Many years on the job and I still don’t get it.

I’m coming up on 20 years of professional web development and I still don’t get it sometimes. I tend to measure myself or view work productivity through the lens of “How much code did I write?” and that does a great disservice to myself and what I do.


This content originally appeared on daverupert.com and was authored by daverupert.com

I’m coming up on 20 years of professional web development and I still don’t get it sometimes. I tend to measure myself or view work productivity through the lens of “How much code did I write?” and that does a great disservice to myself and what I do.

There’s a lot more to the job:

  • Checking email
  • Scheduling calls
  • Writing release notes
  • Contributing to newsletters
  • Documentation (code and otherwise)
  • Making spreadsheets
  • Demystifying the work I do to teammates
  • Clarifying decisions
  • Having technical conversations with teammates
  • Having non-technical conversations with teammates
  • Investigating weird browser behaviors
  • Babysitting servers and build processes
  • Reviewing PRs
  • Manual QA on branch deploys
  • Attending meetings
  • Attending talks (internal/external)
  • Cross-org contributions
  • Learning
  • Planning
  • Dreaming
  • Scheming
  • Community Ops
  • Moving cards across a board
  • Reading thru backlogs
  • Associating tickets to PRs
  • Closing out old tickets
  • Reading specs
  • Giving feedback on web standards
  • Eating lunch
  • Taking walks
  • Cleaning my home office

These are all aspects of becoming a better web developer. It’s not always about lines-of-code or hours-in-chair. Ideally, we’re all shipping our creations, but sometimes you’re the lead role and sometimes you’re a supporting role. A lot of the work is immeasurable, but it all counts towards something. So… self, don’t be so hard on yourself.


This content originally appeared on daverupert.com and was authored by daverupert.com


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