I busted my ass for six months. The promotion went to Fedya. Why?
I busted my ass for six months. The promotion went to Fedya. Why?
Back when I worked at Alibaba, a developer came to my 1:1 and said, quote: "I've been busting my ass for six months, and the promotion went to Fedya, who does nothing but run his mouth in meetings."
At first I was a bit stunned.
A beat. The shock passes, feelings kick in, and I get it: the guy really did work a lot. Another beat. Rationality kicks in, and I, his manager, can't recall a single important thing he shipped in six months.
Sound familiar?
Here's the thing: a lot of engineers treat visibility as some kind of "dirty game".
"I'm here to write code, not to play politics." Yet the people who hate "office politics" the loudest are often neck-deep in it themselves. They're just bad at it.
Take a hypothetical Lyosha. He hates this whole "corporate world" and takes pride in "just writing code". Meanwhile he:
- Complains about the team's decisions over beers with friends - Regularly skips meetings, and when he does show up, it's always online with the camera off - Plays the part of "that introvert engineer who just cares about doing the task well"
That's politics too. Just an ineffective and slightly destructive kind.
After that conversation I started thinking about what to do with this as a manager. Here's where I landed:
1/ Admit the reality
Politics shows up in any group larger than 10 people. It's not good or bad, it's a given. Your job isn't to pretend it doesn't exist. It's to teach the team to use the system for good.
2/ Teach the team to "show" their work
There's a book called Show Your Work! Like many books, it boils down to three simple but working ideas:
- Show not just the finished feature but the road to it. What were the forks? What did you try that didn't work?
Example: a developer spent 2 months grinding through a database migration. At the demo he showed: "Here, done." Nobody grasped the scale. He could have dropped a weekly note in the channel instead: "Today I realized the old approach won't work, here's why." By the end, everyone would have known he was doing a hard thing.
- Don't wait for the big release. Toss small stuff into the team chat: a curious bug, a useful article, a question for the team.
All the small things stack over time. Everyone can see you're deeply involved and that you genuinely give a damn.
- Figured something out? Teach others. Teaching automatically creates interest in your work and lifts your visibility.
3/ Watch that it doesn't turn into a toxic race
Visibility can degrade into a "who shouts loudest" contest. Then the winners aren't the people doing the work but the people selling it best. That kills a team from the inside. Don't let it happen, cut it off immediately.
TL;DR Visibility isn't a dirty game. It's a skill you can build. And your job as a manager isn't to pretend politics doesn't exist, it's to create a system where good work becomes visible. Because if you couldn't recall what a person did for six months, the problem isn't them. The problem is you.
Stay tuned 🥷🥷🥷