Hacker News front page5 min readintermediate
Doing Everyone Else's Job
Summary
The author argues that taking on tasks outside your formal role gives insight and can accelerate delivery, but warns that such “charity” can hide deeper organizational problems like misaligned incentives around buy‑vs‑build and centralization.
- Doing work outside your role reveals hidden dependencies and can unblock projects.
- Integrating a feature directly into another team's system can sidestep slow planning cycles.
- Buy‑vs‑build and centralize‑vs‑roll‑your‑own decisions often reflect headcount incentives more than technical merit.
- Relying on a tiny minority to do others' jobs masks systemic issues and risks burnout.
Senior engineers and engineering managers should read it to understand the trade‑offs of cross‑functional work and avoid hidden inefficiencies.
4/10
