[busterarm]

The only reason I'm in the organization is to push for organizational improvements. That's why they hired me over somebody else. That's the source of momentum in my career path and the best thing for me as well as the org.

If that isn't the case, then I'm a cog in a feature factory and that's not the job that I want to be in. I know that some companies/teams/managers approach work that way, but that's a very strong counter signal to me.

When I'm going on to my next job, do you think they want to hear what my responsibilities were or what I did at the company that made it succeed? This ties into why I think hiring is broken -- we hire for one set of skills and tend to expect delivery of another.

[grepfru_it]

>push for organizational improvements

doesn't pay the light bill

> a cog in a feature factory

pays the light bills.

YMMV

[busterarm]

Disagree. The answer is somewhere in the middle.

Every time some failing startup does a large layoff round, there's always questions of "why does X need Y many engineers?". Too many cogs in a broken organization is just burning dollars and electricity.

[grepfru_it]

do things manually for as long as possible until you need to automate it.

[busterarm]

At some point automating becomes a full-time job. And that's literally what I do.