Don't work for free. I don't just mean in terms of monetary compensation (although that too). If you haven't explained the value of your efforts to your bosses

Don't work for free. I don't just mean in terms of monetary compensation (although that too). If you haven't explained the value of your efforts to your bosses, then you should do that. If they can't understand the value of it, or don't want you to put effort into it (or aren't willing to support you while you put effort into it), then you shouldn't do it. Spend the time instead answering the phone -- that's what they want to pay you for -- and keep looking for a better job. Somewhere up the chain of command is, hopefully, someone who thinks about everything in terms of money. Find that person and explain that the downtime and performance issues cost some amount of money every year. Do the math, come up with some real and plausible numbers. Then explain that you can fix it for probably some other amount of money. Before you go to them, make sure the first number is bigger than the second, otherwise they'll tell you you probably shouldn't be spending your time on it, and they'll be right. Engineers have a bit of a tendency to focus on technical inefficiencies without giving enough consideration to the human or financial things in a business. The ringing phone might actually be costing the business more money than the deadlocks; some customers hate it when they call up and the phone consistently rings a dozen times or goes straight to voicemail. There might be other things that would be more important than fixing the deadlocks -- documentation tends to be a pretty common ailment. It's great that you're taking initiative to fix some problems in the company, but be careful about feeling resentment over a lack of support for it if you haven't talked to anyone first to make sure you really should be working on this particular problem to the exclusion of other duties. And don't do it for free.