Are you the person who takes the time to explain to new hires on your team what everyone does? Are you the person who notices when a project is in danger of going wrong because two teams have different ideas of what is actually required? Do you know the name of the person on the third floor who can sort out the fiddly problem that has slowed down your colleague for weeks?
If you answered yes to most of these questions, then you are doing “glue work”: you build relationships with people; you can see the bigger picture; you fix the organisational cracks and help to hold projects together.
In 2019, a principal software engineer called Tanya Reilly coined the term “glue work” in a talk and blog post that has become something of a seminal text in the profession — I suppose because so many people recognised the truth of it. “Glue work is expected when you’re senior,” she wrote, “and risky when you’re not.”