My career has always been “managed” by attacking whatever the hardest, gnarliest, and most urgent problem in front of me was. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always line up with “sexiest” or “most visible” so I often languish doing “janitorial work” — probably why I’m such an advocate for celebrating the invisible work, rather than the splashy work.

@kerrizor 🪣 (there's no mop emoji?!)

Hard same. Code janitor

@zenspider @kerrizor Yup - “code janitor” is actually what I put as my title in Slack (actually, “payments janitor”, but same vibe).

I enjoy doing things like updating dependencies, but those tasks are rarely celebrated.

@alpha @zenspider @kerrizor

I try and pick up the work that no one wants to do. That usually means I get to deep dive into something that’s gnarly or needs improvement, which is my favorite thing to do.

@kerrizor Kerri, is there some means you can conceive of to get this janitorial work more recognition and/or respect?

@zenspider I think it falls prey to the same traps most things do in our business-driven world - we externalize the costs of moving fast and breaking things, and focus on short-term results over things that are more difficult to quantify. It's impossible to get promoted by shipping a thing that results in _nothing happening_. No deals are closed because the code was 2% easier to write.

@zenspider I love the work, honestly, and it satisfies me more than shoveling out AI slop.. but a hidden cost is how much I have to _sell_ the importance of the work I'm doing, to continually make it obvious and visible.