Hacker Neue

Preferences
exmadscientist parent
> 5. Being visible. If you do great work but nobody knows about it, did it really happen? Share your wins, present at all-hands, write those design docs that everyone will reference later.

And don't forget that when managers or seniors are involved, there's magic alchemy that comes from spreading the credit around. Suppose Bob works under Alice and Bob, mostly solely, accomplishes something significant. If Alice presents and takes credit for it, Alice might receive 1 credit point. If she presents it as Bob's work and never mentions herself, Bob will get the 1 credit point. But Alice will pick up some credit just for presenting (let's guess 0.5 unit), Bob will get the 1 point, and because Alice now manages Bob, whose stature just went up, she'll get an additional (let's guess) 0.25 point. So you've got 1.75 units of credit instead! Never be shy to give credit to others. You will benefit too!

(This is also one of the 11 Laws of Showrunning: https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=27867023 among other links )

jaymzcampbell
I've always used "we" when describing and presenting work done as part of a team, even if solo. There's a certain skill in knowing when to promote yourself, and how you do so. These days I tend to be positive in a group sense, and take direct specific ownership of failings. I may be lucky but I think this has led to a lot of respect from coworkers and c-suite that I've engaged with. I've never once felt like people don't know who is getting the work done in the end.
ryandrake
Everywhere I've worked, come annual review time, everyone is supposed to emphasize what they did, not what the team did. "We're considering promoting you, not the team, so tell us what you did!" Same with interviews: You're not supposed to say "I was a key contributor of Team X that shipped Product Y." You're supposed to say "I shipped Product Y."

So you have this weird contradiction where you're expected to work as part of a team, but then measured on your own contributions in a vacuum. So if you take credit for the team's effort, you're the bad guy who gets rewarded, but if you admit it was a team effort and take credit only for your contributions, you're forgotten for not having enough impact.

jaymzcampbell
In these situations I will frame my contributions directly without the "we" part, speaking to how I contributed to a particular team output, or if it was 100%, I'll just say as much. My comment was in terms of general talk to stakeholders / presentations / casual conversations - then I default to "we".

E.g. if I add some new feature to a tool and deploy it, I'll say "we've just pushed X...". If I do 99% of some particular feature, I'll still say "we've added Y...". In an annual review I can still speak to what I specifically did. I have probably been lucky in the teams and team sizes I've been in, but I've not had a problem with this.

For context I've mainly stuck to small (<50) and medium (<500) companies. My one experience (due to acquisition) of directly working within a 5000+ company was certainly starting to feel like what you described, I got out.

scarface_74
You don’t get promoted in any well functioning organization until you operate at the level you want to be promoted to.

That means that if all you did was work that only involved your own labor instead of work that involves being over an initiative that involved other people, you can’t be promoted above a mid level developer (no matter your title). You didn’t show that you can work at a larger “scope”.

You can look at the leveling guidelines for almost any tech company.

Even if you are a mid level ticket taker, you should at least try to talk to whoever your project manager is and take responsibility for delivering an “epic” or “workstream” that will show that you are coordinating a larger deliverable.

energy123
I used to do that, but decided it was deceptive and harmful. You are not describing reality by saying "we" if you did everything. You are creating a social manipulation. It is better to just accurately describe what happened and allow the correct information to flow through the organization, leading to better decision making. For example, you will have the tools to deal with people who maliciously steal your credit when they say "we" about the work you did, without which you wouldn't be able to address the consequent distortions and harm to the organization if they are to be promoted or given more responsibility. Free riders will be exposed more quickly, giving leaders the ability to more rapidly self-correct the team, and reducing grievances of individuals carrying too much of the weight.
thenoblesunfish
If you wrote code that is to be maintained by someone else, which I think has to be true 99% of the time, it is "we". You are still operating as a team even if you did the initial work.
hamandcheese
I disagree. It's not uncommon that there is work on a team that everyone might want to do, but only one person gets to do it. Being a team player can mean doing unsexy maintenance work while a team mate works on a highly visible greenfield project. Spreading the credit around a bit is perfectly reasonable.
rapidaneurism
Reasonable for whom?

In sufficiently small companies yes it makes sense for everyone. In larger and more regimented companies doing the Greenfield project can (and often does) lead to promotions and higher earnings.

Teamwork is fine, but when salaries and promotions are individually negotiated you have to look after number one.

mlrtime
Agreed, if you have not worked at a FAANG (or adjacent) the advice in these threads can work very well for you or very much against you.

The level of politics, promotion, promotion packets, leveling is a whole different level. That is not to start on PIP, hire to fire, etc...

You need to know the game if you're going to play it.

energy123
> Spreading the credit around a bit is perfectly reasonable.

I'm not against spreading credit. I'm against misrepresenting situations to spread false credit, which creates incorrect perceptions and leads to poor decision making and political tension. If an individual did a unit of work, I will acknowledge that, to the extent that it is true. If an individual jumped on a grenade and did unpopular work, I will praise that individual for doing that work.

This is not antagonism towards teamwork, it's to make the team function better by ensuring information propagation is accurate, that the people pulling the weight in the team feel recognized, and that free riders are held to account which is a form of respect to the productive team members.

cindyllm (dead)
dilyevsky
That’s cool theory and all but in reality alice will get all the credit and no one will even remember bobs name. People are mostly wrapped up in their own thing and 2 months later at best they will remember one sentence and that it's somehow attached to alice. Get people doing the work on your team to present it if you want them to get credit or stop pretending you actually care about this
hamandcheese
This might be my naïveté as an engineer but I've never seen a major technical accomplishment presented and thought "yeah, that manager did that"
nosianu
That may be true for things you experienced yourself, but not for what you heard about others elsewhere. From researcher team leads to company owners, the names communicated and remembered are those at the top (even if the original communication mentions those doing the work, the journalists and everyone else will strip away those "details").
Maro
It depends on the manager, whether they repeatedly recognize/name the individual contributor (or team), and use the project's success to get good outcomes for that person (increment, bonus, promotion). Not all managers are incompetent or corrupt..
fusslo
anecdote:

My first company got bought out and the CEO went around awarding bonuses. It was a calculus of around ( 0.4 * salary * number of years ).

When it was my turn, he double-checked with HR that I had worked there as long as I had

I was super jr, but sat next to his office. Didn't know I existed.

Thanks for the link and perspective

Chris2048
As in, you had worked there very little, or very long?
fusslo
2 years (company was 4yrs old)
NoPicklez
You need to give credit where credit is due, if you are presenting someone else's work and they put in the majority of the work you must share that. Yes you may have been part of it and perhaps even reviewed it, but you must give them significant credit.

Nobody likes people who take credit for others work and it will be quickly found out. Particularly if the work gets critiqued and you are asked to stand by it.

This isn't some fancy law, but general decency.

nedt
But of course that's only for things with positive outcomes. If it's negative Alice would start saying "we" and "I" and then come up with a solution that can again give Bob credit because of the positive outcome in fixing something.
silvestrov
This is one effect that a lot of narcissists don't understand: You get more by giving some away.

So you can get only get to the top when you spread coins around.

Loughla
With the number of narcissists I've seen be wildly successful, I have to disagree with you.

There is a very clear and well established path to the top for people who only care about themselves.

mlrtime
How are you defining successful?
Loughla
So for the purposes of this I'm talking about success at work. Because that's what the article and discussion are about.

No that's not how I define personal success. But that's also not relevant to this.

mlrtime
This is true in life that most non narcissists figure out (including myself). Self actualization comes from helping others and less on yourself.

This item has no comments currently.