[lazarus01]

> Good work speaks for itself.

I really enjoyed reading this story. I personally believe in subscribing to self concordant goals and working altruistically to cultivate the good Society.

I also agree with the statement above. But what the author leaves out is that good work that speaks for itself can also create insecurity for those that are in an intense competition for recognition.

People’s reality is entirely subjective, where even well intentioned people may reject ideas that don’t contribute to their interpretation of reality.

In my personal experience, when I came up with and executed ideas that made substantial impact and outperformed others, I wasn’t given proper recognition, mostly due to others insecurity and politics to support a subjective reality that everyone can agree to. Particularly leadership who were non-technical sycophants that cared more to please their master than to do the right thing for the company or even themselves.

Humans are complicated social creatures where ethics and altruism often lose to filling personal voids.

I do believe in the concept of the wolf, someone who has reached self transcendence that doesn’t need to subscribe to a subjective shared reality and can achieve personal satisfaction through mastery by exercising their will to do something they believe is intrinsically meaningful.

[jfreds]

> good work speaks for itself

I disagree. Ideas don’t speak, and work doesn’t speak. People do. Being a 10x engineer isn’t just about having great ideas, it’s about having great impact.

Sometimes I hear ICs say with some pride that “I’m not interested in playing office politics”. I promise you they will lose out to the engineers who are able to self advocate, and coalition-build.

[lazarus01]

I don't see things the way you do.

You look at gaining recognition for good ideas as a zero sum game that requires self promotion.

If you develop a good original idea that solves a problem and it gets implemented, you have created positive impact without self promotion. If you're not concerned with public perception, then the discussion stops right here.

Someone can take credit for your idea to gain perception that it was their original idea. But in the end, someone who self promotes that can't come up with original ideas will eventually lose their believability factor and will be unable to promote themselves much further.

[jfreds]

The crux is in the “and it gets implemented” part. Teams have a limited bandwidth, so what gets implemented absolutely is a zero sum game, that’s why backlog prioritization exists. In order for your idea to get implemented, you have to advocate for it, and convince others to do the same. Writing great code and delivering useful side-projects can make you a 2-5x engineer. If you want to be a 10x engineer, you have to scale your impact beyond what you can do alone

Edit: maybe your great idea is actually something that you can implement on your own, such as a test suite or a tool. You still need to change other peoples behavior. You need to convince people to try it.

[lazarus01]

You completely missed the crux of the story.

I'm speaking specifically to the example given by the author.

He was approached by an engineer that saw a critical flaw in the software that goes beyond simple "backlog prioritization".

The engineer "quietly" escalated his concerns by showing a thoughtful approach to fixing a global problem that goes beyond his assignment, that if left unsolved can cause problems for everyone.

Given the managers experience, he understood the engineers intrinsic motivation to do good (not biased in self promotion) and believed that the idea would speak for itself and gain the confidence of other engineers, which it did.

This approach is antithetical to what you described. The engineer did not advocate for himself or his idea, he identified a bigger problem that was far more important than his assignment. He brought the idea to leadership out of concern, to deal with conflicting priorities above him. He was not caught up in politics or transactional thinking.

The message the author is trying to convey, people with significant talent that have higher order values, are not concerned with labels such as "wanting to be a 10x engineer". They just focus on what they believe are the most important problems that they can solve that benefits everyone, not just themselves.

These people are truly rare and your argument that playing politics is necessary to promote ideas, proves how rare it is to come across these people.