[Waterluvian]

I think I know what you're saying all too well, if I understand correctly. In my Master's program, my advisor had to keep asking me to stop saying, "we" any time I described efforts. I didn't even notice I was doing it, but very naturally I would say, "we applied X." "We then did Y" instead of "I", being the sole researcher.

It's very hard for me to be so bold as to flatly say, "I designed and built this, and I feel responsible for why it has been such a success." The most I can get out these days is, "I am very proud to see that software still finds value among the other dev teams."

[Fordrus]

I think we are understanding each other very well! Yes, learning to "sell ourselves" and highlight our own successes well enough to influence social structures when we need to is a hard problem, we're trained quite strongly and mostly correctly that "rooting one's own horn" is quite rude, and even in cases where it isn't actually rude or is expected, we STILL have to tread lightly! (For example, resumes and interviews are functionally places where we're given ORDERS to tout our achievements- yet there's still an invisible line you can cross that'll mark you as a braggart if you go overboard!)

But on the other hand, people can only make decisions based on information that is actually available to them, and so the quiet industrious worker in he corner who rarely pipes up and silently gets the job done but does nothing to make certain his/her contribution is noticed is passed over, because the boss can't magically know that quiet worker is the excellent contributor they are without something imparting that info- good managers will try to understand who's truly contributing in ways like that but even very good managers are frequently subject to imperfect information!

Anyway, I'm glad your advisor told you that, and I'm glad you shared that with me, yours is a succinct way of describing that, I'm almost tempted not to post this reply, as I'm uncertain it adds anything more of value than an emphatic "yes I agree!"

[MrQuincle]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.D.C._Willard used another strategy.