| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 3 hours ago | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
How will someone know what you’re doing if you don’t tell them? There is an entire theory called the “luck surface area” that says you need to do the work and tell people you did the work. https://modelthinkers.com/mental-model/surface-area-of-luck There is another similar school of thought that the only thing that matters in your career are “results and relationships”. It took me way too long to figure all of this out. But once I did, it made my life much easier and it made it much easier to navigate within my company and getting opportunities on the outside. During the last ten or so years as a “developer” without doing a single coding interview because I do know how to sell myself (and deliver)… 1. I’ve gotten three jobs where the new manager/director/CTO hired me as one of their first technical hires to lead major initiatives 2. Got a job at BigTech without any coding interviews even though my job required hands on keyboard coding as part of the job - cloud consulting specializing in app dev (yes full time direct hire with bonuses and RSUs) 3. Left there and had a job within a week as a staff consultant (full time) with another consulting company. I’m not smarter than anyone else, I learned how to network, talk the talk and play the game. On another note, you don’t and shouldn’t get a promotion based on doing your current job well. Just because you are a good developer doesn’t mean that you have the skills to lead other developers. That’s the entire point behind the “Peter Principle”. You have to show you are capable of working at the next level by working at the next level. I’m not saying you shouldn’t make more money if you bring more value to a company than do done else at your level. But how is a company suppose to objectively manage that? You pulled more stories off the board? You had less QA defects? For what it’s worth, I flew to close to the sun myself about a decade ago and realized I would suck as a manager of people. But I was getting better at leading projects. I chose the IC route. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | aristofun 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> I’m not smarter than anyone else, I learned how to network, talk the talk and play the game. Congratulations that you learned how to game the system. Fair enough. That doesn't mean you should brag about it or celebrate that terrible "school of thought". > How will someone know what you’re doing if you don’t tell them? That's a simple part: it's your manager's direct and one of the main job responsibilities. It's like 80% of what manager job is all about. To be perfectly aware of what his team is doing, what was done good, what was bad, performance, strong, weak sides etc. For every individual report. The hard part is to find the manager who at least understands that, even harder to find someone who are good at it. But in my limited experience it's not much harder than to find and spot a decent engineer. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | BeetleB an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> How will someone know what you’re doing if you don’t tell them? They certainly seem to know when I'm not doing well, without me having to tell them. Do you not see the asymmetry? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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