My Hard Work Is GONE! My Manager Got ALL Of The Credit!

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Hey folks, I'm just leaving the office. Um, I'm actually leaving in the middle of the day cuz there's no one at the office. Um, I thought because I had yesterday off, I'd come in today and then get more FaceTime, but uh there was just no one there. Um, sorry, that's not true. There's one person at the office and they were on call, so they're pretty focused on what they were doing. So, there's no point in me being here. I'm going to leave before I have to sit in traffic, but I'm going to go home and work. I have meetings that go a little bit later this evening anyway. So, um kind of bummed cuz it's a bit of a waste of time driving in, but that's okay. I'd rather have the opportunity for some FaceTime. Anyway, we're going to go to Reddit for another question um or topic.

I guess this one's probably uh probably pretty quick, but I thought it would be interesting to talk about because I see this being something that goes kind of two ways. And this is the kind of thing that I'd love to hear from people in the comments if this has affected you, you've seen this, how you've navigated it, you know, just different experiences. This is good stuff to be able to share if uh if you're comfortable with it. So, the Reddit thread is about uh what seems like a like a stereotypical like kind of crappy situation with a manager taking credit. Now, I don't know and I don't necessarily think this person framed it as their manager taking all the credit, but essentially their manager getting all the credit. So the context was there was some big issue, some big bug that had to get fixed, you know, uh high impact in terms of like the the dollar amount that is it's going to cost or customers, this kind of thing.

And sort of the issue makes its way to this developer. They end up being one of the people that really has to drive it and focus on it. And then it seems like there's like after everything's said and done, there's some type of like exec memo that goes out basically like thanking the engineering manager, right? So it kind of gets down to the engineering manager but not beyond that in terms of visibility and credit. So this person was kind of bummed about it and they're saying like, you know, is this is this normal? like they were kind of hoping that they would get some uh some visibility on it and uh so I figured it'd be good to talk about because I think I have different takes on visibility since coming to a big tech company cuz I work at Microsoft now versus being at a startup where I was before.

So maybe let me start with that. Okay. So when I talk about visibility and sort of like this is something that I've genuinely struggled with. I never had to do anything to try to get visibility. That's how I'd put it. Um I historically like before Microsoft, I worked at a startup. I was there since near the beginning. I had a lot of autonomy and I could, you know, be given goals, go work at them and go deliver on them. the um the visibility part was just the side effect that always came naturally, right? So, as long as I could keep doing work, there was visibility. like I never had to even think about hm how do I make sure that I have visibility in the work I'm doing so that you know I can be rewarded for it or that the right stakeholders need to

know or that I can you know work towards promotion leveraging that because the right people need to see it like I just never had to do that so it's never been a thing that's crossed my mind right you do good work good things happen but that's just simply not the case um as I've been finding at big tech companies and I say that not only for my own work but um like the the work of people that I manage where I've had you know promo conversations where uh they're denied because of visibility for people on my team. I have been given that feedback when I have had uh managers in the past put me up for promotion at Microsoft. It was like visibility, right? Like the the other people that are part of the decision-m process do not have visibility into my work, so it gets denied.

And so it's a very real thing. And um personally, I find that like there's far too much effort that has to get put into like driving visibility. Uh because if that's where all the motivation is to get promoted and that kind of stuff, then like it almost feels like a distraction from actually just doing the good work. But that's my background on this kind of stuff. I got to merge lanes and this guy is not letting that happen. Thanks, buddy. Um give me one more sec here. Just got to get another lane over. Cool. Um, so Oh, buddy. You can't come in this lane if I'm here. Someone in the lane beside me. I get maybe I was in their blind spot or maybe they checked and then I was there. I don't know, but I saw their signal go on and then they started to to merge over.

Not going to be a good time for either of us. Don't do that. Um, okay. So, that's my like my background when it comes to visibility. I'm trying to call this out in the beginning so that I give you some framing because anything I talk about, there's going to be bias associated with it, right? I don't like the game of visibility because it feels like a waste of time versus just doing good software engineering or good management, whatever, doing your job well. Feel like that should just come, but it's just not the case from my experience now that I've had big tech experience. So, this person is bummed out about it, right? And I feel like I could I could totally understand that, right? If you're the person who's working hard on this sucks. Um, and I think this kind of thing can happen in different situations too, not just like a manager getting credit.

It could be that, you know, you were working with another software engineer and they happen to get credit for something. Um, could look a bunch of different ways. Why is this solid red for traffic? It's literally 1:30 in the afternoon. Why are you beeping at me? Okay, I need just a moment to think here because there's more traffic at this spot than when I drive home at night. Just for context. So, want to be fully aware. Do I sneak in front of this big truck and risk getting crashed? Baby, let's do it. Yeah. Okay, we survived. No, no crushing today. Okay. Um, so yeah, like this kind of thing is not just going to occur in this like manager IC relationship. It could happen with, you know, you working on a project with another colleague. Um, or, you know, your team is working with another team, they get the credit, that kind of thing.

So, couple couple different angles I want to go about on this and I don't know exactly which one I want to start with. Um, okay, let me let me start with this one just because it it's uh more from like my personal side of things. I actually when it comes to visibility um in a manager role, I actually struggle with this a lot. Aside from what I was just saying in terms of like I don't give a crap and feels bad to focus on it. I do the exact opposite of what's happening in this story to a to a fault. And I've learned this. It's to a fault. Um, as a manager, like I can be involved in projects and things like that. I'm helping lead them. I'm helping organize them. I could be contributing to the architecture. I could be contributing to how we might be approaching things.

Right? Even when I was working at Magnet Forensics before Microsoft, there are situations where like, you know, I'm coding with the team, I will always try to do my best to bring visibility to other people. So, like I said, to a fault or if I'm involved in something, I almost take no credit because I I very much view myself as a support role and like Maybe this just comes from the fact that where I was working before, I'm trying to like do a bit of reflection on this at the same time. Where I was working before, the visibility just happened, right? So it it almost didn't make sense to try and draw more visibility. Like there's no benefit.

So my entire career basically I've always been in positions where if someone was like, "Wow, like thanks for all the hard work." in my head, I immediately go to, well, so and so helped on this and like, you know, couldn't have done it without this other person or, you know, we really owe it to this other team. I will, it just it's kind of built in and I have to unteach myself this, but I will always try to give the visibility or the credit to other people just how how I end up operating. Again, this can hurt invisibility. This probably has hurt me even at Microsoft, right, where I've been, you know, sharing updates on things like let's say with my current team, my previous team, and I'm telling people like like excellent work so and so and so and so and I'm not putting any amount of myself into that.

And um the reality is like I am playing a part, right? But like I said, I never had to get like try to focus on giving myself the visibility. So, just wanted to call that out because I think it's I don't know like you might be someone who's like me as a manager or as an individual contributor. I just like I'm doing the reflection right now, right? And I would kind of encourage you to do that too. Like think about it. the last time someone was like, "Hey, thanks so much for like this project." Or, you know, team celebrates a milestone or whatever and they're looking to you for the person that that delivered, like, do you take the credit and you're like, "Thanks so much." Like, you know, it was hard work, but I did it. Or are you immediately like, "Yeah, but so and so.

Yeah, but so and so." Um, it's tricky. So, I just wanted to kind of call that out because I think it's interesting. Um, but that's the first thing I wanted to acknowledge is that um there's a a difference in how I operate versus what's being talked about here. And I should clarify too, I'm not trying to say that as in like I I am I am better. I'm modeling better values or something. Not at all. I'm trying to call out that that's actually detrimental to my to to me because I do it to a fault. I think there's a balance and maybe this is a good segue into the next point. So I think there's definitely a balance and something that happens a lot is that I think when people see like credit for a project um just to give you an example right if

you had one engineer working on a project okay and they're going to deliver on this um I've seen it many times where it's like they feel that they need to be the one person to own it and drive it. they have to be the only like the person because otherwise they're not going to get credit, right? Because this comes back to the hyperfocus on getting visibility, right? If if this is such a thing that we have to focus on for being rewarded and promoted, you're like, I got to do whatever I can to make sure I have the spotlight on me for this, right? I've heard it once before, I don't have enough visibility. And I heard it again, I don't have enough visibility. I'm making sure I get the visibility. I'm the one person on this. But I also think that that's like counterproductive because when it comes to credit and visibility on things, it's um the math doesn't math.

And what I mean by that is if you added a second person into that that was helping. It does not mean that you have to split the total value of the visibility or split the total value of the credit. Right? If you have one person that delivers on something and they're leading it, or you add in a second person and they're both working as partners on it, it's not like you go, "Oh, you only get half the visibility now. Like, that sucks. You have to go do another one of these." Like, no. The it doesn't add up to like you don't have to get the same sum. So, you have to cut it in half because you have two people. The math doesn't math. So, you can absolutely have additional people.

they can get the visibility right this is one of the things again with the manager situation like me as a manager it's like if I balance it properly I can also take credit for some of the projects that are happening in addition to my employees it does not have to be oh look I did nothing they need to get all of the credit or like what we might be seeing in this Reddit post where it's like it stops at the manager they get all the credit, you can absolutely add more people in and it does not make it so that the credit has to be divided. So, I just wanted to call that out because I feel like it's a misconception, right? So, I I I'm trying to think of like a good like action on this because I need to practice it better myself.

But I I think the action is like one make sure that if you were involved in something that like if you're getting credit for it that yes like you accept that credit but I would also say don't um you know if you notice that other people that were instrumental are not getting credit. I would also find a way to include them as well. Not a replacement if that makes sense. It's not one or the other. It can be both or all the above. It's probably one of the meta points I have from from chatting through this. Um I think like I'm trying to, you know, obviously I don't know the manager. I don't know this this situation from this Reddit post, but uh what I would really appreciate that a manager does in a situation like that um where you know an executive, a VP, CEO, whatever is like giving thanks for something getting resolved.

The reality is like depending on the size of the company and everything, the person that's at that level, like at the exact level, they genuinely might not have visibility into all of the individuals that were working on something. It's just that's reality. Okay? So I don't when I see this kind of thing happen like in terms of how this communication was in the Reddit post. I don't look at this like oh like crappy VP for not knowing crappy executive. It's like they're they're operating at a different level focused on different things. So they have visibility into the problem. If the manager is going to be the point of contact that's helping coordinate and report up status, I could absolutely understand why it stops there to the VP. However, what I would love to see from a manager in this situation is to is to acknowledge like, hey, thank you so much.

like, you know, I don't know the exact wording on this, but like acknowledging yes, they they played a role in that, whatever it happened to be, cuz it's not I'm assuming it's not that they played zero role, and I don't think that that's what this person's trying to say in the Reddit post, but then from there, I would like to give acknowledgements to the team because if that never bubbled up before while it was happening, then I think it would be a good opportunity. Now, it's not always realistic to do that, right? Like you could imagine a scenario. I'm just going to make this up, right? Like imagine there's a scenario where you have one manager who's kind of reporting up this status on whatever incident's being addressed. And like actually I could probably no I won't um scratch that thought. You can imagine a situation where there's some big incident and maybe you have multiple teams.

Maybe it's not like you know one team's issue and like one or two engineers are working on it. Imagine it's multiple teams. Imagine it's like five teams and from each of those teams you have like I don't know like two to four engineers like participating. So, like what I wouldn't necessarily expect is that like the manager goes, "Thanks for, you know, thanks for the praise and like Jimmy did this, Timmy did that, Sally did this." And like just kind of like reporting that up. I don't think that that's like I think that starts to just be a little bit artificial to expect. Now it's tricky because like then you might be saying well then I'm not getting visibility and it's like well yeah maybe not to that VP which might be okay right in that email communication but the reality is that if you were

helping out on that and say that's something that work values and that should be considered for like you know part of how your reward cycle looks or whatever contribut buting to promotion. Maybe that's something they can highlight. Um I would expect that that's like a thing that is brought up in conversation, right? So if someone was like, "Okay, like let's talk about Bobby on the team." I'm really bad with making up names on the on the spot, by the way. You probably figured that out. Let's talk about Bobby. Um, you know, Bobb's been doing really good with delivering his feature work, contributing to a lot of really good designs, helping the team out. And then someone might say, oh, like how was he participating with like helping out for the live service? Well, actually, you know, Bobb's been really good at that. In fact, you remember that big incident?

Well, like Bobby was instrumental to that. Um, and you know, bringing visibility up that way. So, just because it doesn't happen, is this person flipping me off on a bike? That's really weird. I'm like pretty concerned. They're like shaking their head and like I think they're dancing now actually. So maybe it's okay. They were trying to come into this lane cuz I'm in the fast lane. And then I saw them. So, I like slowed down a little bit because the car in front of them was going too slow. So, I let them in and then they flipped me off. But, they're just dancing. This is a good time for my Insta 360. Anyway, you know, I think you don't have to like have it all on a single email to get the visibility. And sometimes like jumping levels like that, like up the chain, like it might not really matter.

But um it's hard to know in this context, right? If someone was really instrumental, I think it would be a great opportunity to call them out if it's not going to be rhyming off like, you know, 50 people and like all of their individual contributions in an email. It just like it kind of loses the the value that way. Um so personally, I would not I would not be taking that to heart like you're getting screwed over necessarily. Um, I would hope that if you have a good manager that they can bring this kind of stuff up in other conversations as well, so that it's not just, you know, the one time there was an email that was your only chance. Um, another thing too is like what the manager could do is like they could give praise to the team that was involved without necessarily calling out the individuals.

I think that could be helpful again just to draw attention that it's like, hey, this is a team effort. This bike is coming up behind me now. Man, I don't understand. So weird. Anyway, they're exiting, so I'm safe. I will live to see another day from the dancing motorcyclist. So, yeah. And like I wanted to give a little bit more context. I was trying to think about a good way to talk through this like um cuz I wanted to give some like real world examples. This is Oh, is that It's my friend from my gym that I used to go to. There's a really big truck, but there's a lot of big trucks around here. So, I never know it's him until I see behind I can see the what's it called? Uh like the vinyl on the back of his truck for his business, but he knows the car cuz there's not too many of these around.

Anyway, um yeah, I wanted to give like a a bit of a real world example, right? So, without getting into details, like yes, I work at Microsoft. we operate a live service. Um, yes, there are things that come up that aren't perfect, right? So, yes, I go on call. Yes, there are live sight incidents. This is a thing. It's part of uh operating a live service. And uh I've definitely been in conversations where like behind closed doors that people on the team are being acknowledged for, you know, for contributing, for really helping save the day, like for playing a really important role, for stepping up to go like lead an investigation and stuff like that. So like I just wanted to share with people that this kind of thing does happen. Now the reality is I can't speak on behalf of every manager or every group engineering manager whatever like what is squeaking in here?

My backpack is God that's going to drive me nuts. Um, I can't speak for everyone, right? Like you absolutely may have managers and people that are like they're going to hoard all the credit. Absolutely. And that sucks. But, um, I think, you know, if you have a good working relationship with your manager and you don't think they're a total piece of um, I would I would kind of remind you that like that's probably something you can expect is happening is that when there's conversations about performance, rewards, and things like that, how you contribute to the team, that these types of things happen. They should happen. So, hopefully that helps a little bit. Um, but really for this conversation, I just wanted to talk through this idea of visibility because this seemed like a I don't know, probably a pretty relatable thing for people, right? Manager seems to be getting credit for it.

Uh, regardless of whether or not they were trying to like take that credit versus it was just kind of given to them. So maybe some different angles to think through, but I wanted to kind of say again, right? Like curious from folks that watched all the way through to here, what do you think? Have you been in situations where you have a manager that's stealing credit or another person on your team or another team, they're taking all the credit? Do you find that you're like me where you're like trying to give other people credit and you're not giving yourself enough visibility? Just be curious to hear, right? Cuz I think this is the kind of thing that different people have different experiences with. And um I don't know, I always find that talking about this kind of stuff is like helpful because you see different angles on things.

If other people are sharing in the comments, then I don't know, you're in a position where you can see other people's experiences on this, too. It's not just not just Nick talking in his car about his own experiences, right? You can see other people have similar or different experiences that maybe give you different perspectives. So, I think that is it, folks. I'm just realizing it's like a million degrees right now and I'm wearing a sweater. So, I'm going to take that off as soon as I get out of this car. But anyway, reminder, the channel is driven by your questions. So, please leave questions in the comments so that I can make a video response for you. I'm happy to do that. If you're not comfortable leaving a public comment, send a message to Dev Leader on any social media channel you want. I do have code social media channels.

It's just that I generally look at all my Dev Leader stuff. Um, and I do have the codeccommute.com website up and running, but the um the question submission is not yet live. So, um, I will keep mentioning it and I will let you all know when it is live cuz I'll start saying submit your questions on there, but it's coming. Um, and uh, the code.com website was all vibecoded. Like legitimately I struggled through vibe coding it because I wanted to I wanted to see it done that way and then I made a YouTube video kind of or a couple YouTube videos explaining getting it put together and then uh iterating on some of the features with it. So um was fun to do and when I say fun I mean fun and frustrating at some points but you can go ahead and check it out. It's not beautiful, but that's the kind of thing that I think uh can iterate on.

I don't know how to tell. This is one of the things with getting AI to do this kind of stuff is like I don't know how to describe what makes a site aesthetic, right? So, I can't instruct it properly. I'm just like, make it look better, please. And then hope that it does it. So, we'll see. But I will be improving it over time. But the next thing for it is going to be the question submission. So check it out when it's ready and I will see you next time. Take care.