You Never Notice the Janitor đ§š
I swore Iâd never be a janitor like my dad. But in tech, I became one anywayâcleaning up code, teams, and culture behind the scenes. You only notice the janitor when everythingâs broken. And thatâs the point.
Until the mess gets too big to ignore.
When I was a kid, I used to help my dad mop the grimy floors of our apartment building. Iâd sweep the basement, bundle the trash bags from the compactor, and help haul everything out to the curb. He was a building porter, then a superintendent. It was relentless workâthankless, invisible, necessary. I promised myself I would never be like that.
But here I am.
Not with a mop in my hand, but with bug tickets đ, refactors đ ď¸, and org-wide drama đ to clean up. Somewhere along the way, I became a janitor in tech. The kind people only notice when something starts to smell. The kind no one thinks to thank until everything breaks.
𧰠The Fixer in the Shadows
It started with the code. Always the code.
When I worked as a designer at an IT company building a CRM for VCs, I transitioned into frontend engineering just to do the job better than the engineers who were handing off barely functional interfaces. From there, I moved to a Ruby on Rails shop, and quickly found the backend a disaster. They werenât following Ruby or Rails best practices, and the architecture was a mess. So I cleaned it up.
At a fintech startup, I told them during my interview that the API was the productânot the frontend. That statement didnât land at the time. Nearly a year later, after I cleaned up the frontend architecture and design, the team finally caught up to that insight.
At CarGurus, I inherited a mountain of outdated Freemarker code đ§ą. I started introducing React under the radar, cleaned up old tech debt, and mentored engineers on modern web best practices. I refactored a financing admin panel three times in one year because engineers kept rebuilding it wrong.
Even today, on my current team, Iâve quietly removed tech debt across both frontend and backend (JavaScript and Java), simplified architecture, and paved the way for a cleaner, more maintainable codebase.
Itâs not glamorous work. Itâs often invisible. But without it, the foundation crumbles. đď¸
đ¸ The Untangler of Messes
But itâs not just the code that needs cleaning.
On the first growth team at HubSpot, I pointed out that our 30% week-two retention wasnât the problemâit was actually good considering the questionable ads we were running and the audience we were attracting. That shifted how people saw the data đ.
On the product team, I kept asking if the billing interface we were building would actually help us meet our goals đŻ. That unearthed deeper issues: acquisition tactics that didnât align with long-term value.
At CarGurus, Iâve resolved more drama than I care to countâquietly supporting developers, navigating dysfunction, and stabilizing team culture đ¤.
As a manager, I dealt with personnel debt and team dynamics. As an IC, I still find myself stepping in to guide, support, and clean up. Not because itâs in my job description. Because itâs necessary.
Everywhere Iâve been, Iâve offered observations đ, pushed for better, and tried to leave things better than I found them. That usually means dealing with what others ignore: the mess behind the scenes.
𪣠Why I Keep Grabbing the Mop
So why do I keep doing it?
Because I care. â¤ď¸
Because I see it. đď¸
Because walking past a mess I know how to fix feels worse than just fixing it.
I donât do it for credit. I donât do it for visibility. Most of the time, people only notice when things break. Thatâs the curse of being a janitor. If youâre doing it well, no one sees the mess. They just assume things work.
But thereâs a kind of pride in it too. In knowing you hold things together đ§Š. In seeing the impact even if no one else does. In being someone who cares enough to clean it up.
đ¨âđ§ The Janitor I Didnât Want to Be
My dad worked harder than most people ever will. He deserved more credit than he got. And now, I understand him more than I ever expected to.
I became the janitor I swore Iâd never be. Not because I failed. Because I gave a damn.
And in this industry? That might be the most important job of all.
So if thereâs someone on your team quietly fixing the unfixable, stabilizing whatâs shaky, and caring when others check outâthank them. They probably wonât ask for it. But theyâve earned it.