> Those kids of work may even help get you promoted and open up more interesting projects.
Do you have any anecdotes in support of this view? My general understanding is that working on such things (if it isn't part of your explicit job description) is usually met by at best gratitude from other people, but certainly not promotions. And there are definite risks: since it is time spent not on your "actual" job, it can show up in performance cycles especially with a mediocre manager.
This seems to be a common and expected way of getting promoted within Google: Their performance review system allows engineers to provide feedback on people from unrelated teams.
I don't know if any other company where this strategy is likely to get you ahead.
OP said he's working at 20% capacity for one because the tools and documentation are bad. If fixing those problems increases the team productivity by some non-trivial amount it's a positive data point for a promotion.
At my current co, promotions and job levels are measured by increasing impact at an individual level, within a team, across teams, across orgs, etc. Cutting waste is everyone's job.
Do you have any anecdotes in support of this view? My general understanding is that working on such things (if it isn't part of your explicit job description) is usually met by at best gratitude from other people, but certainly not promotions. And there are definite risks: since it is time spent not on your "actual" job, it can show up in performance cycles especially with a mediocre manager.