The person who just runs tests
This text is a reflection on something that happened to me over time. Not suddenly, and not because I made one wrong decision, but because a certain way of working kept being useful, rewarded, and repeated. At some point, I realized that this way of working had quietly become my role.
How it looked from the inside
I started in a place that felt right.
I worked on projects where performance mattered, with real systems and real consequences. I ran load tests, analyzed system behavior, found problems that were not obvious, and helped teams understand what was actually limiting them.
At that stage, I felt involved in the system itself, not just in testing. I was close to real decisions, even if I did not always make them. Nothing felt wrong, and nothing suggested that this role would narrow over time.
How the role slowly narrowed
The change did not come as a clear shift. It came through small, reasonable requests that made sense in context.
I was asked to validate changes, to confirm that something was fast enough, to run tests before releases. Each request was practical and justified, and I accepted them without much thought.
Over time, however, I noticed that I was being involved later and later. I was no longer shaping decisions but confirming them. Performance work started to live at the end of the process, not at the beginning.
This is where performance quietly turned into a service.
I still worked on complex systems, used serious tools, and produced valuable results, but my responsibility ended with execution. I delivered numbers and reports, while the real ownership of decisions sat elsewhere.
Performance as responsibility v. performance as a role
This distinction became clear to me only after my role had already shifted.
When performance is treated as a responsibility, it influences architecture, data flow, execution models, and limits early on. It is part of deciding what kind of system is being built.
When performance becomes a role, it validates what already exists. It answers the question “does this work” instead of shaping “what should we build”.
I slowly drifted from the first position to the second, without any formal change in title or expectations.
How tool expertise reinforced the shift
Tools played a big role in this process.
I became better at them. My scripts improved, my scenarios became more realistic, and my dashboards more detailed. This felt like progress, and in many ways it was. At the same time, tool expertise made the role more concrete and easier to define. I was increasingly valued for execution quality rather than for judgment or system-level thinking.
The better I became at running tests, the more often I was asked to run tests. This was not a conscious decision by anyone. It was simply how the system adapted.
Why it was comfortable to stay there
Execution is comfortable.
The scope is clear, expectations are explicit, and responsibility is limited. The feedback loop is fast, and often the compensation is good. For a long time, nothing feels broken.
That comfort made it easy to stay in this role and hard to notice what was slowly being lost.
When good money hides the problem
High compensation delayed my questions.
It is easy to assume that if you are paid well, you are on the right path. In reality, pay often reflects how reliable and efficient your execution is, not how much influence or responsibility you carry.
A well-paid execution role can look like growth while quietly freezing the trajectory underneath.
What became visible later
The cost only became clear when I started looking toward architecture and long-term decisions.
I had experience, but fewer stories where I truly owned outcomes. I had results, but not many decisions with consequences that I carried end to end. I helped systems perform better, but I rarely defined their limits.
That realization did not come as a shock. It came as a gradual clarity.
Where I am now
This text is not written from a clean endpoint. I am still moving away from this role, not through a single jump, but by slowly shifting where and how I get involved. Earlier conversations. Harder questions. More responsibility for consequences, not just for results.
I do not see this as a mistake. It was a phase that made sense at the time. But I am clear now that performance, in its meaningful form, is not a narrow specialization. It is responsibility for how a system behaves over time. And that responsibility does not disappear by itself. You either keep it, or you slowly give it away.