Something to doGetting ahead
Make your glue work visible
A simple exercise to get credit for the work that holds your team together
Why it’s worth your time
Coordinating, unblocking and onboarding keep a team running, and they rarely show up anywhere anyone looks. If you don't describe this work, it tends to stay invisible, even to the people who benefit from it. Naming it by what it made possible, and choosing on purpose how much of it you take on, is how it starts to count.
How to get credit for glue work
You’ll come away with a short list of your glue work, in terms of what it made possible.
We’ll turn this into a checklist you can tick off.
- List the glue work you did this past month.
The coordination and support nobody assigned or tracks: chasing decisions, running the check-in, onboarding a new hire, reviewing others' work, fixing the process everyone complained about. Short answers are fine.
Stays in this browser only. Nobody else sees it.
- Next to each, note what it made possible.
Glue work is invisible because its result is something not going wrong. Say what happened because you did it: the launch that went out on time, the new hire who shipped in week two.
- Decide what to keep, and what to hand back.
Some of it is work you value and are good at. Some just landed on you because you noticed first. Be honest about which is which, and about whether it's what your role is meant to be doing.
Tip: Doing less of it is a legitimate choice. So is doing more of it on purpose.
- Bring one or two into your next update.
Your weekly update, a 1:1, your self-review. Describe it by outcome, in one sentence, next to your other work. For example: coordinated the three teams on the data migration so it shipped on schedule.
- Ask how this work counts at your level.
Ask your manager directly. The answer tells you whether to keep investing in it, and how to describe it when it matters most.
You“A fair amount of my time goes to coordination, like keeping the migration on track across three teams. How does that kind of work count for someone at my level here?”
Good moments for this: once a monthbefore a self-reviewwhen your role or team changes
We’ll turn this into a checklist you can tick off.
Keep going with Truest
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
Teams often struggle without it. The trouble isn't that it doesn't matter; it's that nobody sees it unless someone says so.
What might make this harder
State it as fact, by outcome, next to your other work. One line in an update is information, not boasting.
Questions people ask
What is glue work?
The less visible work that keeps a team functioning: coordinating, onboarding, unblocking people, reviewing, noticing gaps. Tanya Reilly named it in her talk and essay Being Glue.
How do I get credit for invisible work?
Keep a short list, describe each piece by what it made possible, and include it in your regular updates and self-review, one line at a time, alongside your other work.
Is glue work bad for my career?
Not in itself. It's valuable, but it can hold people back when it takes time from the work their level is judged on and nobody sees it. Asking your manager how it counts helps you decide how much to do.
Why this works, and where it comes from
Every team has work that holds it together. Someone makes sure the decision actually gets made, gets the new person up to speed, notices the deadline everyone forgot, and keeps two teams talking. When this work is done well, nothing goes wrong, which is exactly why nobody notices it.
Tanya Reilly gave it a name in Being Glue, a talk and essay, and came back to it in her book The Staff Engineer's Path. Her point had two sides. Glue work is essential, and teams struggle without it. But when it goes unrecognized and pulls time from the work a role is formally judged on, it can quietly hold someone's career back. Her advice was to take it on deliberately and describe it well, rather than let it happen by default.
That's what this exercise is for. Writing the list shows you how much of your time goes here. Writing what each piece made possible turns activity into outcomes, which is the language updates and reviews run on. Written as outcomes, the same week reads as a contribution instead of overhead. Then comes the honest question: which of this do you want to keep doing, and does it count where you work? A direct question to your manager answers the second part.
From your manager's side, this is useful information. Many managers assume things just work, because for them they do. Showing what it takes gives them a truer picture of the team, and something concrete to point to when they argue for you. None of it needs to sound like a complaint. You're simply describing the job you've actually been doing. And if this is the part of your job you'd most like to drop, the useful move may be handing it back, not writing it up.
Other simple things to consider
More in Getting ahead
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Written by Truest, based on Being Glue (Tanya Reilly) and The Staff Engineer's Path (Tanya Reilly). Last updated September 25, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.