Do maintenance and glue work, and make it visible

On-call, documentation, upgrades, mentoring and unblocking others keep a team healthy but are easy to overlook. When Dropbox updated its framework in 2023, one stated goal was for promotion evaluations to recognize a wider range of contributions, including ownership, difficult decisions and maintenance work such as on-call and documentation, not just large complex projects.

This work counts most when its effect is visible:

• "Cut the on-call page rate for the payments service from about ten a week to two" says more than "did on-call".
• "Wrote the onboarding guide; the last two hires shipped their first change in their first week" says more than "wrote docs".

Balance it, though. If glue work is all you do, have an explicit conversation with your manager about how it is valued on your team.