Your are not paid to write code

New industry title: Front-end Systems Engineer. The responsibilities? You spend all your time updating dependencies of a project.

(See Rich Hickey notes about how gem install hairball is easy: easy to get all that complexity.)

But if you set up a system, you are likely to find your time and effort now being consumed in the care and feeding of the system itself. New problems are created by its very presence. Once set up, it won’t go away, it grows and encroaches. It begins to do strange and wonderful things. Breaks down in ways you never thought possible. It kicks back, gets in the way, and opposes its own proper function. Your own perspective becomes distorted by being in the system. You become anxious and push on it to make it work. Eventually you come to believe that the misbegotten product it so grudgingly delivers is what you really wanted all the time. At that point encroachment has become complete. You have become absorbed. You are now a systems person. (emphasis added)

On another note:

We’re not paid to write code, we’re paid to add value (or reduce cost) to the business. Yet I often see people measuring their worth in code, in systems, in tools—all of the output that’s easy to measure. I see it come at the expense of attending meetings. I see it at the expense of supporting other teams. I see it at the expense of cross-training and personal/professional development. It’s like full-bore coding has become the norm and we’ve given up everything else.

Conclusion:

engineers should understand that they are not defined by their tools but rather the problems they solve and ultimately the value they add. But it’s important to spell out that this goes beyond things like commits, PRs, and other vanity metrics...you are not paid to write code.