL-Mariner, Microsoft's RPM-based Linux distribution. Much of Cutler's earlier work is documented in the "Showstoppers" book: https://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Microsoft/dp/0029356717 https://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Mic... The book doesn't really delve into the Xenix decisions, if I remember correctly. Without Cutler, Microsoft would likely have ended up on a BSD kernel, as Apple did.
aunty_helen 4y ago
That first paragraph, not a great start when I have to do mental gymnastics just to figure out what the blog post is even about. If you can't write about a subject directly, use creative license and make the situation up. Nobody knows / is going to find it different and it will help get your point across. I bailed on this article after the first paragraph.
- coastflow 4y ago
  >"If you can't write about a subject directly, use creative license and make the situation up. Nobody knows / is going to find it different and it will help get your point across." Making up a situation—without disclosing that it is fiction—is risky in a practical sense and also morally questionable. Readers typically don't like to be deceived when reading non-fiction. If a specific detail is fabricated and a reader notices, a reader can assume that the writer is sloppy/deceptive, and become far more skeptical with the rest of the author's works. Undisclosed fabrication can also lead to unsound conclusions (for example, an article could rely on the existence of a counter-example to disprove a rule, but a fabricated counter-example would make the argument fail to be valid). Furthermore, suppose a reader cites an article with a fabricated story, relying on that story to make a point. If the story is false, the reader would take a reputational hit as well. In a moral sense, it's better for the reader to avoid fabricating situations. It is typically good practice to make an article introduction easy-to-understand with minimal jargon, but creative license should always be disclosed when writing about a hypothetical situation. It leads to higher-quality reasoning (by avoiding arguments that rely on false anecdotal evidence) and is simple to disclose (e.g. "Consider a hypothetical: ...").
  - aunty_helen 4y ago
    They’re called business fables, five dysfunctions of a team being a classic, well known, best selling one. It’s a common way of conveying information that might come from several related experiences and built on to drive home meaning. People don’t like to be deceived to the point they’ll go out of their way to believe a story is true until presented with unrefutable evidence that it’s false. Even then they’ll prefer to believe the original lie. This is called the backfire effect.
ZainRiz 4y ago
This article seems to be advocating sticking your head in the ground when something goes wrong There’s a world of a difference between telling others “that’s not my job” for tasks that have nothing to do with you, and owning the success of your own projects And it feels like this author is conflating the two concepts If there’s a dependency of yours that’s not working the way you need it to, it doesn’t mean you can simply go home free. At the very least you have to fill in the communication gap of informing management of the blockers. If need be, then you have to own driving the call to either add more resources to your own project (to compensate for the bad dependency) or push forward the call to nix your project since it apparently has a high chance of failure And if none of those attempts pan out, _then_ you can try to move on to a different place where you can actually be effective. But know that you’ll face this same type of challenges in your new role as well! There’s no easy escape: if you took a position of leadership, then it’s definitely your job to lead
- deleted 4y ago
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- David 4y ago
  I read the article as saying you can't solve everything yourself. That's different than saying you should ignore problems. Instead you need to communicate when you see a problem that you're not positioned to solve, because you don't have the bandwidth or you're not in a position of authority for that domain > you should be working on properly communicating the gap and its risk to the business (and risk to which part of the business) and NOT attempting to solve everything.
- Dave3of5 4y ago
  > There’s no easy escape: if you took a position of leadership, then it’s definitely your job to lead Leading != to fixing every problem that has no one assigned to it or filling every gap. It's about helping the other so that overall the org can achieve it's goal. Leaders should be miles away not in the trenches. You can ask Russia what happens when you send your general to the front lines. A similar effect happens in software when more senior devs take on all the work themselves. The original tweet is saying the higher up you go the more you have to do everything. That's wrong an extremely unhealthy.
Twisell 4y ago
I just started a new gig and I'm working on a critical glue stuff that was nobody's job so I can totally relate to this article. Don't stop at the title which is voluntarily provocative. So far identifying coworkers ownership, planning and validating glue to make things work took most of my time but everyone appreciate that. Some veterans are astonished and say things like "wait so you get Mr Grumpy to do that?" or "How on earth could you get a validation from Mr Nitpicker with a single meeting?"... Well acknowledging that "it's not my job" to do what is Mr Grumpy and Nitpicker area of expertise is exactly what made things works. They feel recognized and they also understand that the burden is on them if we collectively fuck up so the glue project can move on fast.
- hinkley 4y ago
  One of the tricks up my sleeve is figuring out that sometimes the new guy is the only person who can get Mr Grumpy to change his mind. There's one phenomenon where some people don't re-evaluate their position until they've encountered the same issue with multiple people. Sending new people to ask often works better than going yourself for the third time. You're just a repeat, not a new data point. And then there's a form of the Curse of Knowledge, where the resistant person has heard all of the arguments and (circular?) reasoning from their coworkers and doesn't buy any of it. And then someone asks the question in plain English, with no conceptual or relationship biases. Either the way they ask it makes the person realize they're being unreasonable, or they dissect the problem along a new axis that suggests a way to escape the deadlock. Words and questions can push us toward some connections in our brains, and away from others. Rephrasing is sometimes all it takes to reframe a problem, and the more inured you are to the project jargon the harder it is to rephrase things.
  - deleted 4y ago
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ryan_lane 4y ago
I'm in violent agreement with this post. The biggest issue with making everything your job is that it hides the problems growing in the company. If there's a gap that needs to be filled, if you fill that gap, you're increasing your workload, and the work is being covered, so management may not even know they need to hire to cover it. At some point you'll be doing so much gap work that you'll burn out, leaving all those gaps uncovered. Obviously you shouldn't be saying "That's not my job", but that's not the point of the post. The point of the post is that you should point that gap out to your management, so they can close it. They may ask you to help cover it, until it's hired for. They may find another team to cover it. They may do nothing, in which case either the work isn't considered high enough priority to cover, or they're not good managers. Don't be a hero for the sake of being a hero. Be the glue that binds everyone together.
sascha_sl 4y ago
I had to have this talk with my partner recently, who works at a small-ish company that hires people competent with data science, but absolutely useless when it comes to architecture, git or even setting up a python development environment. She does all of those things really well and ended up putting a lot of effort into fighting chaos (spaghetti code, spaghetti git flow, a lot of copy pasted code that doesn't have to be, a complete lack of dependency management, no automation for anything) at that place. I stepped in when I suggested some shared vacation days and she refused because she wouldn't be there to be her team's guard rails. That screams leadership failure to me. Keeping in mind she barely gets paid better than a junior dev.
smcleod 4y ago
Someone should have told that to Scott Morrison - https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2021/04/22/scott-morrison-not-my-job/ https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics...
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Yeah his job was to put out the fires - literally. But really it isn't: that's why we have the states.
itsgrimetime 4y ago
I was sold this same line since I started my career in software as an intern ~15 years ago. Every year I've become less convinced that fully applying myself is worth it for my career. Any time that I've stepped up to fill a gap when it didn't directly benefit the short-term perception of my manager/skip-level, the effort was undersold or outright ignored. Edit: ok - I'll admit, I didn't read the whole article at first. I still stand by my point, though - even when I'm simply identifying those gaps and not fixing them, I still don't see engineers being rewarded proportionally for the value they're bringing their employers.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Sometimes it is better to leave the gap. Let someone feel the pain. And have it consciously fixed by management. Depends what the gap is. Small gaps (QA person is sick today, so can someone test...) I would just fill them if they are not happening all the time.
  - malfist 4y ago
    Agree with this. Pain points are cleavage. Let them be felt, then leverage them into making your improvements known. I so often see junior engineers making work for themselves by "fixing" things that weren't broken. This is often the case when they want to refactor something to make it better. If you can't measure the improvement, it's hard to make the case you actually improved things. Legacy code is like settled law, touched only when absolutely necessary.
- yellow_lead 4y ago
  It always depends - on the company, leadership, and each particular situation. Always pick your battles wisely :)
- athrowaway3z 4y ago
  > I still don't see engineers being rewarded proportionally for the value they're bringing their employers. My theory is that's because the relationship between employers and engineers has an off by 1 error. Non-software folks see 'managers managing software developers creating software' in a similar dynamic as 'managers managing drivers driving trucks'. Whereas I believe it is better to frame the function of software engineers as 'managers managing code handling data'. From the business perspective, its software engineers should be seen as managers. Its just that what they manage doesn't require HR or sick days. And just like a re-organization of the business, software updates might take more than a sprint or two.
jp0d 4y ago
I honestly thought, this was related to the ex-prime minister of Australia (Scott Morrison).
dalbasal 4y ago
There is a class of these problems that's easy enough to talk about: "Glue work vs gap filling" is relatively easy topic. Broaching "doer/talker" ratios can be stickier. Some not-my-jobs are evolved/strategic... they have meta reasons. Redoing the company's google-sheets inventory management horror might be high value, but is status-detrimental work for a senior dev, or assistant PM to do. "Excel dude" is low status. Within excel-dude land, the highest (personal) value work might be indulging executive pedantry over the formatting of dashboards. UI is low status at some shops. Talking to clients and tracing back requirements is thankless work at other shops. Etc. Incentives can be wacky in orgs, after all . People naturally fill in gaps when they're motivated and work independently. You can see this with hobbyists, personal projects, startups, Community OS, small teams, criminal gangs, children playing and whole lot of other human endeavors. They row in the same direction when they want to go in that direction, perhaps to reach a destination. In 80% of orgs, 80% of 80% of people's concerns are related to happenings on the boat itself. The vector of the boat isn't their job. They don't care where the boat goes.
Dave3of5 4y ago
I agree the original tweet is wrong. Imo as you become a more senior your role should become more and more tightly focused. Narrowing down into things that are more important for the company. Examples might help here: As a junior dev you can be expected to fix bugs in the product, work on features, maybe help with testing. Basically anything that the company wants to get you more experience. This is the role discussed in the tweet filling in any small gaps. As an intermediate dev I would expect you to start working on your own features (with help from a senior+). Only when you're finished these you can tackle anything else like random bugs and suchlike. Senior dev is more about helping others so you mentor juniors, help intermediate devs with their features and are given the slightly harder features to work on. Principle devs shouldn't really be mentoring juniors. Certainly you can ask for advice but I would have all my principles working on the hardest parts of the codebase. Anything that requires research or things that the company hasn't done before. Examples of this would be adopting new technology, complex algorithms ...etc. Seniors go to you for advice, not mentoring or step by step by advice on how do I approach X or Y that sorted of thing. You should have a principle working on a low level bug (say a spelling mistake or poor grammar) that's for people further down. There's an element of people management here as well. Staff roles are mostly hand off and are their to take the strategic approach that comes from the exec team i.e. the CTO / CEO and actually puts them into action. So think working with product coming up with reasonable plans that are actually doable. You'll work with the principles to execute your actions. If it's a big system and a big team part of this will be working out how to split the work amongst the sub teams. This is what I mean by the responsibilities as you become more senior your responsibilities change from fixing spelling mistakes to help set and execute the roadmap of the product / service.
g5095 4y ago
Some years ago I was one of the first 5 engineers at what became a semi-unicorn, in 5 years we spent close to 1bn before a sale to tencent. In the first 12 months I built a dozen microservices, each which eventually had a team supporting them. As the team grew I and one other guy were the 'glue' that kept much of the platform working, we knew how things went together, and by the time the Eng team hit 200+ staff we were indispensable. After year 2 however, as several of our peers from the beginning moved into team management roles (something I prefer not to do), we noticed we were 'too important' to promote, or to allow to move, or to take off 2nd lvl on-call (at all). What started with us being the architects of the system turned into us being the 'glue' that kept a massive multi-country eng team operating, which eventually turned into being boxed into a shitty support role rather than promoted, watching people vastly less qualified get moved ahead of us. Eventually I just quit and moved into a tech lead role at a startup for something different. I feel like this is a trap for IC roles, don't be so helpful as glue that you 'set' into an indispensable position.
codingdave 4y ago
I'd take some of this advice one step further. In the examples of when not to step up to fix a problem, the author states under-resourced teams. If you do step up to help out such teams, not only do you risk burning yourself out... you are also masking the problem. Helping those teams hit their targets sets up a long-term situation where leadership says, "They get their work done, so they must have enough resources." It does feel off to not help is such situations. It feels like you are letting a team down. But in the long run, showing evidence that the team is under-staffed will force leadership to make a choice: Either increase staffing or decrease scope. Either way, the team is adjusted to have a healthy match between their staffing and their workload, the people have a healthier work environment, and the business has a more predictable and reliable work output from that team. Everyone wins. I'm not saying to never help a team. I'm saying to look deeply at why the team needs help before jumping in. Maybe they could be fixed with mentoring or process improvements. Maybe their PM needs guidance in a better way to roadmap the work. There are many cases where you can jump in and help. But if the team really is running well, but simply overworked and under-staffed, that needs a different fix. Being able to parse out the differences of where direct help is a benefit vs. a hindrance is exactly the type of perspective that takes people beyond the "senior" level role.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  Your take presumes that management is incapable of understanding these issues, or perhaps that managers are incapable of communicating when their teams are losing time fixing bugs of others. While obviously there are bad companies and managers out there who operate like this, it’s far too cynical to assume every company is this broken. If the only way you can think to communicate a problem to management is by letting a team fail and hoping management figures it out, that signals a massive communication/management failure. The proper response is to do what’s necessary to unblock your work, even if that means helping another team, and then also communicate very clearly what had to be done and how much of a setback it was. If management is paying any attention at all, they’ll collect these anecdotes and realize that the failing team isn’t getting their work done. From the management side of things, when I see teams playing too much of the “not my job, not my problem” game to the point that they’re letting their objectives fall behind just to make a point about not helping with an issue, I also lose confidence in that team. Why? It’s a political move to let something fail just to make a point. This doesn’t mean that teams should be quietly dedicating resources to compensate for other teams, though. It needs to be communicated clearly through the management chain to make it understood like professionals working together to accomplish shared goals. Making moves to let goals fail just to make a point is, like it or not, a petty political play. Communicate, don’t play politics.
globular-toast 4y ago
My experience working for a big company is that most things are not your job. It's not that you get to say "it's not my job", it's that you are not allowed to make it your job. I like working for a smaller company because I can make things my job. In any company there are things that need doing that either aren't being done or are being done suboptimally. Almost every day I spot something and think "I could do that". So I make it my job.
nisegami 4y ago
Adolescents act out because they quickly realize that the adults in their life give a lot more attention to problems than to things going well. I think this makes sense, and there's a psychological basis for this. I'm not surprised then that it works the same way in the workplace. No one is going to be willing to change things unless they feel the pain associated with not changing it. If someone keeps putting out fires at the expense of their work-life balance or health, then their superiors will simply direct their finite attention at the fires that weren't put out - just as the honor roll student with a dropout sibling probably doesn't get a ton of attention from their parents.
NordSteve 4y ago
You need to analyze the organizational landscape to know what your role as a staff engineer really is. If your manager has sole discretion on your compensation, then you need to be strongly aligned with her goals in order to succeed. If she sees her goals as solely delivery of her projects, then that's what you should work on. If you work in an organization (like I do) where your compensation is determined by a group of leaders, then you need to look at what the group wants from you and deliver on that. In my group, a big part of that for staff-level engineers is making sure that the overall organization is successful. Story for me this year: I noticed another team struggling. Their deliverable is really important to my boss 3 levels up, and I have the background to help them get unblocked and be successful. This team works on something completely disconnected from my manager's goals. I started working with them, and after a month or two told my manager I was working on it. She agreed that it was a good use of my time, and my involvement didn't interfere with other commitments we'd made. I've probably spent about 3 weeks in total on it. At review time, there was widespread agreement that it was the most important thing I've done for the year. To close - As a staff engineer, you'll see lots of gaps (if you don't see them, you're not a staff engineer). Most of them should be handed off to others. But some of the gaps are things you're uniquely suited to fill, even if it's not precisely in your area of responsibility. They're "not your job" but exactly the right thing for you to be doing. If your role is too narrowly defined, go negotiate with your manager (or better, your manager's manager) to broaden your role.
glonq 4y ago
I often work at small companies. There, you'd better not utter "it's not my job" unless you plan on resigning.
ManlyBread 4y ago
If I do stuff that is not my job it will become my job to do that stuff. I'm not sure if I want the additional responsibilities or increased workload, especially when there's no guarantee that it will go hand in hand with pay increase. Why bother?
angarg12 4y ago
This is a topic close to me, and one I have problems expressing my thoughts about without coming across as cynical. My bottom line is "not my job" is a way to avoid companies taking advantage of you. I'll give you a real specific example. My wife joined a company as a junior fresh grad. As she grew into the role, started to expand her responsibilities to get to the next level. The first time she got passed for a promotion she decided to take in even more responsibilities to strengthen her case. She was performing at the next level while getting paid the absolute lowest salary for her role. By the end of her tenure she was literally mentoring a newly hired Senior, and still got passed for a promo for the third time because "she wasn't ready yet". Stretch assignments are a great way to grow, but there is a clear asymmetry of power here. Companies will easily extract as much value as they can from you and give nothing in return. I think it is perfectly reasonable to set boundaries and say not my job. The difficult part is choosing where that boundary should be.

195 points by sebg 4y ago

This is good advice. Sometimes fixing things requires not fixing them yourself before getting people to agree that it's a problem

mianos 4y ago
Yes. And, sometimes when the standard is so low, it's impossible to convince anyone that it is broken. Specially when you indicate the effort to fix things. Sometimes 'struggling by' is the modus operandi. What comes with this is the toxic culture, high staff turnover and disrespect of anything new by the people who have suffered through it all for a long time.
ZainRiz 4y ago
This article seems to be advocating sticking your head in the ground when something goes wrong Yeah, sometimes all you can do is raise awareness. And if the ongoing issue is going to affect your deliverables, then you better be raising awareness! Saying “that’s not my job” isn’t for anyone in a leadership permission
- beckingz 4y ago
  The phrase "It's not my job" is never good to say, Often, focusing on the things that are explicitly your job and intentionally ignoring bigger problems is a good move so that the people who are responsible for those issues will allow you to fix them.
  - dilyevsky 4y ago
    I had this theory a while ago that accumulation of this sort of thinking is why big corps without regulatory capture stop innovating and then wither and die - “if it was so important someone would surely tell me to do it”
TameAntelope 4y ago
I work very hard to avoid working with people who think like this. Have the guts to stand up and own something.
- jcims 4y ago
  Some things have never had an owner, others can’t keep one. In the latter case, at least in my experience, it’s because the ‘thing’ is actually composed of several things that clearly have different owners but the link was lost in the composition. The furthest I’d go with pat advice is own finding the owner. If it’s truly homeless then feel free to take it in as a rescue. If it’s a rat king, grab your side cutters and get to work.
- deleted 4y ago
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- itsgrimetime 4y ago
  Should someone do this when they're not going to be amply rewarded for doing so?
- beckingz 4y ago
  I own plenty. There are more things than I can own sustainably, so somethings need to go unowned until the powers that be decide they need ownership.
  - TameAntelope 4y ago
    Sure, but then be open about that. Silently watching as something fails at your business so you get to feel superior is toxic as hell.
- robocat 4y ago
  Trying to own 100% of problems is as toxic as trying to own 0%. Agreement is often critical: https://sharedphysics.com/everything-is-important/ https://sharedphysics.com/everything-is-important/
  - 4y ago
bluedino 4y ago
This works with hobbies and your wife as well. Don't bring up buying a new boat/whatever until she does. "Honey, your boat really looks bad and has so many problems, maybe you should think about getting a new one"
- scruple 4y ago
  If I owned a boat and tried that with my wife it'd be more like, "Honey, your boat really looks bad and has so many problems, it's time you got rid of it."

infamouscow 4y ago

I'm can't be the only one exhausted from all these pointless bloggers trying to point to how their promotion to hierarchical title N is justified because it's arbitrarily different than N - 1 at their org. Let's just acknowledge these things don't actually map across different organizations and therefore have no meaning. Hierarchical titles are for engineers that hide their mediocrity behind HR appointed titles.

pm90 4y ago
> Hierarchical titles are for engineers that hide their mediocrity behind HR appointed titles. Disagree. The motivation is more around the financial benefits that come from it. Which, honestly, I wouldn’t blame anyone for wanting, considering the CoL in most major US metros. I do think its worth attempting to create a technical career path for engineers though. The current iteration may not be perfect, but its an improvement over the previous thing, which was that you had to move into managerial positions to make “career progress”. In fact one of the criticisms I have of the upper levels of this rat race is that it devolves into more managerial work anyways, reducing the amount of time engineers spend in the trenches (so to speak) contributing to the decline of their skills.
dasil003 4y ago
Like a lot of things in life, judgement is required. To dismiss levels as "having no meaning" is to misunderstand their purpose and limitations. Someone being promoted to Staff, Senior Staff, Principal, Distinguished at top tech companies says a lot. On the other hand, getting hired into Staff means less. In all cases though, the specifics depend on a lot of (usually) nameless, faceless individuals who also are subject to their own biases. I'll tell you this though, having interviewed hundreds and hired dozens over the last 25 years: someone unilaterally declaring levels to be bullshit for the mediocre is a pretty strong negative signal about their ability to succeed in a large organization outside of specialist positions in research or other isolated roles that don't require cross-team or cross-functional influence.

chasil 4y ago

Someone recently replied to me with comments by Dave Cutler, designer of the kernels for Windows NT/XP(...) and (Open)VMS: “I have a couple of sayings that are pertinent. The first is: ‘Successful people do what unsuccessful people won’t.’ The second is: ‘If you don’t put them [bugs] in, you don’t have to take them out.’ I am a person that wants to do the work. I don’t want to just think about it and let someone else do it. When presented with a programming problem, I formulate an appropriate solution and then proceed to write the code. While writing the code, I continually mentally execute the code in my head in an attempt to flush out any bugs. I am a great believer in incremental implementation, where a piece of the solution is done, verified to work properly, and then move on to the next piece. In my case, this leads to faster implementation with fewer bugs. Quality is my No. 1 constraint – always. I don’t want to produce any code that has bugs – none. “So my advice is be a thinker doer,” Cutler concluded. “Focus on the problem to solve and give it your undivided attention and effort. Produce high-quality work that is secure.” https://news.microsoft.com/features/the-engineers-engineer-computer-industry-luminaries-salute-dave-cutlers-five-decade-long-quest-for-quality/ https://news.microsoft.com/features/the-engineers-engineer-c... Unfortunately, I do not have this level of talent, but I do what I can.

patrck 4y ago
Though, if your bias is towards action, how do you avoid stepping on toes? These discussions seem like MBA brain-teasers, ie. there can't be any hard and fast rules, so each case needs to be individually worked out. There's probably a sub-reddit for this.
- kinos 4y ago
  Delegate the prioritization by using a template similar to this one. > "Hey, I noticed [this thing that I think might be a problem]. Would you like me to [do a specific action that would probably fix it] or move onto something else?"
- chasil 4y ago
  True to form, Cutler had a break with DEC, and they gave him a carte-blanche VAX "skunkworks" with Prism/Mica. DEC eventually shut this down, which prompted his departure for Microsoft. This is unfortunate for DEC, as they eventually poured the company into their Alpha RISC processor, which did not live as long as DEC hoped. Prism might have been a superior design. At this time, Microsoft was maintaining a UNIX kernel in their Xenix product, so they knew a good kernel engineer when they met one. Microsoft was the leading UNIX vendor in the early 80's. Cutler famously disparaged the UNIX kernel (his notable saying was "Get a byte, get a byte, get a byte byte byte" to the tune of the finale of Rossini's William Tell Overture). Microsoft dumped their Xenix onto SCO about this time. What is more interesting to me was Cutler's involvement with Azure. He must have had some sway over CBL-Mariner, Microsoft's RPM-based Linux distribution. Much of Cutler's earlier work is documented in the "Showstoppers" book: https://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Microsoft/dp/0029356717 https://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Mic... The book doesn't really delve into the Xenix decisions, if I remember correctly. Without Cutler, Microsoft would likely have ended up on a BSD kernel, as Apple did.

aunty_helen 4y ago

That first paragraph, not a great start when I have to do mental gymnastics just to figure out what the blog post is even about. If you can't write about a subject directly, use creative license and make the situation up. Nobody knows / is going to find it different and it will help get your point across. I bailed on this article after the first paragraph.

coastflow 4y ago
>"If you can't write about a subject directly, use creative license and make the situation up. Nobody knows / is going to find it different and it will help get your point across." Making up a situation—without disclosing that it is fiction—is risky in a practical sense and also morally questionable. Readers typically don't like to be deceived when reading non-fiction. If a specific detail is fabricated and a reader notices, a reader can assume that the writer is sloppy/deceptive, and become far more skeptical with the rest of the author's works. Undisclosed fabrication can also lead to unsound conclusions (for example, an article could rely on the existence of a counter-example to disprove a rule, but a fabricated counter-example would make the argument fail to be valid). Furthermore, suppose a reader cites an article with a fabricated story, relying on that story to make a point. If the story is false, the reader would take a reputational hit as well. In a moral sense, it's better for the reader to avoid fabricating situations. It is typically good practice to make an article introduction easy-to-understand with minimal jargon, but creative license should always be disclosed when writing about a hypothetical situation. It leads to higher-quality reasoning (by avoiding arguments that rely on false anecdotal evidence) and is simple to disclose (e.g. "Consider a hypothetical: ...").
- aunty_helen 4y ago
  They’re called business fables, five dysfunctions of a team being a classic, well known, best selling one. It’s a common way of conveying information that might come from several related experiences and built on to drive home meaning. People don’t like to be deceived to the point they’ll go out of their way to believe a story is true until presented with unrefutable evidence that it’s false. Even then they’ll prefer to believe the original lie. This is called the backfire effect.

ZainRiz 4y ago

This article seems to be advocating sticking your head in the ground when something goes wrong There’s a world of a difference between telling others “that’s not my job” for tasks that have nothing to do with you, and owning the success of your own projects And it feels like this author is conflating the two concepts If there’s a dependency of yours that’s not working the way you need it to, it doesn’t mean you can simply go home free. At the very least you have to fill in the communication gap of informing management of the blockers. If need be, then you have to own driving the call to either add more resources to your own project (to compensate for the bad dependency) or push forward the call to nix your project since it apparently has a high chance of failure And if none of those attempts pan out, _then_ you can try to move on to a different place where you can actually be effective. But know that you’ll face this same type of challenges in your new role as well! There’s no easy escape: if you took a position of leadership, then it’s definitely your job to lead

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David 4y ago
I read the article as saying you can't solve everything yourself. That's different than saying you should ignore problems. Instead you need to communicate when you see a problem that you're not positioned to solve, because you don't have the bandwidth or you're not in a position of authority for that domain > you should be working on properly communicating the gap and its risk to the business (and risk to which part of the business) and NOT attempting to solve everything.
Dave3of5 4y ago
> There’s no easy escape: if you took a position of leadership, then it’s definitely your job to lead Leading != to fixing every problem that has no one assigned to it or filling every gap. It's about helping the other so that overall the org can achieve it's goal. Leaders should be miles away not in the trenches. You can ask Russia what happens when you send your general to the front lines. A similar effect happens in software when more senior devs take on all the work themselves. The original tweet is saying the higher up you go the more you have to do everything. That's wrong an extremely unhealthy.

Twisell 4y ago

I just started a new gig and I'm working on a critical glue stuff that was nobody's job so I can totally relate to this article. Don't stop at the title which is voluntarily provocative. So far identifying coworkers ownership, planning and validating glue to make things work took most of my time but everyone appreciate that. Some veterans are astonished and say things like "wait so you get Mr Grumpy to do that?" or "How on earth could you get a validation from Mr Nitpicker with a single meeting?"... Well acknowledging that "it's not my job" to do what is Mr Grumpy and Nitpicker area of expertise is exactly what made things works. They feel recognized and they also understand that the burden is on them if we collectively fuck up so the glue project can move on fast.

hinkley 4y ago
One of the tricks up my sleeve is figuring out that sometimes the new guy is the only person who can get Mr Grumpy to change his mind. There's one phenomenon where some people don't re-evaluate their position until they've encountered the same issue with multiple people. Sending new people to ask often works better than going yourself for the third time. You're just a repeat, not a new data point. And then there's a form of the Curse of Knowledge, where the resistant person has heard all of the arguments and (circular?) reasoning from their coworkers and doesn't buy any of it. And then someone asks the question in plain English, with no conceptual or relationship biases. Either the way they ask it makes the person realize they're being unreasonable, or they dissect the problem along a new axis that suggests a way to escape the deadlock. Words and questions can push us toward some connections in our brains, and away from others. Rephrasing is sometimes all it takes to reframe a problem, and the more inured you are to the project jargon the harder it is to rephrase things.
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ryan_lane 4y ago

I'm in violent agreement with this post. The biggest issue with making everything your job is that it hides the problems growing in the company. If there's a gap that needs to be filled, if you fill that gap, you're increasing your workload, and the work is being covered, so management may not even know they need to hire to cover it. At some point you'll be doing so much gap work that you'll burn out, leaving all those gaps uncovered. Obviously you shouldn't be saying "That's not my job", but that's not the point of the post. The point of the post is that you should point that gap out to your management, so they can close it. They may ask you to help cover it, until it's hired for. They may find another team to cover it. They may do nothing, in which case either the work isn't considered high enough priority to cover, or they're not good managers. Don't be a hero for the sake of being a hero. Be the glue that binds everyone together.

sascha_sl 4y ago

I had to have this talk with my partner recently, who works at a small-ish company that hires people competent with data science, but absolutely useless when it comes to architecture, git or even setting up a python development environment. She does all of those things really well and ended up putting a lot of effort into fighting chaos (spaghetti code, spaghetti git flow, a lot of copy pasted code that doesn't have to be, a complete lack of dependency management, no automation for anything) at that place. I stepped in when I suggested some shared vacation days and she refused because she wouldn't be there to be her team's guard rails. That screams leadership failure to me. Keeping in mind she barely gets paid better than a junior dev.

smcleod 4y ago

Someone should have told that to Scott Morrison - https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2021/04/22/scott-morrison-not-my-job/ https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics...

quickthrower2 4y ago
Yeah his job was to put out the fires - literally. But really it isn't: that's why we have the states.

itsgrimetime 4y ago

I was sold this same line since I started my career in software as an intern ~15 years ago. Every year I've become less convinced that fully applying myself is worth it for my career. Any time that I've stepped up to fill a gap when it didn't directly benefit the short-term perception of my manager/skip-level, the effort was undersold or outright ignored. Edit: ok - I'll admit, I didn't read the whole article at first. I still stand by my point, though - even when I'm simply identifying those gaps and not fixing them, I still don't see engineers being rewarded proportionally for the value they're bringing their employers.

quickthrower2 4y ago
Sometimes it is better to leave the gap. Let someone feel the pain. And have it consciously fixed by management. Depends what the gap is. Small gaps (QA person is sick today, so can someone test...) I would just fill them if they are not happening all the time.
- malfist 4y ago
  Agree with this. Pain points are cleavage. Let them be felt, then leverage them into making your improvements known. I so often see junior engineers making work for themselves by "fixing" things that weren't broken. This is often the case when they want to refactor something to make it better. If you can't measure the improvement, it's hard to make the case you actually improved things. Legacy code is like settled law, touched only when absolutely necessary.
yellow_lead 4y ago
It always depends - on the company, leadership, and each particular situation. Always pick your battles wisely :)
athrowaway3z 4y ago
> I still don't see engineers being rewarded proportionally for the value they're bringing their employers. My theory is that's because the relationship between employers and engineers has an off by 1 error. Non-software folks see 'managers managing software developers creating software' in a similar dynamic as 'managers managing drivers driving trucks'. Whereas I believe it is better to frame the function of software engineers as 'managers managing code handling data'. From the business perspective, its software engineers should be seen as managers. Its just that what they manage doesn't require HR or sick days. And just like a re-organization of the business, software updates might take more than a sprint or two.

jp0d 4y ago

I honestly thought, this was related to the ex-prime minister of Australia (Scott Morrison).

dalbasal 4y ago

There is a class of these problems that's easy enough to talk about: "Glue work vs gap filling" is relatively easy topic. Broaching "doer/talker" ratios can be stickier. Some not-my-jobs are evolved/strategic... they have meta reasons. Redoing the company's google-sheets inventory management horror might be high value, but is status-detrimental work for a senior dev, or assistant PM to do. "Excel dude" is low status. Within excel-dude land, the highest (personal) value work might be indulging executive pedantry over the formatting of dashboards. UI is low status at some shops. Talking to clients and tracing back requirements is thankless work at other shops. Etc. Incentives can be wacky in orgs, after all . People naturally fill in gaps when they're motivated and work independently. You can see this with hobbyists, personal projects, startups, Community OS, small teams, criminal gangs, children playing and whole lot of other human endeavors. They row in the same direction when they want to go in that direction, perhaps to reach a destination. In 80% of orgs, 80% of 80% of people's concerns are related to happenings on the boat itself. The vector of the boat isn't their job. They don't care where the boat goes.

Dave3of5 4y ago

I agree the original tweet is wrong. Imo as you become a more senior your role should become more and more tightly focused. Narrowing down into things that are more important for the company. Examples might help here: As a junior dev you can be expected to fix bugs in the product, work on features, maybe help with testing. Basically anything that the company wants to get you more experience. This is the role discussed in the tweet filling in any small gaps. As an intermediate dev I would expect you to start working on your own features (with help from a senior+). Only when you're finished these you can tackle anything else like random bugs and suchlike. Senior dev is more about helping others so you mentor juniors, help intermediate devs with their features and are given the slightly harder features to work on. Principle devs shouldn't really be mentoring juniors. Certainly you can ask for advice but I would have all my principles working on the hardest parts of the codebase. Anything that requires research or things that the company hasn't done before. Examples of this would be adopting new technology, complex algorithms ...etc. Seniors go to you for advice, not mentoring or step by step by advice on how do I approach X or Y that sorted of thing. You should have a principle working on a low level bug (say a spelling mistake or poor grammar) that's for people further down. There's an element of people management here as well. Staff roles are mostly hand off and are their to take the strategic approach that comes from the exec team i.e. the CTO / CEO and actually puts them into action. So think working with product coming up with reasonable plans that are actually doable. You'll work with the principles to execute your actions. If it's a big system and a big team part of this will be working out how to split the work amongst the sub teams. This is what I mean by the responsibilities as you become more senior your responsibilities change from fixing spelling mistakes to help set and execute the roadmap of the product / service.

g5095 4y ago

Some years ago I was one of the first 5 engineers at what became a semi-unicorn, in 5 years we spent close to 1bn before a sale to tencent. In the first 12 months I built a dozen microservices, each which eventually had a team supporting them. As the team grew I and one other guy were the 'glue' that kept much of the platform working, we knew how things went together, and by the time the Eng team hit 200+ staff we were indispensable. After year 2 however, as several of our peers from the beginning moved into team management roles (something I prefer not to do), we noticed we were 'too important' to promote, or to allow to move, or to take off 2nd lvl on-call (at all). What started with us being the architects of the system turned into us being the 'glue' that kept a massive multi-country eng team operating, which eventually turned into being boxed into a shitty support role rather than promoted, watching people vastly less qualified get moved ahead of us. Eventually I just quit and moved into a tech lead role at a startup for something different. I feel like this is a trap for IC roles, don't be so helpful as glue that you 'set' into an indispensable position.

codingdave 4y ago

I'd take some of this advice one step further. In the examples of when not to step up to fix a problem, the author states under-resourced teams. If you do step up to help out such teams, not only do you risk burning yourself out... you are also masking the problem. Helping those teams hit their targets sets up a long-term situation where leadership says, "They get their work done, so they must have enough resources." It does feel off to not help is such situations. It feels like you are letting a team down. But in the long run, showing evidence that the team is under-staffed will force leadership to make a choice: Either increase staffing or decrease scope. Either way, the team is adjusted to have a healthy match between their staffing and their workload, the people have a healthier work environment, and the business has a more predictable and reliable work output from that team. Everyone wins. I'm not saying to never help a team. I'm saying to look deeply at why the team needs help before jumping in. Maybe they could be fixed with mentoring or process improvements. Maybe their PM needs guidance in a better way to roadmap the work. There are many cases where you can jump in and help. But if the team really is running well, but simply overworked and under-staffed, that needs a different fix. Being able to parse out the differences of where direct help is a benefit vs. a hindrance is exactly the type of perspective that takes people beyond the "senior" level role.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago
Your take presumes that management is incapable of understanding these issues, or perhaps that managers are incapable of communicating when their teams are losing time fixing bugs of others. While obviously there are bad companies and managers out there who operate like this, it’s far too cynical to assume every company is this broken. If the only way you can think to communicate a problem to management is by letting a team fail and hoping management figures it out, that signals a massive communication/management failure. The proper response is to do what’s necessary to unblock your work, even if that means helping another team, and then also communicate very clearly what had to be done and how much of a setback it was. If management is paying any attention at all, they’ll collect these anecdotes and realize that the failing team isn’t getting their work done. From the management side of things, when I see teams playing too much of the “not my job, not my problem” game to the point that they’re letting their objectives fall behind just to make a point about not helping with an issue, I also lose confidence in that team. Why? It’s a political move to let something fail just to make a point. This doesn’t mean that teams should be quietly dedicating resources to compensate for other teams, though. It needs to be communicated clearly through the management chain to make it understood like professionals working together to accomplish shared goals. Making moves to let goals fail just to make a point is, like it or not, a petty political play. Communicate, don’t play politics.

globular-toast 4y ago

My experience working for a big company is that most things are not your job. It's not that you get to say "it's not my job", it's that you are not allowed to make it your job. I like working for a smaller company because I can make things my job. In any company there are things that need doing that either aren't being done or are being done suboptimally. Almost every day I spot something and think "I could do that". So I make it my job.

nisegami 4y ago

Adolescents act out because they quickly realize that the adults in their life give a lot more attention to problems than to things going well. I think this makes sense, and there's a psychological basis for this. I'm not surprised then that it works the same way in the workplace. No one is going to be willing to change things unless they feel the pain associated with not changing it. If someone keeps putting out fires at the expense of their work-life balance or health, then their superiors will simply direct their finite attention at the fires that weren't put out - just as the honor roll student with a dropout sibling probably doesn't get a ton of attention from their parents.

NordSteve 4y ago

You need to analyze the organizational landscape to know what your role as a staff engineer really is. If your manager has sole discretion on your compensation, then you need to be strongly aligned with her goals in order to succeed. If she sees her goals as solely delivery of her projects, then that's what you should work on. If you work in an organization (like I do) where your compensation is determined by a group of leaders, then you need to look at what the group wants from you and deliver on that. In my group, a big part of that for staff-level engineers is making sure that the overall organization is successful. Story for me this year: I noticed another team struggling. Their deliverable is really important to my boss 3 levels up, and I have the background to help them get unblocked and be successful. This team works on something completely disconnected from my manager's goals. I started working with them, and after a month or two told my manager I was working on it. She agreed that it was a good use of my time, and my involvement didn't interfere with other commitments we'd made. I've probably spent about 3 weeks in total on it. At review time, there was widespread agreement that it was the most important thing I've done for the year. To close - As a staff engineer, you'll see lots of gaps (if you don't see them, you're not a staff engineer). Most of them should be handed off to others. But some of the gaps are things you're uniquely suited to fill, even if it's not precisely in your area of responsibility. They're "not your job" but exactly the right thing for you to be doing. If your role is too narrowly defined, go negotiate with your manager (or better, your manager's manager) to broaden your role.

glonq 4y ago

I often work at small companies. There, you'd better not utter "it's not my job" unless you plan on resigning.

ManlyBread 4y ago

If I do stuff that is not my job it will become my job to do that stuff. I'm not sure if I want the additional responsibilities or increased workload, especially when there's no guarantee that it will go hand in hand with pay increase. Why bother?

angarg12 4y ago

This is a topic close to me, and one I have problems expressing my thoughts about without coming across as cynical. My bottom line is "not my job" is a way to avoid companies taking advantage of you. I'll give you a real specific example. My wife joined a company as a junior fresh grad. As she grew into the role, started to expand her responsibilities to get to the next level. The first time she got passed for a promotion she decided to take in even more responsibilities to strengthen her case. She was performing at the next level while getting paid the absolute lowest salary for her role. By the end of her tenure she was literally mentoring a newly hired Senior, and still got passed for a promo for the third time because "she wasn't ready yet". Stretch assignments are a great way to grow, but there is a clear asymmetry of power here. Companies will easily extract as much value as they can from you and give nothing in return. I think it is perfectly reasonable to set boundaries and say not my job. The difficult part is choosing where that boundary should be.