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Glue Work Considered Harmful

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Re: Glue Work Considered Harmful

#41

Post by scarface_74 »

jhot wrote: post #38
AlotOfReading wrote: post #3

Another perspective is that "glue work" is one of the best ways you can generate outsized returns for your effort. Your own efforts scale linearly because you're just one person. Improving everyone's efforts scales multiplicatively, and compounds iteratively.

My previous job was specifically to do glue work for the engineering team and it was my favorite job I've ever had by a mile. I loved doing things to smooth the other engineers jobs and they loved the productivity gains. Company had to lay most of us off and my current job is similar but a way bigger company so the productivity gains are less apparent. But I will continue to seek out the glue work jobs as long as I c…

And when you get ready to interview and you are asked behavioral question to gauge the level of “scope” and “impact” you worked at, do you really want to say you spent all of your time doing glue work?

Even before I understood those concepts, I made it a point not to just be a “ticket taker”.

Re: Glue Work Considered Harmful

#42

Post by darth_avocado »

dhosek wrote: post #27
scarface_74 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former “architect” and now a “staff” engineer who is pulled in a million directions, I purposefully don’t pull any stories off the board or assign myself to any work in the critical path of getting something to production. Either I will miss my commitments or working extra hours when everyone else is off of work to get time to do “deep work”. I will do “glue work” that’s important. But not urgent that I can sque…

I think at the staff level, the key is to focus on multiplying the efforts of the team at the expense of your own individual productivity.

That will get you PIP at half the companies

Re: Glue Work Considered Harmful

#43

Post by dehrmann »

spookie wrote: post #20

This kind of perspective exemplifies how mediocre most companies become if they don't value being a well oiled machine. Someone said it here, but all engineering work is glue work. Might as well value those thinking smarter about it.

Funny seeing oil and glue both used as metaphors to describe the same thing.

Re: Glue Work Considered Harmful

#44

Post by 000ooo000 »

>The core problem is that you’re deciding for yourself what the company needs instead of doing your job. Isn’t it your job to make your team run smoother? No! Your job is to execute the mission of your company’s leadership.

Such a massive oversimplification. If you spend more than 8 seconds thinking about this, it's obviously stupid.

>first, you’re inevitably going to burn out

Uhh, OK? So I should bump up against inefficiency rather than fix it, so I don't burn out? Ridiculous article. Wouldn't be surprised if this article started life as a LinkedIn post.

Re: Glue Work Considered Harmful

#45

Post by Gravityloss »

These are just examples, and one can always nitpick, but I hope some people get something out of this.

If you are a competent team lead and are a technical person who understands the substance, you understand relatively well what "glue" is needed and is valuable for your team and the company. Then when some engineer does that glue work, you reward them! You might have the glue items as part of the normal work item management, or then not, it depends.

When you have retrospectives, you can always review "our builds were failing 50% of the time in January but now in May, it's only 10%, big thanks to X for fixing A!". Or it can come up in personal reviews etc.

You don't forward everything to your boss or product manager to decide. They don't review your team's code either. But you of course have to communicate that you will have less capacity for a while to do features, since you're working on an internal thing. Then after that the team will have more capacity for features than before.

This is the kind of work the team lead is expected to do, to keep the machine working. They are not doing a good job if they only follow orders and the machine stops because somebody didn't specifically tell them to oil it. Or if the machine is destroyed because periodic maintenance was not performed.

It's of course bad if the team ends up spending most of their time building fancy internal things that don't produce value. It is tempting to end up building cool stuff. That is then the team lead's responsibility to steer away from. It's a balance.

Re: Glue Work Considered Harmful

#46

Post by palata »

neilv wrote: post #25
palata wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But can we rename it to non-gender-specific "old children's club" or "the cool kids"? :) I don't really see a need to share that to non-boys; it seems to usually be boysclubs. Never seen that happen with non-boys, at least. > I think probably I need to be technical co-founder, or a trusted first/veryearly hire. No, that's not about that. I have been that multiple times, still ended up with a boysclub. You have to b…

> And then again, if you end up being the leader of the group... maybe you are the one doing to the others what you were trying to avoid. In my experience, those people always genuinely believe they are loved and admired, even if the first thing employees do when they have beers "privately" is complain about how much they hate those leaders. I don't have enough data points, but I suspect that trying to nurture honest…

I see it the other way round: the company culture is strongly related to the CEO. It's not that the employees spontaneously tend to behave like at school, but rather that the CEO (and his boysgroup) create this atmosphere.

Those in power define the culture. But those in power are also very biased: employees are naturally careful towards those in power (obviously). Those in power like to say "please feel free to speak up" and "I listen to you" (they all say that, even (especially?) the toxic ones). But it doesn't change the fact that they are highly biased.

The likelihood to have a bad CEO in a startup is a lot higher than in a bigger company, because startup CEOs are usually inexperienced founders who had a big-enough ego to try to create a startup. The risk of them abusing their dominant position is, IMO, very high. Whether they want it or not.

I like to compare it to the #metoo movement. There are people (mostly men, to be honest) in power who have abused subordinates without even realising it. And then they genuinely don't understand that a subordinate may sue them because they haven't even realised that they were abusing them! When you are in power, you have a responsibility to be more careful, because your subordinates may not be in a position to contradict you. "She was consenting" has a very different meaning when "she" was in a position to be scared to say no.

All that to say, it's extremely easy to become toxic when you are in a dominant position. And startup founders usually have no experience, which makes it even more likely.

Re: Glue Work Considered Harmful

#47

Post by scarface_74 »

darth_avocado wrote: post #42
dhosek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think at the staff level, the key is to focus on multiplying the efforts of the team at the expense of your own individual productivity.

That will get you PIP at half the companies

That’s literally your job as spelled out in the leveling guidelines. Doing any sort of coding or work that can be delegated to a mid level or senior developer is specifically considered “working below your level”

Re: Glue Work Considered Harmful

#48

Post by xena »

My greatest gift is that I’m naturally glue. My most horrible curse is that I’m naturally glue. Sometimes I wish I could just turn it off and just do my job, but I can’t because I am just glue.

I’m a support build naturally, I lift others up to my level and make sure that everyone is able to do their job better. This is never rewarded, even at companies that claim to reward glue work. I don’t know what to do about it. Maybe I’m just specced to be a manager and don’t know it yet or something.

It’s very frustrating.

Re: Glue Work Considered Harmful

#49

Post by wheresmycraisin »

If you're planning on working there for 10+ years and you are well treated, do glue work. Otherwise do flashy stuff. First, you can change jobs any time to make it someone else's problem, and second, it you can always blame the "unglued" code for any of your own inefficiencies/f'ups.
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