This isn't totally related to infrastructure but figuring out what you should build, from what you could build is something I've struggled with as I've moved about the engineering management ladder. My current role is a stone’s throw from solo developer (only developer at 4 person start-up) and while I've got total autonomy in the work I complete and the approach I take, it’s a terrible feeling discovering that you're not super-human and you need constraints like almost every engineer that's come before you.
Like the author there's been a number of times where I've felt self-satisfied completing a piece of technical work, only to scratch my head a week later and wonder whether it was worth it. I can say with certainty that having a solid CI/CD pipeline has saved my bacon a few times so I'd probably recommend that as an early investment to make, internal tooling for some of the customer registration was a bit of a mistake and not as critical as I thought it would be which now feels like a waste of 3 weeks.
I am yet to come up with any meaningful advice to pass on to developers in the same position. With time you get better at spotting when you can get away with hacking solutions together and when to put the time in, having a forward vision for a product really helps on focusing your thought and attention and time spent on making things visible to the rest of the business is rarely time wasted. Awareness of what’s going on with the rest of the industry is useful, but don’t obsess over the new hotness, build with what you know works and save your innovation tokens for a rainy day.
Like the author there's been a number of times where I've felt self-satisfied completing a piece of technical work, only to scratch my head a week later and wonder whether it was worth it. I can say with certainty that having a solid CI/CD pipeline has saved my bacon a few times so I'd probably recommend that as an early investment to make, internal tooling for some of the customer registration was a bit of a mistake and not as critical as I thought it would be which now feels like a waste of 3 weeks.
I am yet to come up with any meaningful advice to pass on to developers in the same position. With time you get better at spotting when you can get away with hacking solutions together and when to put the time in, having a forward vision for a product really helps on focusing your thought and attention and time spent on making things visible to the rest of the business is rarely time wasted. Awareness of what’s going on with the rest of the industry is useful, but don’t obsess over the new hotness, build with what you know works and save your innovation tokens for a rainy day.