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Become the Go-To Person

5 min read

Platform

Platform engineers who own 'how we deploy' and 'why our pipeline is slow' are irreplaceable. Be the person with the runbook in their head.

Integration

Integration is messy. APIs break. Vendors change. Be the person who knows the glue. That knowledge doesn't exist in AI training data.

Support Eng

Tier-2/3 support that owns escalation judgment and complex cases — that's the keep list. Be the person product and eng both trust.

Become the Go-To Person

TL;DR

  • Reputation > output in an AI world. The person everyone asks when things break is harder to cut than the person who closes the most tickets.
  • Build it by owning something no one else does — a system, a process, a relationship.
  • "Go-to" means: when there's a hard question, you're the answer. That takes time to build and is hard to replace.

Marcus wants to be the person his manager fights to keep when layoffs happen. That doesn't come from coding speed. It comes from being the person who'd leave a hole.

What "Go-To" Means

  • Technical: You own a system, a domain, or a stack. When it breaks, you're the first call.
  • Process: You know how things work — the deployment pipeline, the release process, the "who do we ask for X?"
  • Relationship: You're the bridge. Between teams, between product and eng, between "what we want" and "what we can do."

Pick one. Own it. Then expand.

How to Build It

  1. Volunteer for the messy stuff. The tasks no one wants — runbooks, triage, cross-team coordination. Do them well. You'll become the default.
  2. Document what you learn. When you solve a hard problem, write it down. Share it. You're building institutional memory — and your reputation.
  3. Be reliable. "I'll look into it" → then actually do. Follow up. Close loops. Consistency builds trust.

The Layoff Test

If your company did a 20% cut tomorrow, would your name be on the "protect" list? If not, why? Fix that. Own something that would hurt to lose.

Quick Check

Marcus wants to be the person his manager fights to keep. What builds that reputation in an AI world?

You're good. You deliver. So do others. If you left tomorrow, someone would pick up your tickets. You're a number on a spreadsheet.

Click "Go-to" to see the difference →

Do This Next

  1. Ask yourself: "If I left tomorrow, what would break?" If the answer is "not much," pick one thing to own more fully. A system, a doc, a process.
  2. Identify one "go-to" person in your org. What do they do differently? Emulate the pattern.