Still good at it

You are the one people come to. The tricky version of the problem lands on your desk because everybody knows you will handle it. New starters get pointed at you in their first week.It takes less out of you than it used to. Not because the work got easier, but because you got good at it.Last week the problem was that nothing was wrong. This week something is actively right, which is considerably harder to argue with.Name the last thing this job taught you. Something you could not do before, with a rough date attached to it.Most people reach back further than they expected to.Competence is the reward and the cageThe better you get at something, the more of it arrives. Work routes towards whoever does it well, which is efficient for everyone except the person doing it. You become a safe pair of hands, and safe pairs of hands do not get moved.The praise keeps coming too, which is the genuinely confusing part. Recognition feels like evidence that things are going well. Mostly it is payment…