Doing Everyone Else's Job

summary

Taking ownership of tasks that fall outside your official job description is a strategic advantage that allows you to learn how a system works and ensure critical goals are met when others fail to act. This approach is not about charity, but about removing blockers and driving success for your own projects. By stepping into gaps left by ineffective management or rigid planning processes, you gain deep organizational knowledge and secure your own success. Ultimately, the most impactful employees are those who do the necessary work regardless of whose responsibility it is.

key points

1. Stepping into other roles helps you understand the system's dependencies and prevents projects from preventable problems caused by inaction. This is particularly useful when integrating new technologies or adding features to tools you rely on by providing patches rather than waiting for official scheduling.
2. There is a a distinction between taking over a task to ensure it gets done, and creating redundant parallel systems. While filling gaps is productive, duplicating work in-house instead of buying a standard tool or allowing every department to roll their own version of a service is often a result of poor management and a result of desire for headcount growth rather than efficiency.
3. Doing other people's work is a a way to gain indirect rewards such as becoming one of the few people who truly understands how to get things done in an organization. This skill is a combination of technical ability and the a bit of social navigation, effectively managing people without the official title of manager.

who should read it

Software engineers, project managers, and ambitious employees who feel blocked by corporate bureaucracy or ineffective colleagues.

discussion skeptical