Today I was called out as my team’s duct tape. Intended as a compliment, it’s anything but.
Culturally, duct tape is vernacular for a fix-anything solution, which is completely justified. Stop something from moving? Bumper hanging off your car? Have a hole in your shoe? Eyeglasses are broken? Warts? It’s duct tape to the rescue! Even skydivers use duct tape to protect noses during cold-weather jumps, IKYN.
And that’s me in a nutshell, the do-anything, fix-it guy: I either know, know where to look, know how to connect the dots, or know whom to ask. Need a deeper understanding of the business domain, ask Scott. Have a question about how business rule changes may impact existing implementation, ask Scott. Need to better understand pros/cons on different design approaches, ask Scott. Need a bug fixed quickly, ask Scott. Need to define observability, ask Scott. Ask Scott. Ask Scott. Ask Scott.
[The exception to Ask Scott is when the answers don’t fit someone’s narrative, in which case the everyone pushes forward hoping that issues resolve themselves magically. Yeah, right.]
So yes, I am a strong generalist with the ability to dive deep when necessary, very productive and valuable to your employer. Flip side is that I’m rarely provided with net-new opportunities because my manager doesn’t know what s/he doesn’t know and what risks that may entail. Yes, occasionally different things might be dangled but the transition rarely occurs because no one else wants to pick up what I’m responsible for, and I remain stuck.
This conundrum has existed for many years across many employers, and I’ve struggled to figure out how to change it, but until I do I remain everyone’s duct tape. Shit.
