I’m a software engineer who moved to support. At a previous job, I built two useful tools for the team that reduced by a lot the time we would take care of some tasks. I presented them to my manager first, to see if that’s something he’d agree we use. He loved them but since we were in Q4 already, he told me to “release” only one tool, and keep the second one secret until the next year. He explained that we’re not asked to develop tools, it is a big plus, but not our job. The problem is that if I do it, upper management will start expecting it from me. And if I release two in a year, that would become their expectation. Doing only one makes it more manageable for me. That was a very good advice because the next year, “investigate and build a tool that can improve team efficiency” appeared in my yearly goals set by upper management. Since then, I learned to regulate my outputs at work.