I like the take that "dirty work" might be unexplored space where impactful, relatively unexplored work can be done. However I reject the notion that simply doi

I like the take that "dirty work" might be unexplored space where impactful, relatively unexplored work can be done. However I reject the notion that simply doing dirty work will help you to advance your career. Since the author says this has worked for them, let me give a counterexample: when I was a start-eyed new joinee in my current company, I was always down to do dirty work. Are builds broken? lets fix them. Do we have open tickets? Let's resolve them. Of course I also took it a step further. I wrote a proposal to untangle the ungodly mess that our builds had become and keep them good moving forward. I asked my manager to let me run an experiment fixing customer issues, and I did a writeup with my findings (positives) and recommendations moving forward. This attitude had two unintended consequences. First, the rest of the team stopped doing dirty tasks altogether. Hey, why fix the build or this flaky test? angarg12 will take care of it. I influenced the team's attitude, but in the opposite direction than intended. Second, when I started to have conversations about promotion, all of this work didn't matter. I wasn't ready because I didn't have 'enough impact' or 'enough scope'. My documents went unread, my recommendations ignored. So if career progression is your upmost priority, first understand well what your company values, and if/how dirty work connects with that.