such a great point. try not to work on the things that people are always arguing or complaining about. But work on the big ticket items if you can. usually higher risk with less direction on how to do it right, but makes you more valuable. Not to disparage the grunt work. it is essential. but, it tends to be commodified and therefore replaceable and not highly compensated.
good point, definitely it becomes a commodity when anyone can do that said grunt work. I actually still have money I can earn with my previous employer since they have a feature they want to implement but it requires deep knowledge on everything I built.
For example, I'm one of the only engineers who speaks English and Chinese fluently (both widely used in the company), and as such I'm not very easily replaceable.
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how did you get so fluent in other languages? very impressive.
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