"From Geek to Star" #3 - When Good Work Goes Unnoticed

If you missed the previous episodes, you can access them online here.

🗓️ This Week – Chapter 2, Part 1: When Good Work Goes Unnoticed

Let’s talk about a quiet frustration I've heard again and again from engineers and I’ve been there too.

• “I work hard. I deliver. But others who talk more seem to get promoted faster.”

• “I fixed that critical issue but no one noticed.”

• “I have many years of experience now but I don't see how I can go the next level”

Sounds familiar?

🤐 Why Great Work Often Goes Unseen

In many organisations, especially large or siloed ones, visibility does not naturally follow quality.

• Leaders are busy and miss the details for right reasons (they are expected to be able to take a step back and look at the big picture) or wrong reasons (they may be too detached from the ground)

• Work gets abstracted, especially technical work.

• In many cultures, self-promotion feels awkward or inappropriate. Especially in Asian cultures and French culture that I am familiar with, where the education systems value more intellectual thinking that social behaviours.

• Add to this the “engineering” culture where most of us are rather introvert, focusing on getting the work done, rather than surfacing the impact…

✨ So you might be the engine behind progress… but someone else is getting the credit.

📉 The Cost of Staying Invisible

I don't need to elaborate too much on the list below, as you know as well as me what are some consequences of not being properly recognised:

• Decisions get made without your input.

• Promotions pass you by.

• You wonder if your effort is even valued.

• Worst of all: you may start to doubt your worth.

What I would like to emphasise is that if you realise there is a huge cost of being invisible, probable you will agree that you really need to do something about it to cut this cost (at last one cost cutting we would be happy with in our professional life!). And to make it happen, the most important thing to keep in mind is that you have to be intentional about it.

When Obi-wan says “there's no such thing as luck”, what does he mean by that and how does it relate to our subject? The idea behind this is that even when something seems to be happening out of luck, the reality is that there have been a lot of intentional direct or indirect actions that led to this event.

Let me share one of my stories. A friend was asking me the other day:

• Him: “How do you manage to be invited to speak in so many tech conferences?"

• Me: "Not sure how event producers got my contacts, but this is probably through some lists they pass to each other or they bought somewhere"

• Him: “Yes but do you remember how it started the first time you were invited to speak?”

• Me: "…”

I couldn't remember until this week when writing this newsletter to you. It was actually at the first hybrid (onsite / online) tech travel event at the end of 2021 as Singapore was emerging out of Covid. My boss back then invited me to come and introduced me to the event organiser who was her friend. We greeted each other, connected on Linkedin… a few weeks later, the event organiser contacted me for a coffee chat, to get my views on how tech had helped or not the travel industry during Covid. After that, she offered me to speak at a next event she was organising. And that's how it started.

But why did my boss introduced me to the event organiser and why did this person offered to have a coffee catch-up a few weeks later? My boss was actually sometimes reading my Linkedin posts and thought I had interesting things to share beyond the scope of my job at work (but without telling me - a jedi master she was!). And then the event organiser saw some of my Linkedin posts after we got connected and thought I could have things to share, so suggested this catch-up. I had been publishing regularly on Linkedin since 2016 and did not think this would lead one day to being invited to speak in events.

🧠 The Shift: From Bragging to Being Understood

This isn’t about politics. It’s about clarity, connection and staying true to your values.

Yes, you will more than often see people who are bragging about things they did not really do, take credit when some would have deserved more. As engineers, whether you are a manager or an individual contributor, you don't want to follow this kind of example - and actually most of us couldn't even do so as we would feel more embarrassed to do so than anything else.

So, how do you do? First, you have to be aware that there are many ways to be meaningfully visible. I mentioned Linkedin but it is just one way, other ways (which are not exclusive) are:

• Sharing your positive contributions to your manager and other leaders you interact with

• Sharing relevant ideas, progress, tech news inside your company through internal social networks (Slack, Viva Engage on MS Teams, etc…). For example, if you are working in cybersecurity, share on this current mind-blowing new threat called Xanthorox AI to your colleagues of security.

• Attend some tech meetups in your areas of interest to become more at ease to share / speak on what you are doing.

• etc…

Then, find your most natural drivers which would push you to make yourself more visible without bragging. Authenticity, being true to yourself is key here.

A few weeks ago, I shared in a Linkedin post my core values at work, coming from my personal story (more precisely from the story of my parents and how I grew up):

“Believing in sharing, transparency and freedom to take initiatives”
“Having a positive and forward-looking mindset”
“Leading with respect rather than as a brutal leader”
“Fostering collaboration and collective success beyond organizational silos”

Which is why I am a firm believer and proponent of open source. And about ten years ago back in France, a friend told me these words: “Sharing is caring” - he was telling me this in the context of how he was managing his professional relationships and loved connecting people to each other.

Those words really resonated with me on many aspects, being very much in the philosophy of open source. Regarding Linkedin, it resonated with me in the sense that I realised that I enjoyed very much sharing ideas, news, thoughts around how technologies and tech management can and should impact positively companies and our world. And Linkedin was a great space to do so. So whenever I do a post, I strive to bring meaningful content and the act of posting gives me a little satisfaction for having contributed a little bit to a conversation larger than me. This is the intent I put in my posts, rather than just doing it just for the sake of visibility with meaningless posts - I won't have lasted all these years on Linkedin if it had been the case.

Remember, Visibility = making your impact understandable to others while staying true to your values.

🧭 Mini Mission

Should you accept it, this is a mini exercise for you to do this week as you go back to work. Pick one project you’ve contributed to recently and that you are happy / proud of.

Write briefly following these bullets points:

• What Situation were you in? This is to provide context, set the stage

• Which Task was yours in this situation?

• Which Actions did you take to resolve this task?

• What were the Results coming out of your actions?

In your next catch-up with your manager / boss / client, when starting the meeting with chit-chat, bring it up: “Oh, I was just thinking back, do you remember this project I have been working on? This was the Situation back then, I had to do this Task. With the Actions I took, we managed to get these Results. I wanted to check with you if this is the kind of impact which is of help for your priorities"?

By doing so, you will actually make your contribution be more visible but also get feedback to understand if this aligns well with the priorities of your manager or your client. Trust me, he / she will really appreciate this kind of posture while bringing more visibility on what you do.

And by the way, you just followed the STAR framework (Situation Task Action Result) that some companies are using for interviews 😉. This can be of use for you in other contexts in the future!

🙏 I’d love to hear from you:

• Have you felt invisible at work?

• How do you share your impact without sounding like you’re bragging?

• Are you clear on your core values at work? If so, do you see how you could be more visible while staying aligned with your values?

Just reply - I read every note.

Also, follow me on LinkedIn for more insights and behind-the-scenes thoughts between newsletters.

✨ Keep shining even when no one’s watching. This helps you to build up your way quietly without pressure.

From Geek to Star, by Khang | “The Way Forward”