Bottleneck Dirty Webs

Overview
The post describes "Dirty Webs" - a subset of dirty work that spans multiple teams and often lacks clear ownership or incentive to improve. Leaders are encouraged to position themselves as bottlenecks, feeling pressure when these tasks grow, so they can intervene and streamline processes before they become crippling organizational debt.

Key Takeaways

• Dirty Webs are cross-functional tasks like compliance, incident follow-ups, onboarding checklists, and software procurement that can become unmanaged debt.
• Leaders should act as bottlenecks, using their ownership pressure to push back on unchecked growth of such work.
• Delegation, specialization, and federation are essential, but leaders must retain oversight of high-impact, shared dirty work.
• Early intervention prevents the escalation of inefficient processes and protects team capacity.

Who Would Benefit

• Engineering managers dealing with scattered operational tasks.
• Technical leaders responsible for scaling product and engineering teams.
• Founders and senior executives looking to improve cross-team efficiency.
• Operations and compliance teams seeking better ownership models.

Frameworks and Methodologies

• Delegation
• Specialization
• Federation