[etse]

But isn’t that better than code (especially if working) that gets scratched? I think designs that are scratched indicate you don’t understand the value you contribute to your company (or that management sees in you) which should be the root concern for the career development.

[whoevercares]

Yea, designs are cheaper then actual implementation. It’s not always the case that the engineer doesn’t understand the value but most times it’s about the management/PM can’t get things finalized over a long period of time. Sometimes I feel it’s just politics in some cases. Don’t you ever need to fight to do some high visibility work?

[etse]

This is a good question. It's funny, I'm the technical co-founder at my startup, so I hadn't thought to make the distinction between high and low visibility work. I guess we're small enough that I think about it as high impact/cost and low impact/cost. My non-technical co-founder will praise an engineer for their work when the product metrics are moved, which has happened for mundane tasks, too. I tend to notice the craftsmanship more, but I think it's right for attention to be given to the impact.

I have also been at a larger company, so you bring up a good point about fighting for work. I also think this is right.

1. If you win the fight for high visibility work, that's a good sign that you're the right person for the job. It wouldn't make sense for the company to have you work on something for your own benefit over the company.

2. You may opt not to fight and discover other problems to work on that have strong potential for being high visibility. Maybe that's something relegated to PMs or eng management, where the engineer might feel helpless to the given assignments, but that's more of a culture problem. I think politics increases when there's less work/budget/praise than there are people, which is more situational than cultural, in my opinion.

[whoevercares]

Agreed. On the second point, it’s definitely a bit cultural thing of the group/org. Worth note that at the higher level of the Corp ladder, there’s indeed fewer work(with the wanted scope) then the people (that’s looking to do next level work)