The Invisible Labor of High Performance

None of the code on Maria’s screen belongs to her. She is currently staring at a function written by a junior developer three months ago that has suddenly decided to stop playing nice with the production environment. It’s not her ticket. It’s not her sprint. In fact, if you look at the Jira board, Maria is technically ‘available’ for new tasks. But her hands are shaking slightly as she types another message into a cross-functional Slack channel, trying to explain to the design team why the new API constraints mean the ‘bounce’ animation they spent 42 hours on is going to have to wait. She hasn’t written a single line of original logic since 10:22 AM. It is now 4:42 PM.

The Topsoil Analogy: Erosion in Organizations

I’ve seen this pattern in my own work as a soil conservationist. My name is Kendall S.K., and I spend a lot of time thinking about erosion. In the world of dirt and silt, erosion happens when the root systems-the ‘glue’ of the meadow-are ignored in favor of the visible crop. You want more corn, so you strip away the weeds and the cover crops that hold the earth together. For a season or two, you get a massive yield. Then a heavy rain comes, and your entire topsoil washes into the creek because nothing was holding it down.

Organizations do the exact same thing. They focus on ‘the crop’ (the code, the sales, the billable hours) and ignore the roots (the coordination, the culture, the unblocking). Then they wonder why their best people leave 12 months later. We reward technical excellence, but we depend on social cohesion. The frustration is visceral. I’ve spoken to developers who tell me their job is 22% their actual role and 78% chasing people for updates. They are drowning in a sea of ‘Hey, did you see my email?’ and ‘Can we hop on a quick 12-minute call to sync?’ This is the glue work that has become toxic.

The Interface Failure: Pushing a Pull Door

Earlier this week, I walked up to a glass door at the local library, reached for the handle, and pushed with all my might. The sign, in clear black letters at eye level, said ‘PULL.’ I stood there for a solid three seconds, confused as to why the universe wasn’t cooperating with my momentum. I do this more often than I’d like to admit. It’s a failure of interface.

The Burden of Coordination & The Automation Shift

I’ve realized that the burden of coordination is the single greatest drain on human creativity. If I am a soil scientist, I want to be looking at microbial health, not spending 62% of my day filling out permits or arguing with the equipment rental company. In the corporate world, this coordination is often ‘digital glue.’ It’s the repetitive, heavy lifting of making sure the right hand knows what the left hand is doing.

We have to stop treating ‘glue work’ as a personality trait. It’s not that Maria ‘enjoys’ helping people; it’s that she cares about the project succeeding. If we continue to let our best people drown in the tasks that ‘everyone should do but nobody does,’ we will lose them. I’ve seen it in my conservation work. If you don’t value the cover crop, you don’t deserve the harvest. The soil becomes hydrophobic. It stops absorbing water. It becomes hard and brittle. That is exactly what a team looks like right before a mass exodus. They become brittle.

The Need for Systemic Repair, Not Heroic Overload

I once made the mistake of thinking I could fix an entire watershed by planting 102 trees in one spot. It didn’t work. The water just went around them. You have to fix the entire slope. You have to look at the whole system. In your company, that means looking at who is actually unblocking the pipes. It means looking at the people who aren’t necessarily the loudest in the ‘wins’ channel, but are the ones everyone goes to when things break. Those people are your most valuable assets, and they are currently at 12% battery life.

We are measuring the speed of the car while ignoring the fact that the engine is on fire.

If we want to save our best employees, we have to make glue work visible. We have to call it out in reviews. We have to say, ‘Maria, your code output was lower this month, but your impact on the team’s velocity was massive because you handled the design handoff.’ If it’s important enough to do, it’s important enough to be part of a job description. Otherwise, it’s just a tax on the kindest people in the building.

Fixing the Door: Design Flaws in Management

I’m still thinking about that door I pushed. I felt like an idiot, standing there in front of the glass, while people on the other side watched me struggle with a simple task. But the designer of that door failed me. They put a handle on a door that required a push. They gave me the wrong cue. Most management structures are ‘push’ doors with ‘pull’ handles. They tell people to be ‘team players’ but reward ‘individual contributors.’ They tell people to ‘collaborate’ but measure ‘tickets closed.’ It is a fundamental design flaw that leads to exhausted humans.

We need to build systems that don’t require heroes. We need to automate the ‘glue’ so that Maria can go back to being a brilliant coder, and so that I can go back to worrying about the pH levels of a field in the Midwest. The goal shouldn’t be to find more people willing to do the glue work; the goal should be to reduce the amount of glue work required to function.

The Tipping Point: When the Roof Collapses

I don’t have all the answers. I still push doors that say pull, and I still occasionally forget to water my own plants. But I know that when you see someone like Maria-someone who is always in the middle of the mess, always helping, always ‘syncing’-you aren’t looking at a high-performer in their natural state. You are looking at someone who is holding the roof up with their bare hands while everyone else is busy decorating the rooms. Eventually, their arms are going to give out. And when they do, the whole house comes down.