---
title: "Career Leverage as a Developer"
url: https://perrotta.dev/2025/09/career-leverage-as-a-developer/
last_updated: 2025-09-07
---


Dan Moore, [Career Leverage as a Developer](https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3712):

> But one insight that came out of the discussion is that this applies to your
> career as well. If you focus on undifferentiated scary problems, then you have
> a lucrative career ahead of you, because the problem is important to solve
> (because it is scary) and transfers between companies (because it is
> undifferentiated). If you focus on differentiated problems, such as a scary
> area of the code base that is unique to the project, you'll be tied to a
> particular company. If you focus on safe problems, you can switch between
> companies but you're unlikely to make a lot of money, because the problems you
> are working on won't be that important.

Big Tech is full of "differentiated problems". See [golden handcuffs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_handcuffs)[^1].

> It also helps you avoid being a cog. Every employer wants fungible employees,
> but every employee should resist being fungible. Don't be "Java Engineer 2" or
> "React Developer with 3 years experience." Be someone people want to work
> with. The goal is for people to say, "I want to work with {your name}," not "I
> want to work with any React developer."

I am blessed enough to have been conditioned towards this path in my entire
life, though it's fairly biased of myself to say so :-)

[^1]: "Often employees feel the urge to remain within the company they've been
    working with, even though it may not seem like the smartest choice,
    objectively, because of tradition, relationships or a simple feeling of
    belonging".