Yesterday I said good work goes invisible. Today, the uncomfortable part.
The thing you're most proud of, being the reliable one, the fixer, the person they call when prod melts down, is the exact thing keeping you in place.
Being helpful makes you replaceable. Every fire you run to teaches the team one thing: call this person when it breaks.
You become the one who fixes things, not the one who prevents them. And fixers don't get promoted. They get kept.
I spent years as the go-to firefighter. Three companies, same story. Slack on fire at 2am, and the reward for being the best debugger was getting stuck there forever.
The devs who make it to the room where decisions happen use a different model entirely. They stop being indispensable at the small thing so they can be visible at the big one.
If this stings a little, good. That usually means you're seeing it.
- Karell aka The Serious CTO