Who decides what you get good at?

I was talking to a colleague recently about what we would build if we had all the resources we wanted. We got onto R&D budgets, and at first I thought money was the interesting constraint.

But what I kept coming back to was our roles.

I work on the technical side. I like building things. But if I build something useful, there usually comes a point where taking it to people, explaining why they should care, or figuring out whether they would actually pay for it becomes somebody else’s job.

Product. Sales. Commercial.

At least in my case, nobody is explicitly stopping me from getting involved. I can ask. I can put myself into those conversations.

But in a big company, work already has owners. You naturally end up doing more of what you were hired to do, especially the parts that already feel natural to you.

And that can reinforce itself. You do more of it, so you get better at it. Because you’re better at it, you get given more of it.

That can be a good thing. Employment has given me access to people, systems and problems I probably wouldn’t have encountered on my own.

But I keep thinking about what happens over time.

If I spend years building while somebody else spends years talking to customers and selling, I get better at building. They get better at understanding what people want, explaining value and figuring out what someone might actually pay for.

I don’t know what I’ll want to do in five or ten years.

Maybe I’ll want to build something of my own. Maybe I’ll stay technical. Maybe I’ll do something I haven’t considered yet.

I’m not saying we should all try to do everything. You can’t get genuinely good at something without spending time on it.

What I’m interested in is how much of that narrowing we actually choose.

Your role often keeps giving you the same kinds of problems. Somebody else keeps getting the chance to practise the things outside it.

I’m not sure we always notice that happening.