[postit]

One thing I’ve learned in my 25+ year career is that if you don't own your narrative and your work, someone else will claim it - especially in corporate America.

I have lost count of the brilliant engineers who were passed over for credit simply because someone less technically capable, but extremely popular, pulled the strings to steal the spotlight.

You don't necessarily need to be in the spotlight, but you do need to leave a paper trail. Claim your work and inventions both internally and externally. You don't need to be a 'LinkedIn thought leader' to do this, just submit talks to conferences and find peers at other companies who understand the difference between those who build and those who only talk about building.

[WhyOhWhyQ]

That's how it works for every organization. Not just corporate America. Want to play on the varsity baseball team? Better be popular with the coaches and other players. Otherwise you're on the bench keeping score. Want to go to Harvard grad school? Better be the right kind of popular. Want to be celebrated in machine learning? Better be popular by doing shallow work on lots of projects. The whole world is a scam, and the scammers always win.

[anonymars]

I don't think it's a scam, I think all too often people forget that people don't just automatically know things that are going on. It's an important life lesson: telling the story is as important as taking the action. "If you build it, they will come" is bunk

Marketing, publicity, networking, call it what you will. If no one knows a feature is in your app, it doesn't matter how good it is. You see this in politics too. That's why you have those signs on the road saying "your tax dollars at work"

I bet you can think of any number of poorly publicized success stories that didn't get the credit they deserved, or became victims of the invisibility of their success

[cal_dent]

FWIW, coming from another unknown internet person, this is 100% the best reply to this whole thread and the most pragmatic way in corporate life. If you think otherwise, you're an idealist and I wish all the best for you in what I suspect you might find a frustrating career. Unless you create your own company.

[drfranke]

Writing “I ignore the spotlight as a staff engineer” with a long description of how they’re better than the other person, is not something a leader that will rise in any company should be writing for the public, even if they’ve given up.

Someone else will always at some point will steal or deserve the spotlight.

You can’t have a successful show full of prima donnas that all vie for the lead role on stage. You can do your best, and have some way to promote yourself for compensation when the time comes, but if there’s this much of a problem that you feel you have to write a lengthy defense to the public, you’ve lost your way and should go elsewhere/

[lo_zamoyski]

Exactly. One shouldn't confuse the spotlight with communication. This is just a matter of letting the appropriate people know the things you want them to know or they need to know. We're social animals. We communicate. If someone doesn't know what you're doing, then, as the Captain says, we have a failure to communicate. Being able to communicate is a core life skill and part of what it means to be a functioning adult.

(I'm also willing to bet that the very same people who pout about not being "appreciated" would be the first to complain about someone "hovering" or "spying" on them, because that's what it would take for someone to know what you're up to in such cases. Like, make up your mind, bruh.)

And if you take a moment to think about it, those who expect others to just know what they've done are displaying the very narcissistic behavior they often claim to be avoiding. After all, why you? Why should anyone know what you, of all people, are doing? Do you know what others are doing? No, you don't. Not until they tell you or someone who has been told knows. You may think you know, but there is plenty that you don't know, and to be fair, perhaps don't need to know. The world does not revolve around you. Like you (I would hope), people have their own lives and tasks and concerns.

Think of something as everyday as a PR. Even if your manager looks at every PR, he doesn't know what you did to get there unless you communicate that to him. Unless you write it down and share it or tell him that you've experimented with three different approaches before settling on the chosen one, or done some kind of detailed analysis based on which you drew up your design, how the hell is he going to know?

And even if a manager should know certain things, it is pointless to make that appeal. So what if he should? Aren't there things you should be doing but aren't, like, say, communicating with clarity and coherence? "Shoulding" doesn't make things so. You have to deal with the world as it is, not as you would like it to be. Every manager is different. If your manager requires a huge banner and a neon sign to get the message, then that's what it takes to make him know things. Behave accordingly.

[SoftTalker]

There's an exception though if you're truly good. If you can hit home runs or throw a baseball with laser accuracy and speed you will be on the varsity team even if you're an introverted social misfit. You might not be team captain but bottom line is the coach wants players who can win games, not be prom king.

[marcinzm]

It’s not a scam. It’s a system that exists for people and made by people. Period. Money, outcomes and so on only have value because people assign them value. If you remove people then what you do has no value or concept of value. Life is not some video game with an omniscient score counter. Other people are the score counter.

[johnnyanmac]

In your lens: people are often horrible at keeping score, distracted by values that do no help them win overall.

Not necessarily a bad thing at times. Of course some chance encounter that builds a friendship or even family can be worth not winning that ball game. But actions have consequences and maybe someone else needed to win to get their goals fulfilled.

[marcinzm]

In my lens the only true score is the collection perception of the score. Not a number, not a formula and not what you think the score is. There is no external absolute counter you can point to because the collective view is the truth.

[johnnyanmac]

>In my lens the only true score is the collection perception of the score, not what you think the score is.

Am I not part of the collective? When does my perception matter or not? Is it majority rule and I'm just a pariah following my own beat?

Given the "collective view" of my country on 2025, I think I'll opt out of the score, thanks.

[QuantumFunnel]

People are terrible at keeping score for others, because they're usually only paying attention to themselves

[marcinzm]

There is no objective score and thus people are perfect at it since the score is by definition what other people think it is. Like the value of money or stocks. Once you realize that a lot of life is significantly less frustrating.

[johnnyanmac]

I'd say life becomes more frustrating of you really think this extreme. You realize your values and then realize certain people with contradictoryvalues aren't part of your community, hut obstacles to overcome. Now it's not a team game, it's a battle royale. Not necessarily winner take all, but overall a lot of people will lose more than they win.

A collective sense of "score" is needed to prevent that.

[awesome_dude]

Kind of no.

The example I am going to point to is TSMC/Morris Chang.

> During his 25-year career (1958–1983) at Texas Instruments, he rose up in the ranks to become the group vice president responsible for TI's worldwide semiconductor business.[19] In the late 1970s, when TI's focus turned to calculators, digital watches and home computers, Chang felt like his career focused on semiconductors was at a dead end at TI.

The guy was literal gold, and Texas Instruments pivoted away from him (I have also read that anti-Asian sentiment in the USA/TI created a glass ceiling where he could never be CEO

His ability to "hit home runs" was ignored in the USA, and only worked in his favour in the ROC/Taiwan. In both cases (positive and negative) it wasn't his ability, but who believed in him that made the difference.

Edit: At the risk of drawing (more) ire for making it political.

Almost all of the "isms" that the left are (in general) working to stop, are actually preventing economies from reaching their full potential - sexism, racism are the really big ones (because of the sheer numbers of people they affect)

[creato]

This might be a reasonable summary of the situation but I suspect it's vastly oversimplified. The trajectory of these businesses depends on more than who's name is at the top of the org chart. TI pivoting away from semiconductors and towards other goods may seem like a stupid move in hindsight, but even in hindsight it's not clearly the case. TI's move is basically them trying to be Apple or NVIDIA instead of Intel or TSMC. Because they failed at that, doesn't necessarily mean that attempting it was wrong.

And none of this necessarily has anything to do with Morris Chang personally. Many factors need to align for a company like TSMC to be successful. Morris Chang may be one of them, but there are other factors that may or may not have existed at TI. The claim that they didn't exist at TI because TI didn't like Morris Chang is not something we'll ever know for sure.

[awesome_dude]

> The claim that they didn't exist at TI because TI didn't like Morris Chang is not something we'll ever know for sure.

We do, though, have VERY GOOD evidence of what TI could have been had they provided the conditions that TSMC did.

[johnnyanmac]

>TI pivoting away from semiconductors and towards other goods may seem like a stupid move in hindsight, but even in hindsight it's not clearly the case

I think even by the turn of the 90's this could be seen as an extraordinarily stupid move. The PC was on the up and up and they abandon expertise on a resource that will only explode in demand? I'm sure there was some cushy educational deals with school supplies, but they literally left a gold mine for China.

[johnnyanmac]

Well yea. If you truly look at US history, you'll see the current situation in 2025 is ultimately a huge counter reaction to the idea of colored people and women being able to work alongside Caucasians, and some of the latter just couldn't stand that. "when you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression"

So. Tear down the unions and regulations, let the rich consolidate wealth, and everything else in between for 50 years. They are still moserable, but hey. They feel better than Enrique over there who just wanted his kids to love a better life.

[thwarted]

Sometimes achievements speak for themselves and provide the marketing for the actor. But that requires both the achievement to be extremely outsized, so as not to get lost in the noise, and very obviously the result of a singular actor. Only one person can step up to the plate and swing the bat.

[YetAnotherNick]

Depends. Look at the graph of month year of professional hockey player[1]. Player born in first quarter is twice as more likely to be in pro leagues than last quarter. Month of birth's only effect is that it gives 0.5 year extra during junior year to be in spotlight. It shouldn't affect player's performance in any other way. And the effect persists for decades.

If you get supported initially when you aren't the best, the effect of the small support can make you much better player.

[1]: https://www.lockhartjosh.ca/2017/11/hockey-birth-month-why-i...

[SoftTalker]

In the US, USA Hockey (by far the biggest youth hockey organization) groups players by birth year. So if you are born late in the year, you are among the youngest players on your team. You tend to be smaller, and less experienced, and unless you are exceptional you tend to play less. This impacts you from your first youth teams up until high-school.

[WhyOhWhyQ]

Where I went to school the coach distributed chewing tobacco to players he liked and bullied the nerds. The black kid who was extremely athletic got bullied and switched schools. The starting pitcher was an idiot who drove a big truck, and was not especially talented.

[SoftTalker]

Yeah I'm assuming the coach is a normal person who's goal is to build a team and win. If his goal as an adult is to have a lot of teenagers for friends because he himself is still stuck in that mentality, then there's not much you can do but get away.

[raw_anon_1111]

But you will never make it to the MLB if you are the best baseball player in the MiddleOfNowhere Nebraska and no one knows you exist

[johnnyanmac]

That ideally what scouts are for. Digging deep for treasure.

But talent correlates too. It's rare to see someone self taught that can be competitive with years of conditioning. So there's arguments both ways.

[raw_anon_1111]

True, but how many skip managers are going to go scouting in a large tech company for a great developer who is working on the internal performance review system?

The skip manager has a lot to do with promotions in my experience.

[johnnyanmac]

Yeah I agree. For sports, that player may end up being a spark for a billion dollar campaign. For a dev, not so much. They want to try and commoditize that role anyway.

[mh2266]

I don’t think being popular with the players is entirely irrelevant for players in team sports. Locker room cohesion matters.

[TimByte]

But calling the whole world a scam feels like letting the worst parts define the whole yet it can feel like the game is rigged in favor of the loudest or most connected

[micromacrofoot]

It is a scam, it's objective. If you live in ignorance of this you will eventually be taken advantage of. There is nowhere on the planet you can live where you can take people or systems of people at their word.

[fragmede]

If it's only an eventuality, then doesn't that imply that you can mostly take people at their word? If you do nine deals, and get scammed on the the tenth, then doesn't that mean those first nine people are honest and could be taken at their word?

[micromacrofoot]

lol no the eventuality is because a lot of people are just too poor to even be allowed to engage in deals — they're largely living in faceless systems where they're pre-scammed by faceless corporations

[venturecruelty]

Sorry, but this feels like a very American take. There are places in the world that still have high social cohesion and high trust. Not everyone is out to get you everywhere all the time, just in societies which encourage that sort of relating to others.

[theplatman]

there are high trust societies where you still cannot take people at their word because it might not be a culture of being direct to others. thinking of japan which is high social cohesion and trust, but still difficult to navigate business contexts due to how problems would be communicated.

[micromacrofoot]

Which one would you recommend? because AFAIK most of them are consuming the American products that are constantly scamming you... I've experienced this as a resident of the EU as well.

[fsckboy]

thank you, venturecruelty, for your take on who might be out to get me. do you think choosing a username says nothing about what comes to your mind?

[zeroonetwothree]

It works that way sometimes but I have found that merit and skill does get rewarded. The best case is when you have both.

[landedgentry]

When merit is easy to define and measure. I have a lot more respect for athletes than tech leaders.

[bdangubic]

with all due respect, every word you wrote is wrong. michael jordan was and still is biggest a-hole that every teammate hated - the best to ever do it. getting into harvard - nothing to do with popularity. mom&pop alumni perhaps or you can just be a great student, I know several harvard grads who are about as popular as wahington generals. machine learning - most celebrated are ones pulling 7-8-figure salaries no one has ever heard of (I’ve heard of one through a colleague).

[WhyOhWhyQ]

"with all due respect, every word you wrote is wrong. michael jordan was and still is biggest a-hole that every teammate hated - the best to ever do it." Bronnie James is in the NBA... ... .. . Michael Jordan was terrible at baseball and got to sign up for a real chance at the MLB.

"most celebrated are ones pulling 7-8-figure salaries no one has ever heard of"

You've got a direct contradiction in the span of one sentence... I've directly worked with people like the ones you're referring to and most of them were frauds.

"I know several harvard grads who are about as popular as wahington generals"

You didn't understand what I wrote. It's all about the dynamics of the environment. Academia is as much about fitting in just as much as any other place.

[FromTheFirstIn]

I think your definition of popular is holding you back. If popular just means other people like you, you’re obviously wrong- plenty of people are very successful even though they are disliked. Often this will happen multiple times on a single team at a company. If popular means you’re perceived as valuable, you’re obviously right. All institutions are social institutions and operate on social understandings of value. So to be successful you have to be perceived as valuable by these social structures. I think calling this a scam misunderstands the non-quantitative metrics of worth. There isn’t actually a Best Academic, a Best Engineer, or a Best Coworker in some measurable objective sense. Those are all social evaluations and they’re valuable because of that, not despite it

[Libidinalecon]

This is completely delusional lol.

No one that played high school sports can possibly believe this.

Everyone knows by day two who the gifted players are, who is average and who sucks. The good players are never bench warmers because everyone wants to win.

The world is made up of a bunch of average people by definition but there is a percentage of those average people that think they are gifted when they are not.

Then they blame the world for not understanding their "genius".

The most brilliant person I know dropped out of medical school and just raced up the corporate ladder. It took her about 2 months in any role for management to see she should move up. Myself on the other hand have had to really grind it out, constantly learning and networking to improve my luck because I am just so very average.

[proc0]

This is one of the main reasons I'm trying to pivot away from a career inside a corporate environment. There is too much politics. I wish it was just do the work and go home, and get rewarded for the work that was completed, but instead there is a huge self-promotion (as in marketing) component. If that's what it takes I might as well do something that I own and control. If I'm going to need to worry about how to market my own work then I might as well try and at least not have a boss. I always thought the point of being an employee and having a limited paycheck meant that you don't worry about this things. That's the fair tradeoff.

[goalieca]

There’s too much emphasis on career growth into leadership. I know so many programmers who simply want to solve the trickiest of technical problems, do good work they can feel proud of, and go home to their families. They want stability more than anything.

[TimTheTinker]

There are rare software companies where this is exactly what programmers do. The pay is lower than at FAANG & SV/LA/NYC startups, but work-life balance is great, stability is great, and most of all they get to just focus on doing great work. It's not about making quarterly goals, it's about stewarding (or perhaps gardening) a software project for many years. Engineers grow a lot from all the deep, focused feature work and problem solving.

I worked at such a place for 15 years. The downsides for me were lower pay, no equity, and not getting broad industry experience. I ended up leaving, and I now make a lot more money, but I do miss it.

[mh2266]

Google lets people stay at L4 forever and Meta does at L5 with no expectation of further growth.

Yes the expectations are probably still higher, but these companies don’t expect everyone to grow past “mostly self-sufficient engineer” as the parent comment suggests, and for people that do want to do that there’s a full non-management path to director-equivalent IC levels. My impression is that small companies are more likely to treat management as a promotion rather than as a lateral move to a different track (whenever I hear “promoted to manager” I kinda shudder)

[cweld510]

Depends on the team — managing can be quite a bit more scope than being a senior IC, depending on expectations for that role. You have broader ownership of technical outcomes over time, even aside from the extra responsibility for growing a team. Managers have all the responsibility of a senior engineer plus more. In that way manager feels to me like a clear promotion to me. Manager vs staff eng, maybe not though.

[mh2266]

Management not being a promotion doesn’t mean that managers aren’t (usually—I’ve both been at equal and higher levels than my managers at times) higher levels than their reports. It means that switching to a management role from IC is never a promotion itself (ie always L6 -> M1 in Google/Meta levels) and it never comes with any difference in compensation.

[zem]

the saddest thing is that it used to be possible to do it at at least some of the megacorps too. "senior engineer" (one level below staff) was widely accepted as an "I have reached as high as I want to in my career, and just want to work on interesting problems now", you would basically never get a raise other than cost-of-living but you could do your work and go home and live your life too. that's still doable to an extent but the recurring layoffs have added a measure of precarity to the whole situation so now you have to care more about all the self promotion and "being seen to be doing something" aspects of the job a lot more than you used to.

[Inityx]

Do they even do cost-of-living raises anymore? When I was at FAANG, my raises in the same role didn't even match inflation.

[ergocoder]

My raises never matched inflation but then my compensation is like 700k a year. I don't know whether my raise needs to match the cost of living increase.

[zem]

good point, it was often less than inflation, so a very nominal sort of raise

[johnnyanmac]

Not in 2025, sadly. Those kinds of companies are the first to freeze hiring and some probably won't make it through the storm.

It would be nice to have that, though. But my industry isn't known for stability to begin with.

[tayo42]

What interesting problems have you solved recently?

[TimTheTinker]

Shipping the frontend for features in a core product area on a large team, just like a lot of other devs here :)

To go into specifics of actual problems solved and do so intelligibly, I'd have to provide specific context, which I'm not comfortable doing here.

It's a lot easier to describe "interesting problems solved" using less identifiable (and more generally interesting) details if one is in platform/infra and/or operating at a Staff+ level -- both of which I have been in the past (and loved it), but am not at the moment.

[LtWorf]

Most people are under NDAs

[twojacobtwo]

I'm pretty sure no one is going to be hunting down NDA infractions on HN unless the poster is silly enough to give specifics about the workplace and time at which they solved the problem. If it takes some kind of investigative work to piece together the most basic details, I think that's within the terms of most NDAs anyway.

[LtWorf]

I think no equity isn't necessarily worse than equity followed by bankruptcy :D

[mh2266]

Google’s terminal level is one past new grad and it has a full parallel non-management IC track, I don’t think that they’re pushing people that hard into leadership roles.

[proc0]

That's precisely why programmers become programmers. It baffles me that tech careers put most on a leadership track when people study CS for many years for a reason. Why would I want to throw those technical skills away.

[raw_anon_1111]

Sure they exists. There is even a term for it. By definition you never hear about them.

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-un...

[venturecruelty]

You mean if everyone works really hard, we can't all be CEOs? :(

[jebarker]

Anyone can be a CEO, just start a company.

[venturecruelty]

So we don't need anyone to teach or clean toilets? We can all work our way up and be fabulously rich?

[jebarker]

I'm not sure how you got that from my comment. CEO is a job title that is easy to get, that was my only point.

[johnnyanmac]

If everyone wanted that, sure. But many people don't (I sure don't), and many people that do will fail. Because "working hard" is relative.

And that's ignoring the inherent inequality of birthright.

[raw_anon_1111]

And then what happens when you are looking for your next job and you get a behavioral interview question and all you can say is “I pulled Jira tickets off the board for a decade”?

[goalieca]

Yeah. Everyone wants to know some cross functional initiative that you led and the exact business value of it.

[throwaway173738]

No, when I ask those questions I want to know how you think about your role and whether you take any ownership of anything or whether you just bumble through as the winds take you.

[stack_framer]

This is exactly how I feel.

I recently spent 30 months trying to qualify for a promotion, earnestly striving to demonstrate that I could operate at the staff engineer level. I accepted literally every single opportunity, offered by my manager and director of engineering, to take on extra work and show that I'm staff caliber. They were both eventually persuaded that I was ready, so they authored an 18-page "promotion packet" touting my many accomplishments—the marketing component you describe. This document was then presented to an anonymous promotion committee who, after two weeks of consideration, rejected my promotion.

I am now channeling every ounce of my energy toward becoming my own boss. They have unwittingly started an unquenchable fire in me, and I eagerly await the day I can tender my resignation and tell them just how much they didn't deserve me.

[jeffwass]

To be fair, this issue isn’t endemic only to big companies. I’ve seen similar even in academia, some people just know how to “play the game” and play it very well.

It really depends on the culture of where you are, which can even vary team by team in the same org.

[shermantanktop]

Some people seem willfully ignorant of the game. When confronted with the reality of it, they turn away, complain that it exists, and act like a bullied middle schooler.

You don’t have to enthusiastically endorse the game. You can learn it, just like you learn Go or Rust or whatever. You can refuse to actively play it, but also be aware of it enough to avoid getting hurt by it.

E.g. figure out the minimal effort for convincing game players that your work is important.

[cal_dent]

I so wish every new starter in professional working life is given a 101 on literally this. I've seen so many talented people over the years think they're above taking part in the corporate optics and then subsequently get bogged down by resentment watching lesser people getting pats on the back.

The system is crap. It should all be about meritocracy and all that but it's not. It is what it is. People need to stop being naive shooting themselves in the foot

EDIT

The other thing to it is that its so infuriating because people who say they wish the game wasn't the game and genuinely could change things because they have the right sensibilities, and are talented enough to rise up to position where they can make decisions that matter, choose not to engage in the game to make that happen. Wake up, you're letting the "wrong people" (in your view) win.

[pixl97]

>meant that you don't worry about this things

Not at all, that was a confused expectation.

The problem here, at least I think, is you may be very unaware of the expectations of running ones own business. There are far more politics, more being cutthroat, tons of regulations you must be aware of that come with potential later penalties if you are not, legal threats, and more.

[proc0]

I can see that, but then what's really broken is the education system. If what you say is true that means there is no such thing as being a specialist, at least not anymore, yet almost all universities train people to be specialists. Either industry should stop looking at academic degrees completely or schools should start teaching business first, and technical knowledge second, for most degrees (with exception of academia and research).

[smj-edison]

My brother is studying economics right now, and he said everyone could use some basic economics knowledge, because getting an intuition for how markets work really helps you as you're looking for jobs and navigating around companies. Maybe business knowledge is better, but I'm personally biased towards the empiricism of economics :) You're onto something though about the need for awareness of how companies think and work.

[pixl97]

This is somewhat correct, and somewhat not correct.

The 'system' needs the following.

People that are unaware of the system, that do the work, think it's a mediocrity, and don't play the game.

Less people that play the game and reap all the rewards for doing the work without actually doing the work.

The problem is once too many people play the game instead of doing the work the entire system falls apart.

[nostrademons]

So I'm not sure about this, particularly in the context of this article. I think it definitely applies to the splashy, Spotlight, one-off projects that will make a career with one shot. But a lot of careers aren't made that way, and this article is specifically talking about the ones that aren't.

I've found that trust is a currency in a corporate environment, possibly the most important one. And trust is built over time. If you work behind the scenes to ensure the success of a project but don't claim it, there's a decent chance somebody else will, and maybe it'll appear in their promo packet. But if you are in the vicinity of enough successful projects, over a long period of time, there's a good chance that leadership will notice that the common element is you. And in the process you'll built up a good reputation and network, so even if leadership gets replaced there are lots of other people that want to work with you. Promotions come slower at first, but they eventually catch up since you don't need to suffer the resets of failed projects and new roles.

[1dom]

> But if you are in the vicinity of enough successful projects, over a long period of time, there's a good chance that leadership will notice that the common element is you.

This is only true if average tenure of leadership and management is more than a couple of years.

[rockinghigh]

As you suggested, promotions tend to come more slowly. You're also likely to hit a lower ceiling than someone who is better at promoting their work.

[notarobot123]

It's pretty demoralizing to realize that appearances matter more than merit in careers/politics/dating/business/etc. The pragmatic approach is to not give up on merit but not neglect appearances either.

Still, the idealist in me hates this. It feels like quality should win out over advertising yet it rarely does in the grand scheme of things.

[lotsofpulp]

That is because time and energy are limited resources, and measuring merit accurately is very costly. Measuring appearance is far less costly, and might serve as an acceptable proxy. And often times it might not.

[FromTheFirstIn]

There’s rarely (maybe never) an objective and comprehensive measure of quality. Your concept of what merits matter is someone else’s advertising. No one is operating non-meritocratically, they just value different qualities from you.

[oatlgr]

This hits close to home. I'm UK-based remote working for a US company, and I've seen this play out more times than I'd like. Led the architecture and design on products that went on to do $100m+, only for someone else to waltz in and take the credit once I'd moved on to the next thing. The annoying bit is that being good at your job often means you get dragged into the next hard problem before the last one's had its moment. Meanwhile, whoever happens to be standing there when the champagne corks pop gets all the credit. The paper trail advice is bang on. I'd just add - document decisions as you make them, not after the fact. Architecture decision records, design docs with your name on them, commit histories that tell the story. Handy when people's memories start getting conveniently fuzzy.

[venturecruelty]

Personally, I don't care. Pay me and leave me the hell alone. We get 80 short years on this beautiful blue marble, if we're exceedingly lucky, and I refuse to spend one red second of that playing stupid games to excel in a sclerotic economic system that didn't even exist until very recently.

So I'm going to continue to try to grind it out as best as I can, while spending time on the things that actually matter: music, art, making delicious food for me and my friends, my hobbies, my family, my local community. Corporate America is bereft of joy and meaning anyway. Maybe it makes me some sort of sucker, but I don't care. I'd rather live.

[bird0861]

You seem like the type of coworker I would accept less pay to work with. Actually at a crossroads right now, did my research on my prospects and have narrowed it down to two places I most expect to be surrounded by good coworkers and managers. Cheers.

[mbajkowski]

Seems to me you have your Life Razor, per Sahil Bloom, pretty much in place for your current stage in life

[anon7725]

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

[cactus2093]

I've always kind of expected it to work this way, with people being cutthroat and stealing credit for other people's work.

What I have seen in reality is a lot more nuanced. There are a lot of good ideas that will simply die if nobody pitches them the right way, i.e. if no one gets the rest of the team/org/company to understand and agree that it solves an important problem.

There are also very few novel ideas in a mature business or technology space. Every time I think I've come up with one, I search the internal company docs and often someone had mentioned the same thing 5 years ago in some long-forgotten design doc or something.

I've come to realize that the hard thing and the bottleneck for a good idea to have real impact is not the idea itself or the execution, it's pulling the right strings to make space for the idea and get it accepted. At a small scale, in your own team or ownership domain, this isn't necessary and you can just build things and let the results speak for themselves. But the amount of impact that thing has on the broader company will be limited if you don't pull the strings the right way.

Some people despise this idea and in that case, a big company is probably not the right place for you. But most of the cases I've seen of "brilliant engineers passed over for credit" were people not realizing and not doing this necessary part of the job. If someone else steps in and gets the idea more widely recognized after you had let it stall and moved onto the next thing, then 1. usually you do still some partial recognition for it so it's a win/win and 2. the other person is not really stealing credit, because if they had done nothing the idea would have just died and you wouldn't have gotten credit anyway.

[lumost]

this is the biggest benefit of 1:1's in my opinion.

Often, individuals can claim credit simply by being first and loudest. For example, and individual can highlight a problem area that someone is already working on in the team and loudly talk about the flaws in the current approach and how they will solve it. The individual need not actually solve the task if the first person finishes - but now the success is subconsciously attributed to the thought leadership/approach of the new individual.

Good managers/leadership teams have mechanisms to limit this type of strategy, but it requires them to talk to everyone on the team - listen for unsaid feedback and look at hard artifacts. Otherwise you quickly have a team of people who are great at nothing more than talking about problems and dreaming of solutions.

[ergocoder]

Working at FAANG kinda bypasses this once you reach the "rest & vest" phrase. It's like whatever I don't give a fuck. I've met tons of them. They don't care about credits because they've earned so much.

[TimByte]

You don't have to self-promote aggressively, but you do have to advocate for your work

[agentultra]

This has happened to me several times!

Hamming, in his book The Art of Doing Science and Engineering, also encourages this.

But the last edition was in 1994 and he was writing from the position of having worked at Bell Labs for most of his career. We don’t really have that these days.

It’s great if you can find a way to be a non-fungible developer. I think part of the strategy is taking the spotlight and managing perceptions of your work. You don’t get to choose what you work on most of the time but you can make sure that it’s visible and useful.

As the author suggests, and I think I aspire to myself, is building good tools and libraries that people appreciate and depend on.

[hedayet]

I can think of a couple of times when I wasn’t the best at something, yet still got opportunities simply because someone well-established in that space liked me.

And I can think of the opposite too - situations where I was at a disadvantage because someone higher up just didn’t like me.

For me, it’s more or less balanced at a balance at this point of time. But most people around me, I don’t think they’ve been as lucky.

[alephnerd]

You can own the narrative while also not being in the spotlight.

At the end of the day, only a handful of stakeholders matter in any organization. So long as you can promote you and your team's initiatives to your manager, your skip manager, and a couple key members of Product, Sales, Customer Success, and Leadership - your place is secure.

In fact, in most cases I would say a mass spotlight is actually a net negative, because it only increases the risk that someone might view you as a potential competitor for either budget or responsibility.

So long as you remain aligned to the business's stated goals for the year and can communicate that to the relevant subsegment of stakeholders, a massive spotlight is unnecessary.

[reactordev]

It shouldn’t be this way. Merit should be the metric. But it’s true. No matter how good or bad your numbers are, if Bob likes you, you’re good.

Keep polishing those soft skills and if you have a face only your mother would love, be a writer… but get your voice out there.