from Hacker News

Being Glue (2019)

by wavelander on 12/21/22, 12:00 AM with 15 comments

• by gitmaeker on 12/21/22, 1:23 AM

  Some great points in the article. I think gaining recognition for acting in your team's best interests and long term efficiency is even harder in bigger companies (like Squarespace in this article). People won't understand why you're committing to such endeavours as an IC, even if you're past the senior level.

  There are now more and more cross functional roles that would better fit this sort of skillset, for example technical programme management or product operations.

  I also think any good lead or engineering manager should know how to "be more glue". If it becomes a vocation and you don't feel like stopping (or if no one who's in control at your company feels like rewarding you for it), it's maybe time to start looking elsewhere. I feel like the people I've seen embodying these skills are more likely to take on lead roles.

  Moving to a startup could also help as you'd be able to drive alignment quicker with these skills and still get to dive in more technical tasks.

• by flakiness on 12/21/22, 12:48 AM

  "The Staff Engineer’s Path" which the author wrote is a decent book. It covers all the things I don't like about working on software development (or being a SWE) and that's exactly why it's worth a read.

• by dang on 12/21/22, 12:59 AM

  Related:

  Being Glue - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25120504 - Nov 2020 (43 comments)

  Being Glue - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19846720 - May 2019 (42 comments)

• by slang800 on 12/21/22, 5:44 AM

  Imagine, your company has hired you as an engineer to design software systems & write code. Your performance at the company is measured by your ability to design software systems & write code. You've decided to take on the job of a project manager instead and not write code. Your contributions might be valuable, but why would you get promoted as an engineer?

• by TiredGuy on 12/22/22, 4:47 PM

  I remember one client saying to me something like "So and so does a lot of X, and such and such is really churning out Y. What exactly would you say your focus is in this project?" At the time I gave a very unsatisfactory answer, but looking back, a lot of what I was doing was glue work and working across the stack. This looks like a great resource to help me next time I have trouble articulating such things.

• by johmue on 12/21/22, 9:32 AM

  I haven't not seen someone be promoted because they are writing such good code despite being a poor communicator. Glue people get promoted

• by JoachimS on 12/21/22, 9:07 AM

  Really good presentation and article!