| > Then your case is the exception, not the rule. To reach the level of principal, you generally have to be recognized for delivering high impact. Visibility is not just ego, it is how organizations perceive value. Of course you need visibility and impact. But it's not the kind of crass taking credit for what other people did that the original poster talked about. As a principal you need to actively build visibility because so much of your work is normally invisible. It means being an active participant with discussions with leadership, clearly being the person that sets the agenda on something, becoming someone who other principals turn to on a topic and then report to their managers, leading the conversations on a topic, being the person that people can bring a hard problem to and then see results, picking up on a business need first and finding a way to deliver on it, etc. In the example I gave for the quiet change in direction of that project, there are many ways in which I get visibility. I told my manager this was a risk and I have a strange solution. I told the manager of that project. The other principals that I needed to involve and their directors know I pushed this. My VP knows because no one talked about that kind of feature until I did. I checked how crazy this direction change would be with more senior scientists and product people. I actively make sure that these gentle communications happen, and in a sense they're natural, because I'm taking the lead on something. But no one is going out of their way to say "I take credit for all of this work that everyone else did". > A principal who keeps their head down, avoids controversy, and stays on friendly terms with the right directors can outlast a dozen brilliant but abrasive engineers. I don't think that abrasive people should become principals until they change their ways. There's so much cross-org coordination that you need to do, if you're abrasive, that's going to hurt everyone. That doesn't mean you should be a pushover. I don't back down from technical arguments if I know I'm right and have the data to back it up. I have gotten into deep weeks-long disagreements reported far up to chain. But it's important that you can still go have lunch with your peers and collaborate on other topics even while you're trying to show that they're totally wrong in one area. That's part of building trust. > In that reality, being invisible is not a liability. It can be a strategy. A strategy to be fired. This is not viable. There is no tension between "quiet authority" and visibility. If you're invisible no one will ever come to you. Visibility is what consistently demonstrates to people that talking to you will make their lives better. |
Not true at all. Plenty of invisible people in the world who don't get fired. You're ignorant.
Your initial post talked about lack of visibility, now you're talking about it as if it's required comically to the point of claiming that "invisible" people are absolutely on the path to get fired or that people who keep their head low and don't grab attention isn't a strategy. Ever heard of the saying the tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut? Also have you seen how Xi, the current leader of China rose to power?
Part of being a principal is the perception of principled and expert reasoning/expertise. That means being able to flip what you're saying on the fly so that other people continue to perceive you as an expert who knows what they are talking about. Did you say something that was completely off and wrong and it made no sense? How do you hide this from the people above you?
You expertly did this with your response. First you say you take none of the credit, now you say taking credit and being visible is required. Expert pivot and THIS is truly the primary skill of a principal engineer and you display it unequivocally.
You don't even need to actually be responsible for all the changes you claimed to have influenced. You just need people to perceive the reality as if you were responsible. And I see this kind of BS in many, many engineering organizations.
A lot of this is self delusion too. These high level strategies and directions aren't hard to come up with. Likely tons of lower engineers have thought of the method too, they just don't have the "visibility" or the time to actually drive that direction into the organization. Some people tend to think the ideas they have are genius and that these ideas are what makes them "principle". No. It's mostly politics that puts you into a position to take credit for ideas anyone can come up with.