Boring is a feature, not a bug.
Why doing the repetitive, day-to-day work is the most career additive.
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During a conversation with someone I have the privilege of mentoring, they mentioned that they were working hard to find a Product Manager role where they could build with AI. For context, they are an experienced tech professional looking to pivot into Product Management. Hearing this immediately made me recall advice I had received years ago: βboring is a feature, not a bug. Find and take the boring role. Thatβs where you learn how to grind it out, day in and day out.β
This advice was given to me by a mentor when I was considering taking a role to lead a team working on a portfolio of fraud and identity API products that served the financial services industry. I was not excited about the product and didnβt care much for the company. I also didnβt know much about the industry and the product confused me, but I took the role anyway. In hindsight, it definitely wasnβt the βsexiestβ role ever, but one Iβm so glad I took because I learned a ton. I repeated this advice to my mentee. AI capabilities are the exciting and hot thing to be building right now, but theyβre certainly not the only thing that will help you learn and contribute to your exponential growth. If you are craving to work on something more βexciting,β but optimizing for long term career growth, take a step back and remember that the best learning happens when youβre in the day-to-day grind. That often comes from working on the βboringβ stuff and type of product actually matters less than you think.
Some of the most successful tech companies are often the ones where you look, and have no idea what the product actually does. Itβs the infrastructure, cloud security, API-as-a-service, or observability tools companies. The ones where, if you ask any average person about it, theyβd be confused. The truth is, regardless of what company or product you work on, 99% of your day job has really little to do with the sexiness of the product. Outside of being able to say you work on X product that is well known or clearly understood, your job is the same. Itβs managing people, talking to users, working through constraints, making tradeoffs, and figuring out how to scale. This is the slog and grind that teaches you the most. And frankly, if you are going through this slog and grind while working on a βboringβ product (or boring part of a product), you might also unknowingly become a subject-matter-expert in this boring space! Thereβs nothing wrong with having an expertise and being known for a specific industry niche.
This isnβt to say that you canβt optimize your career decisions for the type of product you work on. You can if that is truly important to you. This is more of a nudge to expand your horizons and consider thinking longer term, as you optimize for career growth and learning. Go take the boring role and approach it with curiosity to learn and grow. Or, if youβre looking to make your next move, go find a role where the product is complex and requires you to dive into a completely new space. That, in and of itself, is career additive and will pay dividends in the long run.
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