[dominotw]

> Take out the garbage.

I don't agree. You don't get promotions/pay hikes/bonuses for taking garbage out. Those are given to ppl who ship products directly bringing in tthe revenue.

> I'll say this also applies to your first few weeks/months in a new codebase.

I agree with this.

[pmiller2]

I'm on a project right now that's essentially all "taking out the garbage." I sort of feel like a garden gnome, fixing minor little issues here and there, but, this is all being done with institutional support, from my manager on up, so I have no doubt that I'll be rewarded appropriately for it. One of the bigger components of the project is going to end up saving one of our client teams about 9 man hours a day. In the end, I think that's a good enough result to justify a little garbage hauling.

[dominotw]

> this is all being done with institutional support, from my manager on up,

I would be very careful with this. I made many mistakes like this. Unless you know this personally, I wouldn't trust this if its coming only from your manager and one level up.

People who control purse strings just don't care about garbage collection.

Even CEO should understand and value the project you are working on.

[tasuki]

I don't think there's a disagreement here: notdonspaulding's advice was for "anyone who has a little spare time at work and is looking for how to improve their company", not for "anyone who mostly cares about promotions/pay hikes/bonuses".

[muzani]

> You don't get promotions/pay hikes/bonuses for taking garbage out. Those are given to ppl who ship products directly bringing in tthe revenue.

I'd disagree. Pay hikes and bonuses, maybe. But promotions are likely to go to someone who is stable and reliable. Why would you promote the fastest coder out of a coding job? Tech leads and managers are often the ones most comfortable in the system and the one who doesn't yell at others when he's interrupted.

The other little thing a lot of people forget is that it's hard to get anything done in a room full of garbage. So this often leads to better things for the team.

[InfiniteRand]

I think one of the marks of a good manager is they look at who is doing the quiet background work and make sure they get credit for that organizationally.

I am not saying all managers do that, or even that I am good at doing this, but this seems like a core responsibility of managing a team

[jameshush]

There's a difference between taking out a little extra garbage and being taking advantage of. I think the OP is referring to doing something like removing an npm warning message in a build or adding a few sentences to the documentation on a Friday at 4:30pm instead of leaving early.

[gitgud]

> You don't get promotions/pay hikes/bonuses for taking garbage out

Cleaning and streamlining processes and procedures can have huge effects on the company and get you noticed.

It starts with little things, Say you decrease compilation time by 30sec which could add up to hours a week. Or clean up documentation, making on boarding new devs easier.

Then one day you clean up something that has a huge impact on the company. Like a 40% reduction on server costs, by dynamic scaling... Then you're likely to get a promotion...