Glue (Verb): To integrate different parts of a system together that would otherwise be incompatible.
Glue is complex
Being the Glue can be a lot of different things, from Coding, design or just being the human being amongst it all. People are not always rewarded for doing it well. It’s testing or Quality Engineering it’s often seen as just piecing things together but in reality it takes a lot of communication, documentation, writing, evaluating vendors or designs and how to implement the. It is so much more complicated than just “piecing things together”. In testing or Quality Engineering we often have to solve problems for ourselves. Testing tool evaluation for example.
Your job title says “Quality Engineer”, but you seem to spend most of your time in meetings. You’d like to have time to prevent bugs, but nobody else is onboarding the junior engineers, updating the roadmap, talking to the users, noticing the things that got dropped, asking questions on design documents, and making sure that everyone’s going roughly in the same direction. If you stop doing those things, the team won’t be as successful. But now someone’s suggesting that you might be happier in a less technical role. If this describes you, congratulations: you’re the glue. If it’s not, have you thought about who is filling this role on your team?
“the less glamorous and often less promotable work, that needs to make a team successful.” — Tanya Reilly
Gluework is not a new concept in tech. Women have been talking about it for years, my fave Tanya Reilly who did a great talk about it in 2018.
Every senior person in an organisation should be aware of the less glamorous — and often less-promotable — work that needs to happen to make a team successful. Managed deliberately, glue work demonstrates and builds strong technical leadership skills. Left unconscious, it can be extremely career limiting. It pushes people into less technical roles and even out of the industry. We need to talk about how to allocate glue work deliberately, frame it usefully and make sure that everyone is choosing a career path they actually want to be on.
If you are not being paid for this Glue Work and it is detrimental to your progression — stop doing it. Stop being the unofficial lead. If you keep doing glue work — you will only get better at being glue. Make sure to focus on your own technical skills.
I am still a Staff Quality Engineer at heart, awesome woman in tech, UN Women Delegate and I believe in the value of curiosity and empathy in testing. I do all my own stunts, love food, travel, my friends, family, music and art.
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