[zabzonk]

Project manager asks me:

"What did you do this week?"

I say:

a) "I spent the week chasing down an apparent bug on one of the Standard Libraries we use."

or:

b) "I implemented connectivity with the Hong Kong stock exchange, improved our MT performance to get a 20% improvement on submitting trades, and identified a bug we were having with currency conversions as possibly being in one of the libraries we use, wrote a work-around for it, wrote the fix and tests up on our developer wikki, and submitted a report to the library vendor."

Now, I would say that(b) is of far more value for the company I work for and is at least as "professional" as (a).

[bluGill]

Several times in my life I've been in situations where a) was more important because the bug was causing real issues now. In your industry a bug that miscalculates risk can cost billions of dollars. In my industry a bug can cause a safety system to fail and kill people.

[Kranar]

It looks like we're in similar industries then based on your comment and if that's more or less the level you've been operating at on a weekly basis for decades then without a doubt you are a significantly more productive individual than I am and really kudos to you for it.

My point is mostly that not everyone is you though, similarly I don't presume everyone works like I do. Hence arguing that because you've done something for 30 years that it reasonably follows that everyone else should also do it is a really poor argument.

[Silhouette]

Now, I would say that(b) is of far more value for the company I work for and is at least as "professional" as (a).

That's fine, but it does assume that a workaround exists and can be implemented within a reasonable amount of time. If you're talking about a bug in a library of convenient text processing utilities, that might well be the case. If you're talking about a bug in a security-related library that you rely on to authenticate instructions to make high-value trades, maybe not so much.