[Shenglong]

For me, what's frightening about this is how often I used to reflect on my own life, and at times, couldn't actually be sure whether I was useful or just overrated. People would tell me what a great job I did and praise the amount of time it must have taken, and while I'd smile nervously and modestly reject their attribution, I'd often be left silently thinking, "I don't think this was as difficult or took as long as you think it did." It took a while to just accept that I did my part.

While there is danger in exaggeration, I also warn that there is arguably more danger in being too modest, and understating your own importance and value of your work. I've met extremely talented individuals who were being paid less than a third of what they deserved because they believed that their "work will speak for itself" or because they "don't believe in self-promotion". There is a healthy balance to be struck; remember that just as marketing is essential to a successful product, promotion is important for the self.

There are better ways to do that than the ways listed here, though. For example, taking credit where credit is deserved is extremely useful, but ONLY when you're speaking to someone far removed, such as at a job interview. On a team, you'll get further by promoting and pushing through other peoples' accomplishments when they are too timid to do so. You'll earn respect from both parties, and you'll breed a more productive atmosphere which can only benefit you in the long term.

[allochthon]

remember that just as marketing is essential to a successful product, promotion is important for the self.

I agree that a little self-promotion is necessary in corporate America. But I find this to be due to a flaw in American character rather than a virtue. Self-promotion in any context apart from interviews is a little unbecoming in my opinion.

[kops]

AFAIK neither the problem, nor the solution is specific to America. Link bonus, salary or promotion to the amount of noise a guy makes and you can have an army of self-promoting assholes overnight anywhere in the world. The baby that cries the most, gets the milk etc. etc...

[Hermel]

> anywhere in the world

Not to the same degree. A common belief is that the Americans are especially good at self-promoting in comparison to their European counterparts.

Maybe this can be partially explained by the size and nature of the US labour market. The more often one changes jobs and the less likely it is that the new employers knows the previous one (and thus can rely on their testimonial), the less necessary it is for an employee to be able to promote themselves in job interviews.

[judk]

Indeed, self-promotion is an obvious byproduct of democracy and bottom-up economy, where the population at large chooses winners (through voting or market force$) , instead a top-down command economy where everyine is rated by fixed measures, or a caste society where privilege is hereditary and no one gets promoted or demoted, so no one needs to impress anyone else.

[nfoz]

Self-promotion is an obvious byproduct of a highly competitive society in which actors need to struggle against each other in order to survive, rather than a more cooperative society where there's less pressure to survive and less pressure to get as far ahead as possible.

[judk]

Would love to see such a cooperative society in this universe. I guess ants and bees have that?

[inopinatus]

This is the most commonly quoted reason for negotiated pay disparity at senior levels: in many cultures, women are conditioned to underrate themselves, men the opposite.

[devhinton]

Could you explain this a bit more and what you mean by 'self-promotion'?

1) If you are defining self-promotion as 'falsely giving the impression of ability or productivity' then it seems hurtful to any company (I hate seeing undeserving people praised).

2) If you are defining self-promotion as 'giving the impression of ability or productivity' then I do not see any inherent negative value in it.

3) If you are defining self-promotion as 'giving the impression of ability or productivity in order to receive some gain' then I do not know if this negative or positive.

My only experience is as a software engineer and not as a manger, but is there not a problem of little time versus the need to judge?

That is, as a manger do you not need to understand the ability of your employees while at the same time having limited time. In small companies a CTO etc... has little time because there is SO MUCH WORK to get done. I imagine that in larger companies there are too many people (and investment in oversight) to understand the value of each person's ability.

So it seems that self-promotion has served as a solution to this difficulty 'as a leader I need a hand on the pulse of my employees but have little time to do so'. Thus when an employee says 'hey I am good at this', it saves everyone time if they have an accurate understanding of their own ability. The problem in this solution is that it opens the doorway to these 'unsuccessful people.' The real solution is problem not to hire them in the first place (I know, I know, this is not an easy solution). Unless you want to turn your company into the worst place to work ever, will there not always be an opportunity for shitty people to game the system?

My only solace (and this is motivated by my recent reading of Plato's Republic) is that these people cannot possibly, truly be happy. I would think a lot of people who pretend are lazy (which means the rest of their life sucks) or untalented. The only person I have ran into that does this consistently is actually unable to code (not lazy). I hated him until I felt sorry for him. Again, I am drawing a lot of these conclusions from a small sample size.

[allochthon]

By self-promotion, I'm thinking of the following kinds of thing:

- I say something subtle or not-so-subtle that I perceive will impress other people concerning my (real) abilities, for the sake of impressing them.

- I intentionally say something that will make me look better than a peer.

Self-promotion is not so easy to define, but it's something you can recognize when you see it. This is behavior that in a previous time we would have thought of as immodest. Americans (I'm one) and others with similar cultural tendencies don't have a sense of how self-promotion comes across to people. Avoiding it is as much a matter of good taste as anything else.

is there not a problem of little time versus the need to judge?

It seems to me that a necessary qualification of a manager is that he or she take the time to understand the strengths and weaknesses of his or her reports at a level sufficient to have an opinion about their contribution, one that is not dependent upon them needing to be flashy in various ways. My sense is that anyone who cannot do this is either too busy or perhaps otherwise not in a good position to supervise a team.

[yason]

Self-promotion, as I would describe it in this context, is simply selling yourself at all. This is highly frowned upon in cultures in the opposite end of the continuum as it comes out phony: "if he's so good then why does he have to underline it himself?" If you really are good, then it's something that's known and you'll hear others (your coworkers, peers, ...) saying the good things about yourself.

[maigret]

You may find it a flaw but remember this belongs to the bigger cultural environment. So for example, in another country you might see people being shy about self promoting, but you'll also have difficulties engaging them in small talk, or even making new friends. Also, people may get the same reluctancy over new technologies than they have about new behaviors.

Anyway, alpha people exist everywhere, they just tend to display it differently in another cultures so you don't notice at first.

Also - it's not corporate America only. The world isn't that different.

[coldtea]

>Also, people may get the same reluctancy over new technologies than they have about new behaviors.

That doesn't sound bad. Why shouldn't they be reluctant to adopt new technologies and new behaviors?

What they already use is "tried and tested", the other has what going for it? The novelty aspect?

[maigret]

I pretty much agree - as long as this is healthy untrust. Why redo something running for little benefit? But I know many people who dismissed smart phones at the beginning, or other pretty big things like AJAX. Their decision wasn't much based on a sound analysis. Also often they failed to identify the new realm. Rather when someone say "with that technology you can do that and that which is new, and in the future you may be able to do this, but it is limiting on that and this aspect", I take the person much more seriously for their analysis. The tried and tested may be what you know to use, but something better might come along as well, or establish a different new playground which you cannot imagine of as possible in your current framework of thoughts.

[jpttsn]

It's nice to distinguish flaws in the national character, but it's very hard to change one thing (and that one thing only) about any system.

Have you considered the reasons behind self-promotion? What purpose does it serve? What circumstances allow self-promotion to exist, and what makes it necessary? How would the world look without this flaw, once the changes have propagated? Why is it a flaw?

[allochthon]

Have you considered the reasons behind self-promotion?

All good questions. I don't know for sure what it's rooted in and what it serves. I've lived abroad, and modesty is the norm for the most part, rather than selling oneself, and there's something refreshing in that. (But self-promotion isn't just an American thing, so one can't overgeneralize here.)

A corporate environment in which self-promotion was no longer necessary would look very different. For one, people with responsibility for decisions about promotions would be more observant.

[jpttsn]

Right. Managers would have to be not just more observant across the board, but especially good at noticing those who don't promote themselves, to compensate for those who do.

This becomes a high bar for managers. They must effectively cancel the effects of self promotion, so that rational employees move away from it. Then, assuming managers are at least ideally rational, something would have to motivate them to behave this way in turn.

If we were serious about removing this flaw in the system, we'd have to change a lot of other things to make room for it. It's easy to evaluate any one aspect of a system, but be careful not to abandon deeper analysis once the flaws have been found.

[fat0wl]

yes yes yesss. the biggest headache in tech america is that the recruiters and hiring managers dont know who or what they are hiring.

there are so many people at my job who i look at and think "why were they exempt from a rigorous tech interview... because of seniority? they're completely in over their head"

yet those people are valued above actual competent employees!! because they run their mouths 24/7.

the BEST thing that could ever happen to the tech sector is for recruiters and hiring managers to actually develop metrics for judging candidates that equate to success -- some mix of syntax knowledge, creativity, ideas about efficiency in terms of work processes/philosophy

the reason so many of these goobers are out there is because the tech world is largely just "how many buzzwords do you know" and "can you fake your way through a tech exam" (which, as i've mentioned, a lot of the older folks are exempt from for some reason anyway). odd. very odd.

[pasbesoin]

I, too, have struggled with what you describe.

I find a real dichotomy between modesty, which works in interacting with co-workers -- and with which I am much more comfortable -- and rampant self-promotion, which often seems to produce the most positive-feedback at the corporate level.

I think I can generalize this to social settings, overall. Confident self-promoters seem to have more dates and to "be out there" more. Whether they are happier and more satisfied in life? I don't know.

I find more that a bit of enjoyment in my peace and quiet. But I'm kind of lonely.

Sometimes it feels that way in the corporate setting, too. Perhaps not the ideal setting for people like me.

[SonicSoul]

I'm also not sure i entirely agree with any of the examples in this post, but self promotion really does work. As illustrated really well in "All Is Fair in Love and Twitter" article http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/magazine/all-is-fair-in-lo.... Creating lots of self buzz can mean a difference in millions if not billions.

in corporate culture, sometimes there is a staggering divide between actual delivery and perception. I've seen people do nothing for 3 years, and later get a director level position at another company after claims of big accomplishments and general "good rap".

personally i believe in doing both. instead of being the guy claiming the credit, be the guy finding the time to contribute to other teams.. so when it comes to performance evaluations, yours will be pages long and everyone will know you're not just a parasite.

[dimon]

Thanks for that comment. I had very similar experiences in regards to myself and coworkers. I used to, and to some extent still do, think that stuff I've done is overrated/easy. While some people are seemingly naturals at striking that balance, some have to constantly be aware of that situation and not always default to being too timid. Especially true for interviews as that highly impacts starting salary and so forth. The team-part you mentioned highly depends on the communication culture of the team and the company, wouldn't really work in a "dysfunctional" team.

On the other hand I think that it might be an unconscious defense mechanism for fear of taking on too much responsibility or fear of too high expectations from others.