Glue Work
Noun · Slang & Abbreviations · Origin: 2019
Definitions
Glue Work is the often invisible, unacknowledged work that holds a software team together but is not directly related to writing code or shipping features. The term was popularized by Tanya Reilly in her 2019 talk and article. Examples include writing documentation, onboarding new team members, improving development processes, setting up CI/CD pipelines, organizing meetings, facilitating cross-team communication, reviewing design documents, triaging bugs, and maintaining team norms. Glue work is essential for team health and productivity, but it is frequently undervalued in performance reviews that prioritize code output and feature delivery. It disproportionately falls on women and underrepresented groups in tech, who are more often expected to perform these tasks and less likely to be promoted for doing so. Organizations can address this imbalance by explicitly recognizing and rewarding glue work in career ladders, distributing it equitably across the team, and including it in promotion criteria. Without glue work, teams fragment, knowledge silos grow, and productivity declines despite individual coding output remaining high.
In plain English: The behind-the-scenes work that keeps a team functioning — writing docs, onboarding people, improving processes — important but often unrecognized.
Tanya Reilly's key insight: glue work is disproportionately performed by women and underrepresented groups in tech, who are then penalized in promotions for not having enough 'technical impact.' The fix is organizational — recognize glue work in performance reviews and distribute it equitably.
Example: 'She ran the oncall rotation, mentored three juniors, and improved the deploy process. In her review, she was told she needed more 'technical contributions.' That's the glue work trap.'
Source: equity / Tanya Reilly's insight