Early in your career, output is the currency.
You write more code. You close more tickets. You ship features faster than the person next to you. The feedback loop is clean, visible, and mostly fair. More output leads to more praise, more trust, and usually more opportunity.
Then, quietly, the rules change.
Most people do not notice when this happens. They just feel the friction. The same effort produces less recognition. The same volume of work no longer moves the needle. Raises slow. Promotions stall. Feedback becomes vague.
This is not because you got worse.
It is because output stopped being the point.
Output Is a Proxy, Not the Goal
Organizations use output as a proxy for value when they lack better signals.
At junior and mid levels, this works well enough. The risk of any single decision is low. The cost of mistakes is contained. The easiest way to evaluate contribution is to count what ships.
As scope increases, the cost of mistakes rises faster than the value of speed.
A senior engineer shipping the wrong thing quickly is not impressive. It is expensive.
At that point, output becomes table stakes. It gets you into the room. It does not determine your ceiling.
The Invisible Upgrade in Expectations
The shift rarely comes with a memo.
No one sits you down and says, “We care less about how much you do now.” Instead, expectations change implicitly:
Fewer tasks, more ambiguity
Fewer instructions, more judgment
Less credit for speed, more scrutiny on outcomes
You are still expected to produce. You are just no longer evaluated primarily on volume.
This is where many capable people get stuck. They respond to ambiguity by doing more. They respond to uncertainty by shipping faster. They respond to stalled progress by doubling down on output.
From the outside, it looks admirable. From the inside, it is exhausting.
Why More Output Stops Compounding
Output compounds when:
Problems are well defined
Mistakes are cheap
Direction is stable
Those conditions do not scale indefinitely.
At higher levels, work is less about execution and more about selection. Which problems matter. Which risks are acceptable. Which tradeoffs are worth making. Which work should not be done at all.
You cannot brute force that with effort.
In fact, excessive output can become a liability. It creates surface area for failure. It crowds out thinking time. It signals that you are optimizing for activity rather than impact.
Ironically, the people who advance are often producing less visible work than before.
What Replaces Output
When output stops being the primary signal, three things take its place.
Judgment
Are your decisions sound when information is incomplete? Do your choices reduce future risk rather than just solve today’s problem?
Leverage
Does your work enable other people to be effective? Do systems run better because you touched them, even when you are not around?
Direction
Are you helping the organization aim, not just move? Do you prevent wasted effort before it starts?
These are harder to measure. That is why organizations cling to output longer than they should.
That is also why many careers stall right at the transition point.
The Common Failure Mode
The most common mistake at this stage is confusing reliability with advancement.
You become the person who always delivers. Always says yes. Always cleans up messes. Always ships.
You are invaluable.
You are also increasingly invisible as a decision maker.
Output makes you safe. It does not make you influential.
Career Health Check
If your output keeps increasing but your influence does not, that is a signal.
If your days are full but your trajectory feels flat, that is a signal.
If you are rewarded for speed but excluded from decisions, that is a signal.
None of these mean you are failing. They mean you are operating under outdated rules.
What This Sets Up
The question is not how to produce less.
The question is how to shift what your work represents.
Tomorrow, we will look at the next step in this transition: why output was never the real job to begin with, and what quietly replaces it when you are not looking.
Speed got you here.
It will not get you where you want to go next.
Tomorrow, we'll talk about where the point has actually moved: Judgement.