While recovering from ACL surgery (yes, that’s why there was no newsletter last week), I started re-reading Great at Work. I’d read it about a year ago, but almost nothing stuck. Maybe that explains why I haven’t exactly been "great at work."

Chapter 2, "Redesigning Your Work," hit me at the right moment. Then a friend sent me this article: Altoids by the Fistful.

The gist? We used to love building stuff—fun weekend projects, scrappy hacks, things that made us feel alive as developers. Now? It feels like a lot of what we do is "busy work." Feedback loops drag on. Ceremonies multiply. Gatekeeping sneaks in. And sometimes the "value" we deliver looks suspiciously like…nothing.

Sometimes the Best Code Is No Code

At my job before last, my manager once asked me to write a script to patch PayPal transactions. The plan: query the database, fire off a bunch of POST requests, then update records. Risky. Messy. And frankly, not our team’s responsibility.

So I pushed back. Instead, we worked with PayPal directly. I flagged the transactions, they fixed them, and callbacks flowed through our system naturally. No dangerous writes. No extra scripts.

And honestly? That was the right call. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is avoid adding more code to the pile.

The "One-Click Efficiency" Mirage

More recently, my team debated whether we should cut deployment from two clicks down to one. Sounds like a win, right? Except the engineering effort required was massive. Endless workarounds. Resistance from the system owners. Design reviews that went in circles.

At one point I just asked: Do we really need this?

Because here’s the truth: one less click doesn’t meaningfully improve anyone’s life. But it does make for a great dashboard metric: "Reduced friction by 50%!" Cue promotion cycle applause.

Sometimes, fake wins look shinier than real ones.

The AI Accelerator (Not Always in a Good Way)

And now AI is here to turbocharge the problem. Yes, it can patch vulnerabilities or spin up fixes. But more often, it just helps us deliver the wrong thing faster.

If you’re not careful, you end up with speed without direction—kind of like putting a rocket engine on a shopping cart.

Redefining Value

It gets even stranger when your team’s work isn’t tied directly to revenue. Value becomes abstract. Dashboards get padded. Standups stretch out. You find yourself answering the same question twice because your manager wasn’t listening the first time.

But here’s the framework that stuck with me from Great at Work:

Notice the last part—efficiency. Spending weeks polishing your "perfect" solution doesn’t mean much if nobody benefits. And eventually, someone new will rewrite it anyway.

The Question That Matters

So what’s the solution? Not more ceremonies. Not more dashboards. Definitely not another "one less click" initiative.

The answer is simpler: keep asking yourself—

• Does this need to be done at all?
• Who actually benefits?
• Am I creating value, or just keeping busy?

Because at the end of the day, our careers won’t be measured by lines of code written or hours logged. They’ll be measured by whether we consistently created value for others.

So—how much value are you creating right now?

P.S. According to Great at Work, if you’re working more than 50 hours a week, you’re not adding value—you’re burning out. Go outside. Touch some grass. (Seriously, you’ll come back with fresher ideas than you’d ever get from another hour of "perfecting" your code.)

Cheers!

Evgeny Urubkov (@codevev)

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