Doing nothing at work
Summary
The post advocates for engineers working less and at a slower pace, proposing an 80% utilization default to preserve capacity for high-impact work. It argues that performance in large tech organizations hinges on timely, time-bound opportunities rather than sheer effort, and highlights three common high-impact scenarios: sealing enterprise deals, mitigating incidents, and shipping high-profile features. The piece also warns against glue work, discusses the risks of being exploited for unpaid or backchannel work, and promotes deliberate inaction and ‘slow motion’ thinking to improve incident response and long-term outcomes.