202206112310 Work on what matters

Make the most out of your time.

Hamming has a good quote about this in 202205092134 The Art of Doing Science and Engineering.

To the extent you can choose, work on the problems that you think will be important.¹

[...] how to do great things. Among the important properties to have is the belief you can do important things. If you do not work on important problems, how can you expect to do important work?¹

Working on what matters is important because the only viable long term bet on your career is to focus on work that matters, do projects that develop you, and steer towards companies that value genuine experience. (202109251140 Play long term-games)

1. Avoid snacking — 202204091039 Impact vs effort model of task value and 202106241531 Eisenhower matrix of task value
2. 202206112313 Stop preening
3. 202206112312 Stop chasing ghosts

What does matter?

This section was written specifically with the responsibilities of a 202206112233 Staff-plus engineer in mind, but is generally adaptable to other situations as well.²

Companies operate in eternal iterative elimination tournaments

1. Existential issues — nothing else matters if your company stops existing. Note that this isn’t the most efficient place for effort but it should be swarmed on by everyone.
2. Work where there’s room and attention — need room to do actual work, but it also has to be valued by your company or your contributions will be uphill, not valued, and eventually eroded anyway.
3. Foster growth — building the team around you is a much more lasting contribution than tech stuff.
4. Edit — be the key to unlocking progress by editing approaches and stepping in at critical points to guide things forward. This can be done very well and very poorly: be careful.
5. Finish things — help people close projects out. This is surprisingly commonly needed.
6. Work on what only you can work on — convince your CEO to pay down tech debt, build strategy people will actually follow, convince candidates to come on board etc.