10 Comments
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John Sawiris's avatar

Great advice! Thank you for sharing this wisdom.

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Dimma Joel's avatar

Coincidentally, this has been on my mind since yesterday and your article just confirmed I need to work on it.

I just felt I needed to focus my attention on energy and time on things I'm sure would yield result.

Thank you, Ryan.

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Stephane Moreau's avatar

If you don’t protect your time, you can’t get promoted no matter how much you work.

I love this! Intentionally deciding where to give your time is so important. Nice one!

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Komal's avatar

Every week, i read your articles and it motivates me for next week. Your articles are very informative and also motivates me to write. Hope I will meet you one day Sir.

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XY's avatar

How to say no though? 👀

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Ryan Peterman's avatar

People should want you to have as much impact as possible. So it often comes down to explaining the value of the work you could be doing otherwise compared to what is being proposed.

I wrote about a concrete example of this from my career so you can see: https://www.developing.dev/i/137207897/a-concrete-example

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XY's avatar

That’s really helpful, thank you 🤝

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Vincent Vicari's avatar

Great post and good lessons for everyone not just developers. 🙏

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Joe Woodhouse's avatar

As a sorta EM I have to say I'd put that IC9 on a PIP and probably exit them from the business. They completely missed the point of the justification for their professional existence.

Once we get to IC7+ our impact and value is predominantly as a force multiplier for others, rather than any individual contribution we might make. I don't care how much of a rockstar ninja x10 SWE that IC9 was... nothing they could personally be putting their hands on would be worth as much to their employer as (say) even just a 5% improvement to productivity for 100 IC4-6.

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