I talked in the past about the two metrics that quietly drive a huge portion of our professional outcomes: TTA (Time to Awareness) and TTR (Time to Resolution).

It has been five years since I joined Grafana Labs. In my entire career, I have never worked at any company for this long. This is a new situation for me. Turns out, you can stay in the same company, with the same people, for years and still feel fulfillment, joy, and growth.

I recently had a conversation about performance and promotions. The person I was speaking with shared feedback they had received: they needed to work on a project with “high business impact” to get to the next level. I am a manager. I have given this feedback myself. Many, many times.

I’ve been thinking a lot about solitude at work, not in a philosophical sense, but in a very real, everyday way. The thought first came up because of my 7 year old son. He’s an introvert, the textbook kind. He enjoys learning on his own, prefers silence to noise, and doesn’t rush to speak in groups.

In the world of collaborative teams, we love the idea of distributed ownership. It sounds fair, empowering, scalable. And it often is.