# Being Glue - No Idea Blog Synced: [[2023_11_30]] 6:03 AM Last Highlighted: [[2023_08_19]] Tags: [[teams]] [[Teams]]  Glue work is all of the work in between. It is work that typically falls between the cracks especially in smaller organizations. Including things like: writing docs, setting up meetings & agendas, team process, mentoring & coaching, onboarding. The problem is that all of this work does not get recognized as _engineering work_ and therefore overlooked with promotions, compensation & title. It holds everything together, and it should be valued as being critical to the success & especially enablement of others. ## Highlights [[2023_07_13]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h57aye27hfmr4spd67aq72qb) > Your job title says "software engineer", but you seem to spend most of your time in meetings. You'd like to have time to code, but nobody else is onboarding the junior engineers, updating the roadmap, talking to the users, noticing the things that got dropped, asking questions on design documents, and making sure that everyone's going roughly in the same direction. If you stop doing those things, the team won't be as successful. But now someone's suggesting that you might be happier in a less technical role. If this describes you, congratulations: you're the glue. If it's not, have you thought about who is filling this role on your team? [[2023_07_15]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h5ch3hgmxwk0qcmpbf0wxn1d) > In teams without a project manager, what happens? In some teams, the manager takes up the load. In others, the work gets spread among the people willing to do it, or the people **expected to volunteer** for it. [[2023_07_15]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h5chcng2scsmdakwd3g85x9j) > I advise people to choose deliberately. Choose a role that you'll feel successful and happy and proud to say you do, and that will teach you skills you want. Do a job you’re excited by. You will learn to get good at it by doing it. I feel like we don't admit it often enough enough that most of the time, we won't do a job well on day one. The vast majority of our learning happens on the job. [[2023_08_19]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h86s0d5xmhfkjvnze5dztd2e) > The Awesome Coder only succeeded because someone else on the team went and talked to other people and broke him out of the email thread of doom. He couldn't communicate well enough to ask another team for some data that he needed. > The System Designer only succeeded because someone else on the team asked what the thing he was building was actually for. He didn't have the technical judgement to step back and understand how his system would integrate with the other systems the company was building and to be clear about the problem they were all solving. [[2023_08_19]] [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h86rzfn188yvsm14t1w9tyd3) >