Everything was my job.
Infrastructure design. Site availability. Three different operations groups. Hiring. Security. Domains. Office wiring. Cooling. Data-center rebuilds. Budgets. Networks. Capacity. Disaster planning. Technical escalations.
The list kept going.
I sent it to my boss because the breadth had become a problem. The responsibilities were manageable when I joined Shutterstock. As the company grew and the operations environment needed more structure, the list kept getting longer.
Me.
Then my name started coming up as a bottleneck.
That was frustrating. The list mixed leadership, management, design, facilities, and technical escalation work. All of it competed for the same time.
The second half of my note described the job I thought I should be doing: create stable systems, set standards, build a strong team, give people career paths, improve technical culture, plan for continuity, and design the next version of the infrastructure.
That list still included management, budgeting, continuity planning, and high-level infrastructure design. I was not asking to step away from responsibility. I was trying to separate leadership work from every unrelated operational task that could land on the same calendar.
The two lists were wildly different in their time commitments and in the ability to focus. That was the problem I was trying to make visible.
I sent the summary because my boss had inherited me as an employee and needed the full picture. The note asked for a better alignment between my experience, the work Shutterstock needed, and the place where I could be most useful.
This is not a reorganization or a decision yet. It is the argument for having that conversation.
The note separated the work already landing on me from the longer-term work where I thought I could add the most value.
Writing the list down made the problem visible.