Doing mechanics
In MMORPG raid encounters, a group of adventurers will get together to clear a dungeon or boss encounter. Each of these adventurers will have their own specialized role in the team. Within the typical MMO Holy Trinity we have a tank that gets the attention of the boss and protects the party, damage dealers who try to down the boss as fast as possible, and supportive healers who try to keep everyone else alive. Playing one’s own role can be difficult to optimize and have a high skill ceiling as is, but modern raids will also throw in boss mechanics into the equation. These are events or minigames that may occur in the middle of the fight. For example, a player might need to periodically run to a pool of antidote to cure the party of lethal poison stacks, or a group of players might have to play an impromptu game of hot potato with a bomb that will explode for massive damage if held too long or dropped. Doing these mechanics often results in a dip in individual role performance, but not doing them would spell disaster for the whole group.
Glue work
Glue work is work outside of your job description that helps the team succeed. Examples of this could be helping with hiring, writing documentation, or jumping into customer calls.
Trade-offs
Doing things in your job description is like pumping DPS (damage per second) on a boss. You can just keep your head down and knock out tasks one by one. It might not be easy or simple, but it’s what you were trained to do. You often get recognized for good performance here and catch flak for bad performance.
Doing “glue work” is like doing mechanics. It’s critical for your team to succeed, yet it’s going to cost you on your DPS performance charts. Hopefully you’re in a team that properly appreciates and values it, but it can still feel like you’re underperforming.
However, I find that doing mechanics helps me understand way more about the nuances of the raid encounter than just pumping DPS, just like how doing glue work helps you understand the business much more holistically than just doing your day to day job. This is similar to how doing projects can teach your more holistic things about your hobbies than just doing the same thing over and over, or how doing quests is more rewarding than grinding skills.
Additionally, doing mechanics lets me realize and understand the windows during which I can do optimal DPS so that I lose as little as possible. Since more variables are thrown into the mix, this helps me experience more edge cases in my play (which is normally pretty flowcharted); taking all of these factors into account has a high skill ceiling. I hope to get to this state with glue work as well.