>starting with the problem they need to solve and focusing on the minimum needed to just solve that problem
To be fair if held strictly to these principles their work would revolve mostly around gluing together various Apis, services and sometimes adjusting already written software to company's needs. So I'm not surprised they are using every possible opportunity to write something here and there, this menial digital plumber's work takes its toll and one needs to try to squeeze in something a bit more enjoyable from time to time just to keep sanity in place a bit longer
When I WAS the bane of my existence was senior and staff engineers hoarding all the fun, new work for themselves and forcing me into "bitch work" where I'm just cleaning up old, broken code and handling bugs. I finally got promoted because I explicitly ignored my manager to deploy changes that were needed for my company, and that was what finally got me promoted. Of course, at that point, I had been looking for a new job and just left instead of taking the shitty, bottom-of-band promo increase.
It's awful for promotion chances, and it forced me to quit.
Not just politics, I almost feel it can hamper you as an engineer. If you just do basic plumbing for 10 years, are you really an engineer with 10 YOE or one with 2YOE 5 times over because everyone needs a plumber?
2-3 years seems to be where that valuable plumbing experience starts to plateu. I don't know how engineers these days that move companies every other year even get a chance to grow when you're doing a soft restart at every job hop.
> When I WAS the bane of my existence was senior and staff engineers hoarding all the fun, new work for themselves and forcing me into "bitch work" where I'm just cleaning up old, broken code and handling bugs.
Oh how I relate to this...
That's why these days I go out of my way to "save" interesting work for my junior colleagues and have them grow through it.
To be fair if held strictly to these principles their work would revolve mostly around gluing together various Apis, services and sometimes adjusting already written software to company's needs. So I'm not surprised they are using every possible opportunity to write something here and there, this menial digital plumber's work takes its toll and one needs to try to squeeze in something a bit more enjoyable from time to time just to keep sanity in place a bit longer