This is nearly the norm for ENTERPRISE software development, and it's such a tragedy.
Also, so far most of our projects start simple but end in chaos and deadlines on the minute. I feel like we could always do better.
Like, if you’ve got a tight deadline coming up, it’s not the time to spend a week making CI slightly faster. On the other hand, if someone is telling you to not do work (right now), then they also need to help be responsible for finding time to do that work and understanding the impacts of that work never gets done.
I explain this to people as the tension between important urgent work. Some work is important but never（rarely) urgent. And if you ignore important work (like maintenance) it might become urgent at a very bad time.
You get credit for fixing the issue, avoid giant fix-along-the-way PRs, and future credit for people (maybe even you) understanding why you those changes were made.
To put it a different way: it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. Creating a ticket is asking permission (as the project managers will see the ticket and start asking questions about why time is being spent on low-priority things). Just going ahead and pushing code is asking forgiveness - sure, someone might notice after the fact that you did some work that you weren't assigned to do, but by that point it will be considered irrelevant, as long as your other responsibilities were handled on-time.
If you've never worked at a company where these political games are necessary - count your lucky stars!
A crappy form filled ticket by an AI is slightly better than no ticket.
I mean, finding a Jira epic/project where to fit my ticket is not the hardest part of the job tbh. Also, depending on the team and your experience, loosely fixing things here and there can be a red flag or totally the opposite (e.g., I've seen how juniors or people in general with less than a decade of experience get punished when they start fixing random things here and there. On the other side seniors or staff engineers get kudos for fixing also random things but in less volume and usually more tricky ones).
Having a ticket to back up your work is never going to hurt you, though.
One of the biggest career mistakes is doing things on your own that are not aligned and approved with the management chain. Even if makes 100% sense.
They might look past it once or twice but you will get managed out eventually. Doesn't matter how good you are.
There are so many opportunities for improvement, I'm never bored. My aim is to leave this place better than I found it. Even tiny improvements compound over time.
The bane of my existence are CI/CD systems that get caching 99% right. Chasing down the problems from that last 1% of strangely busted...well, lets just say that if you want TENSION at work, good way to get it. :/
Tension is, imo, ephemeral. If you keep chasing it, you are chasing dopamine loops. Little good comes from this.
But meaning is different. When you can remind yourself a truly great "why" you are doing something, can re-frame it, it can help.
Most importantly, boredom, irritation, and anxiety are temporary. They are emotions. They do not define us or the work. It was a joy when I realized that all these emotions will pass. They really do. You can sit with it. You really can. You can't make it go away, but it will pass.
ian-g•1h ago