Agreed. I’m a technical lead at a startup. You know that guy in Office Space whose job it is to basically ferry messages between the engineers and the customer? I feel like that is my job. I attend meetings and pass along messages because they are in a different time zone.

I:

• try to convince other teams they’ve done something wrong and they need to fix it based on analysis already done by my team
• preside over meetings where everyone summarizes and agrees upon root cause analysis that is already done by people on our teams
• babysit the change management process
• hound people for updates on things they are putting off
• have meetings with my developers where they ask me for a decision, then correct me when I’m wrong
• monitor the error queue and figure out what is wrong and fix it

Some of it is because I’m relatively new, but mostly my job is filling in for my boss in meetings because he’s spread so thin so he can focus on strategic stuff. I feel like my job is just to have 30 years of experience so people take things seriously when I say them. There are people who will ignore a request if it comes from my team, but are super helpful when I ask. There is clearly value to me being here, but I had envisioned something different with mentoring and doling out technical wisdom like “this doesn’t adhere to SOLID principles” or “the best practice here is to do this.”

The thing I’ve spent the most time doing developing a system where all the little shit I’m responsible for doesn’t fall through the cracks — mine or someone else’s.

Well, if meetings mean I can improve things for myself, my teammates, and company - I’m ok with that