This week I’ve been recording the audiobook for Scaling Fast. Working with a professional producer is great! Lots of little tips and tricks to make sure we get the perfect audio experience for you.
This means I’ve been re-reading my book. It’s funny how much of the advice is easy to know but hard to do in the moment. You’re feeling the stress, your bruised ego, and hearing all the loud voices around you.
You don’t want to be the adult in the room. But you gotta :)
Here’s a passage that made me chuckle and go ”Heh ... yep”
Code yourself out of the job
Your ego loves being the critical member of a team.
Everyone looks up to you, seeks your advice, runs important decisions by you, and makes sure their code is up to your standard. You’re the genius who started this product and knows where all the bodies are buried. Feels great!
Then one by one your team starts leaving.
Joe gets pulled into a critical company-saving project. Huge career opportunity. Alice single-handedly talks the CMO off a ledge and repairs an important stakeholder relationship after a bug killed their metrics. Jane spends more and more time with product, helping define long-term strategy.
All the while you’re sitting there making progress on your team’s core products and making sure everything looks right. Your ego loves it, but your mind is thinking ”Where are MY opportunities?”.
They’re not coming. You’re critical to this project. We can’t afford to lose you. Plus aren’t you swamped being in every pull request, meeting, chat thread, and discussion about your precious baby? You don’t have time for new opportunities!
This is the hidden cost of hoarding your legos: You become trapped in your role. No time for big opportunities.
Your goal should always be to code yourself out of the job.
Cheers, ~Swizec
Continue reading about Probably the realest thing I ever wrote
Semantically similar articles hand-picked by GPT-4
- Code yourself out of the job
- Code yourself out of the job
- How good engineering unlocks fast scaling
- A few more thoughts on mentoring
- Your job as an engineer is to make yourself unnecessary
Scaling Fast book free preview
Enter your email to receive a sample chapter of Scaling Fast: Software Engineering Through the Hockeystick and learn how to navigate hypergrowth without burning out your team.
Have a burning question that you think I can answer? Hit me up on twitter and I'll do my best.
Who am I and who do I help? I'm Swizec Teller and I turn coders into engineers with "Raw and honest from the heart!" writing. No bullshit. Real insights into the career and skills of a modern software engineer.
Want to become a true senior engineer? Take ownership, have autonomy, and be a force multiplier on your team. The Senior Engineer Mindset ebook can help 👉 swizec.com/senior-mindset. These are the shifts in mindset that unlocked my career.
Curious about Serverless and the modern backend? Check out Serverless Handbook, for frontend engineers 👉 ServerlessHandbook.dev
Want to Stop copy pasting D3 examples and create data visualizations of your own? Learn how to build scalable dataviz React components your whole team can understand with React for Data Visualization
Want to get my best emails on JavaScript, React, Serverless, Fullstack Web, or Indie Hacking? Check out swizec.com/collections
Did someone amazing share this letter with you? Wonderful! You can sign up for my weekly letters for software engineers on their path to greatness, here: swizec.com/blog
Want to brush up on your modern JavaScript syntax? Check out my interactive cheatsheet: es6cheatsheet.com
By the way, just in case no one has told you it yet today: I love and appreciate you for who you are ❤️