[jwatzman]

> The more interesting one though, is that sometimes high-impact work is "just there" to be done, if you're looking.

Author here. Yes, this was exactly my point!

> But the best way I've found to detect promising junior engineers who will benefit from mentorship is to find who does bite, and more often respond "what if" instead of "but".

Indeed. I've mentored a bunch of otherwise-competent engineers trying to get to the next level, and my advice is similar: ask yourself "ok, now what's next". After doing the cool thing, there's inevitably half a dozen other things around it, and things might be obvious to you (as the now-expert in the cool thing) but not others.

[necovek]

> Author here. Yes, this was exactly my point!

Your original example shows you doing extra hours and long days to achieve this: if this was your point, the example is terrible.

I do agree with high-impact work just being there, but finding the time to do it other than "on your own time" is where the tension is between management and engineers who have a different belief of what the highest priority is.

[jwatzman]

> if this was your point, the example is terrible.

Yeah, I addressed this in another comment here. I attempted in the last section to separate the ideas of "I heroically dived in" and "I took an opportunity in front of me" -- you shouldn't go looking for heroics. This didn't quite get across, and I totally understand why. Ah well.