Getting Your Behind the Curtains Work Visible Without Selling Your Soul
We’ve discussed the importance of making work visible, but this post delves a bit deeper into the why and how to manage the feeling that you are being a salesperson instead of just doing great work.
Having visible work is necessary to secure promotions. Less visible work, such as leading from behind or performing glue work, can be made visible with a minimal investment.
I’ve spoken a fair bit about how to make your work impactful, but I wanted to focus particularly on the individual who prefers to be behind the scenes or thinks impact alone is enough to secure a raise or a promotion. While this may be true in some companies, in many others, the individuals determining whether you get promoted need to understand your impact and its significance.
During a promotion process, multiple individuals are often involved (e.g., HR, leadership teams, direct manager, skip levels, talent, etc.). They are all weighing in on various aspects of the promotion packet. Most notably, they are spending time discussing the scope of your work and its impact. A manager who is defending the promotion has an easier time if they know your work and your impact. It becomes even easier if others are familiar with your work and its impact. A natural conclusion is, well, shit, I need to talk about my work more often! And you may be the type of person who would rather be getting work done than talking about the work you did or are going to do.
You HAVE to talk about your work a little.
It’s possible that impact alone is enough, but it will be rare. If you are a specialist who just saves millions each month, people will know you. However, if you are the type of engineer who works behind the scenes, addresses technical debt, makes others more efficient, and keeps things running smoothly, you may be overlooked in a promotion if another team member is working on a highly visible, business-facing project that everyone was told to care about during the last shareholder call.
When I speak with mentors about this, they usually say to me, “It feels gross. I don’t want to talk about my work, I’d rather let it show for itself.” I get it. It can feel like self-promotion, and furthermore, you may have worked with people who over-promote or inflate their work.
But, I have 3 micro-tactics (easy to apply) that I’ll guarantee increase visibility of your work without feeling soul sucking or fake.
Never Promote Alone - When you wrap a project, or finish a huge refactor, land a milestone, clean up tech debt, it’s not about your contribution. It’s about everyone who contributed anything to you. Go into your team, organization, engineering, or other relevant channel, and celebrate your peers. Give them all the accolades and credit they deserve. Not only does this demonstrate that you are a team player, but it also fosters a culture where team members give each other positive reinforcement for outstanding work. This achieves the same effect as self-promotion but doesn’t feel as icky.
Share With Others - Another indirect way to make your work visible is by teaching, giving talks, and sharing your designs and thinking with others. This is a great follow-up to sending out accolades after a big project. Invite your team or organization to a deep dive into the architecture, highlighting areas where you've taken big swings, and celebrate those who contribute to the work. In these, your focus isn’t on you as the “person who did all the work” but on the knowledge and insights in the journey to getting to the finish line. With this framing, you end up leveling people up while indirectly increasing awareness of your work and impact.
Maintain a Private Summary of Work - I discuss a summary of work in about half of these posts because it has been essential for me to defend my market rate and negotiate salary increases. I often make them ‘company’ facing, but if you are a person who doesn’t like to talk about your work, keep it private. You can have a private summary of your main milestones and work delivered, which you can share with your manager at the end of the year. While this may require more work for them to socialize your impact during a promotion review, they’ll have a great source of truth for defense.
And a warning. I’ve observed in my career that those who tend to work behind the scenes are sometimes not given the credit for the impactful work they do. The best way to prevent this from happening is to intervene when we see it (e.g., when someone takes credit for another's work). Please keep an eye out for this in your own work and that of your colleagues.
Band Practice - Send out Accolades
Before the end of the year, send out accolades in a public channel for a project you are working on. Be honest but celebrate the milestones, and the folks that contributed. Don’t spend any time promoting yourself, just the outcomes, impact, and peers who got there. Please let me know how your peers respond, your manager, and if you feel it was a bit easier.
Do it with a teammate. Band practice is better with friends!
S.B.