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Amen. Staying quiet and focussing on good work because "it'll speak for itself" is naive and in general the result is only to be taken advantage

Amen. Staying quiet and focussing on good work because "it'll speak for itself" is naive and in general the result is only to be taken advantage of. Yeah. I suspect I'm like most engineers in this regard: staying quiet and focusing on work that "speaks for itself" is my default mode of thinking and working. But it is just an absolute disaster. Management certainly does not understand what you do. And if your skills are above average, your coworkers doing the same exact job may not even understand what you do. If you come up with a clever solution, you need to promote it. You don't have to "brag" but you do need to tell people that you e.g. came up with an optimization that makes the thing go faster and you probably need to show your manager a graph demonstrating the thing you did. If you think this is dumb, I don't blame you, but that is how things work. If you want to fight this reality to some small extent, you can work hard to recognize your coworkers' achievements and clever solutions and promote them by word of mouth, to your manager, etc. If everybody did this then people wouldn't need to self-promote so much.

pavel_lishin 3y ago
> Management certainly does not understand what you do. A good manager should. A technical manager, doubly so, and if you're an engineer, your manager should be technical. Of course you're ultimately your best cheerleader and hypeman, but your manager should be doing that job too, especially to other higher-ups.
- kergonath 3y ago
  > A good manager should. A technical manager, doubly so, and if you're an engineer, your manager should be technical. They really should not. Their job is to manage a team, not to replicate everyone else’s work to understand in detail how clever they are. It’s just impossible. Particularly as teams tend to have a distribution of profiles and skill sets. In this case, do you expect the manager to be a master of all of them? That is clearly unrealistic. If you are a good engineer, you should be able to come up with some executive summary in 1 slide or a paragraph to outline what’s good in whatever you came up with. Otherwise, it means that you don’t understand what you’re doing or that you’re bad at bringing information together and condensing it in an understandable form, which is really not great for a technical role. > Of course you're ultimately your best cheerleader and hypeman, but your manager should be doing that job too, especially to other higher-ups. If incentives are set up correctly, a manager will advertise to the top. They should be rewarded when their team perform well, so it’s in their interest to publicise successes. (Bad managers will do it whilst claiming the credit for themselves, but that’s another problem). They cannot do it if you don’t provide them the information they need, though.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  A good manager will understand what you do and what you have accomplished -- but not automatically. You still need to frame and present your struggles and achievements.
brightball 3y ago
Entirely dependent on the company. The best people at the places I’ve worked have also become the people who everyone goes to for answers. It becomes clear that everyone understands their impact. If a non-technical person gets something that works they don’t have any way to know if it’s better or worse than anybody else’s work though.
kergonath 3y ago
> Yeah. I suspect I'm like most engineers in this regard: staying quiet and focusing on work that "speaks for itself" is my default mode of thinking and working. It is a natural tendency for a lot of people. I know I tend to do it because I don’t like when my work has flaws, so I spend way too much time making sure everything is perfect before I dare showing something to others. It’s still something to overcome because being quiet in one’s corner is counter-productive in the long run. > If you come up with a clever solution, you need to promote it. You don't have to "brag" but you do need to tell people that you e.g. came up with an optimization that makes the thing go faster and you probably need to show your manager a graph demonstrating the thing you did. Exactly! It makes the manager happy because they feel they understood something and it makes you happy because you feel like the value you bring is recognised. > If you think this is dumb, I don't blame you, but that is how things work. It’s not dumb, it’s adapting to one’s environment. It’s hubris to think that all the other people around have the same priorities as you. They have other interests, other skills, other objectives, and they also have only 24 hours each day. When you spend time to engineer something, they don’t have the skills or the time to study it in detail, therefore they cannot grasp all the cleverness in it on their own. That’s not because managers are stupid or MBAs or something. The same is true in a team of engineers. A single person is not able to keep track of everything their colleagues do. So the quiet worker doing their thing in their corner is also missing out. It’s just that they have other things to do. So if you want them to know how clever the thing you did is, just tell them. People respond quite well if you show them something interesting (though, as you say, bragging is bad and is usually seen as a problem, not a sign of brilliance). The key is to talk about the thing and how it solves whatever complicated problem was limiting, not about how bright you are for coming up with such a solution. It makes for interesting conversations as well, because the other people also have clever ideas every now and then, and that way you can hear about them. Because yourself are not necessarily aware of how brilliant your colleagues are if they never talk about what they do. > If you want to fight this reality to some small extent, you can work hard to recognize your coworkers' achievements and clever solutions and promote them by word of mouth, to your manager, etc. If everybody did this then people wouldn't need to self-promote so much. Yes! Another consequence is that this way there is more communication and more cross-pollination, and everyone wins.

pavel_lishin 3y ago

> Management certainly does not understand what you do. A good manager should. A technical manager, doubly so, and if you're an engineer, your manager should be technical. Of course you're ultimately your best cheerleader and hypeman, but your manager should be doing that job too, especially to other higher-ups.

kergonath 3y ago
> A good manager should. A technical manager, doubly so, and if you're an engineer, your manager should be technical. They really should not. Their job is to manage a team, not to replicate everyone else’s work to understand in detail how clever they are. It’s just impossible. Particularly as teams tend to have a distribution of profiles and skill sets. In this case, do you expect the manager to be a master of all of them? That is clearly unrealistic. If you are a good engineer, you should be able to come up with some executive summary in 1 slide or a paragraph to outline what’s good in whatever you came up with. Otherwise, it means that you don’t understand what you’re doing or that you’re bad at bringing information together and condensing it in an understandable form, which is really not great for a technical role. > Of course you're ultimately your best cheerleader and hypeman, but your manager should be doing that job too, especially to other higher-ups. If incentives are set up correctly, a manager will advertise to the top. They should be rewarded when their team perform well, so it’s in their interest to publicise successes. (Bad managers will do it whilst claiming the credit for themselves, but that’s another problem). They cannot do it if you don’t provide them the information they need, though.
JohnBooty 3y ago
A good manager will understand what you do and what you have accomplished -- but not automatically. You still need to frame and present your struggles and achievements.

brightball 3y ago

Entirely dependent on the company. The best people at the places I’ve worked have also become the people who everyone goes to for answers. It becomes clear that everyone understands their impact. If a non-technical person gets something that works they don’t have any way to know if it’s better or worse than anybody else’s work though.

kergonath 3y ago

> Yeah. I suspect I'm like most engineers in this regard: staying quiet and focusing on work that "speaks for itself" is my default mode of thinking and working. It is a natural tendency for a lot of people. I know I tend to do it because I don’t like when my work has flaws, so I spend way too much time making sure everything is perfect before I dare showing something to others. It’s still something to overcome because being quiet in one’s corner is counter-productive in the long run. > If you come up with a clever solution, you need to promote it. You don't have to "brag" but you do need to tell people that you e.g. came up with an optimization that makes the thing go faster and you probably need to show your manager a graph demonstrating the thing you did. Exactly! It makes the manager happy because they feel they understood something and it makes you happy because you feel like the value you bring is recognised. > If you think this is dumb, I don't blame you, but that is how things work. It’s not dumb, it’s adapting to one’s environment. It’s hubris to think that all the other people around have the same priorities as you. They have other interests, other skills, other objectives, and they also have only 24 hours each day. When you spend time to engineer something, they don’t have the skills or the time to study it in detail, therefore they cannot grasp all the cleverness in it on their own. That’s not because managers are stupid or MBAs or something. The same is true in a team of engineers. A single person is not able to keep track of everything their colleagues do. So the quiet worker doing their thing in their corner is also missing out. It’s just that they have other things to do. So if you want them to know how clever the thing you did is, just tell them. People respond quite well if you show them something interesting (though, as you say, bragging is bad and is usually seen as a problem, not a sign of brilliance). The key is to talk about the thing and how it solves whatever complicated problem was limiting, not about how bright you are for coming up with such a solution. It makes for interesting conversations as well, because the other people also have clever ideas every now and then, and that way you can hear about them. Because yourself are not necessarily aware of how brilliant your colleagues are if they never talk about what they do. > If you want to fight this reality to some small extent, you can work hard to recognize your coworkers' achievements and clever solutions and promote them by word of mouth, to your manager, etc. If everybody did this then people wouldn't need to self-promote so much. Yes! Another consequence is that this way there is more communication and more cross-pollination, and everyone wins.