It Took Me 40 Years To Learn What I’ll Tell You In 13 Minutes

Good advice overall - just be mindful not to come across as overly assertive, create unnecessary documentation tied to your name (very annoying), email-blast everyone (annoying), or oversell your contributions or abilities in a way that sets unrealistic expectations with the team.

This is huge. I remember once in a perf review I had received the feedback that I struggled meeting deadlines and prioritizing work. At the moment, I took the feedback and resolved to work on it. But after a couple days of reflection it dawned on me- I never missed a deadline, why in the world did I get that feedback? Because my manager had to ask for results and many times was left wondering if tasks were accomplished. It didn’t really matter that they were done, it mattered that they knew ahead of time that it was done without asking. These kinda things suck but it’s part of the game.

"The real question isn't can you, it's will you" - Great advice!

I made this mistake working at amazon. I upgraded dependencies that blocked projects from building. Every engineer knew this was important because it saved them 30 min trying to start the app. My managers had no idea. To them it looked like I was slacking off. Make sure you're working on something your manager will recognize as high value.

I love the point that software is a team sport. We often obsess over frameworks and cleaner code, but the real leverage is being the person who multiplies the people around them. Making others feel smart for asking questions rather than stupid for not knowing is what actually catapults a career to senior levels and beyond. If people are 'routing around you' because you're difficult to work with, your technical brilliance won't matter. Invest in how you show up for others.

“at senior and above your impact is measured by what you enable others to do.” that’s a really good line, steve

Good tips. Actually lying low is not modest nor doing anyone any favours. You help your team more by being proactive and transparent about what you’re doing. The flip side is: be prepared for occasional criticism. Take it well, learn from it, and thank those who give it: they’re doing you a favour!

I've had this as a data analyst. I spent countless of hours creating an LLM pipeline with Airflow and Python. No one cared. What I also did: talk to the IT team if we are allowed to get data from Snowflake to our data warehouse solution. My managers called me a hero because it was hard to get those permissions. All I did though was ask. I don't think anyone simply ever asked.

Came here to roll my eyes but I stayed for 13 minutes nodding my head. Thanks!

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