Your mvp engineer glues the team together with 127 PR reviews and midnight fixes, but Jira crowns the ticket-hoarding intern as star performer

A common issue in engineering management is the "glue work" trap, where top engineers appear to be underperforming due to their focus on essential, behind-the-scenes work that doesn't show up in traditional performance metrics. According to Tanya Reilly, this "glue work" includes technical leadership tasks that hold teams together but don't map to traditional promotion criteria. Engineers like these spend up to 50-70% of their time on work that has no corresponding ticket, resulting in a shrinking visible output despite increasing actual value. Tools like Span analyze codebase and system data to automatically categorize work, providing a more accurate picture of an engineer's contributions. By using data to measure "glue work," managers can identify and reward high-impact engineers, leading to improved team velocity, retention, and hiring. For example, one company saw a 30% increase in team velocity after implementing changes to measure and reward "glue work."