The Trap of Doing Two Jobs

Mon, 26 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve fallen into this trap more than once. You get promoted, you take on the new responsibilities, and you keep doing the old ones too. Not because anyone asked you to, but because the old work is familiar, you’re good at it, and there’s a voice in your head saying “if I don’t do this, it won’t get done right.”

That voice is wrong. Or rather, it might be right in the short term, but it’s catastrophically wrong in the medium term. Doing two jobs doesn’t make you indispensable, it makes you a bottleneck, and it prevents your team from growing into the space you’re supposed to have vacated.

Learning to Delegate (and Why It Feels So Wrong)

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Early in my management career, I had a team of six engineers and I was still the person who knew the most about every part of the system. When something urgent came up, I’d fix it myself. When a design decision needed making, I’d make it. When a PR needed reviewing, I’d review it. I was efficient, responsive, and completely unsustainable.

It took a holiday, a proper two-week break where I was genuinely unreachable, for me to see the problem. The team didn’t fall apart while I was away. But they didn’t move forward either. They’d been waiting for me on three separate decisions, and nobody felt empowered to make them without my input. I’d created a team that was dependent on me, and I’d done it by being “helpful.”

Delegation on guy@secdev.uk

The Trap of Doing Two Jobs

Learning to Delegate (and Why It Feels So Wrong)