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Apr 28, 2024

Some time ago I asked the 3 managers I have at Amazon:

“Do you see me as too cocky?” “Am I more talk than action?”

Now the question is, why was I afraid of this?

I promoted my work more than other people do. This created the fear I may be doing it wrong.

I asked

for advice on how to share your guilt-free.

Basma:

I think unlike what the phrase “sharing your work” sounds (cocky, selfish… etc,) it’s actually much more than that.

It’s a strong tool for excellent knowledge sharing. This tool is useful because it helps teach others, to help others grow.

Along with sharing your work, you should also share your mistakes. In the spirit of sharing good knowledge. To allow others to avoid your mistakes, or use the same fixes that worked for you.

On a professional level, I started getting positive feedback when I started sharing knowledge and more updates about my work. People regard this as an excellent communication tool!

On a personal level, I think sharing knowledge gives great satisfaction feeling. And, it of course makes your work more recognised.

Don’t be a Dark Knight, be the Light Knight!

In today’s letter, we’ll discuss the following ideas that you can apply now to make your work scream “good” recognition:

Leverage demo sessions to your advantage
Share your design before implementation.
Use The Retro Kudos to Your Advantage.
Share your work in 1:1s with your manager.
Post like a pro in cross-team Slack channels

#1 Demo Sessions Can Be Your Winning Card

❓ What do we mean by demo sessions?

Demo sessions are meetings held in a group of teams to share knowledge. They can go from formal project demos to sharing a cool productivity hack you just found.

⭐️ How to best apply it

Prepare: You must spend time preparing for the session before you do it. Doesn’t matter how much you prepare, it will depend on the complexity and your familiarity with the topic. It can go from 10 minutes to a few hours.
Confidence: You need to be confident in your presentation. And, confidence comes from good preparation.
Awareness of the details: Try to be as aware as you can of the small details on your knowledge-sharing topic. This prepares you for possible questions. Don’t obsess about the details though.
Keep it simple and concise: Don’t overcomplicate your demo. Remove the unnecessary bits. Only include the most relatable bits.
Don’t be perfect: Don’t try too much. Don’t just put the great stuff and leave out the challenges, the mistakes, and the good stories. People love a good story, but remember a good story is not a perfect story!

🏆 Your Wins

Increased Visibility: Gain visibility across teams.
Networking: People know where you’re experience lies, they will reach out to you.
Learning: You will learn new things as you prepare and teach others. You’ll likely find people asking questions, and opening interesting doors for discoveries.

🫡 How we applied it

Fran:

On the main project my team worked on last year, I volunteered to do a demo in multiple demo sessions: skip-level manager level, all-Spain level, organization level… I didn’t author every part of what I explained. But I was the one increasing his visibility the most.

In another situation, I did a demo in Madrid sharing a cool tool that allowed for internal use (an AI writing assistant). I had done zero work preparing, but I got grateful words from a lot of people whom I never talked with because they saw the value of the tool, and they associated my face and my name with it.

Basma:

I recently led a knowledge-sharing session on project scoping. I've been exploring various perspectives on it, documenting all my findings, and suggesting the next steps in a document. I then shared it with the team.

This act in itself is a form of knowledge sharing, but I saw it as an opportunity to present the document's contents directly to the team.

Sometimes, it's easier to hash out certain matters in real time, so that's exactly what I did. And it was a resounding success! The meeting sparked insightful discussions.

The team asked interesting questions that hadn't crossed my mind. Some even praised my ideas, seeing them as practical to implement.

If I hadn't organized these sessions, I would have missed out on valuable feedback about my presentation style and the distinction between business and technical scoping ideas.

#2 Share Your Design and Brainstorm Before Implementation

❓ What’s this work before implementation?

Many times, we rush into implementation only to later regret it because we haven't thoroughly thought through the solution.

One effective way to defend against this is to share your design before diving into implementation.

You can achieve this by leading a session where you share the various options you've considered, along with their respective pros and cons.

⭐️ How to best apply it:

Share the design before the session: this will give people some time to go through your design and prepare any questions or ideas.
Encourage people to participate: during the meeting make sure you’re not the only one who’s talking. Ask others what they think. And, REALLY listen, without interruption.

🏆 Your Wins

Time-saving: Saves you from redoing your work.
Increases your credibility: When team members find you eager to implement “the right solution” not just “any” solution, they will trust you more.
Exposure to your thinking process: This will make your colleagues understand you better. How you think and how you communicate. This will lead to better communication ways with your team!

🫡 How we applied it

Fran:

Not only have these sessions but record the outcomes. There’s nothing more painful than a question from someone having a valid challenge when you are already committed to a solution.

Ensure everyone’s voice is heard in these early sessions and record the decisions taken. I recommend finding some ADR (Architectural Decision Records) format and using it for those key decisions taken.

When people challenge later on in the project, their intentions are not to disrupt your work, but to understand that the alternatives were considered and we took a conscious tradeoff.

Basma:

I've been actively leading many such sessions over the past few months because I've realized I tend to rush into solutions prematurely. I'm working on a plan to consciously strike a balance between speed and correctness.

In my experience, I've found these sessions to be invaluable for communicating my thought process, identifying potential pitfalls in my solutions, and being exposed to alternative ideas.

Since I started hosting these design-sharing sessions before implementation, I've received positive feedback.

Sometimes, the changes aren't significant enough to need a meeting, so I simply share Slack posts outlining the different options I've considered.

#3 Use Retros to Your Advantage

❓ What’s a retro’s kudos?

Retro boards have a “Kudos” section to celebrate accomplishments. It’s great when people acknowledge you. But if they don’t, they may have just missed it.

Don’t overuse this tip, only use this when you feel you are proud to deliver something.

⭐️ How to best apply it:

Kudos board: Use it to say you are proud of certain work you did.
Share your pride: Retros also have a “Happy” section (whatever that is titled,) use it to say you fixed or delivered something. This way you won’t feel braggy and you will make others aware of your work.

🏆 Your Wins

Recognition: Get your work recognized by people who were not involved with your work.
Feedback: People will usually tell you how they found your contribution to this piece of work you shared.

🫡 How we applied it

Fran:

Once I created a few automations that reduced our sprint planning and grooming meetings time. I always had this playful tone of being a power user of any tool I touch. When I noticed people were writing only about project milestones and not process improvements, I wrote: “Kudos to myself for reducing sprint planning and grooming from 2 hours to 20 minutes thanks to automation rules.”

The key is to have a playful tone. Don’t make it sound egocentric.

Basma:

I have once or twice said that I am proud to have built XYZ or happy that I fixed a bug.

#4 Share Your Work Through 1:1s With Your Manager

❓ What 1-1s are all about?

Your 1:1 with your manager and skip-level is to focus on career growth, not on status updates.

It’s inevitable to talk about your recent work.

Follow a template, like Progress, Plans, Problems (PPP) to quickly give the most important work since the last meeting. This ensures you gain visibility and only spend 5 minutes on it.

⭐️ How to best apply it

Prepare: It’s easier if you keep a work log, refer to my previous article “🔱 3+1 strategies to track your achievements”
Document: share a document with your manager that have measurable actionable goals for your growth. Under every goal, make a section for “how I applied it”. Update this section, and go through it with your manager in 1-1s.

🏆 Your Wins

Manager recognition: Your manager gains visibility of your work throughout the entire year.
Manager guidance: Get early feedback from your manager on whether your work contributes to your goals. To know what you should keep doing, and what you should improve.

🫡 How we applied it:

Fran

Some managers want to have a shared doc where we keep track of the agenda and meeting notes. Others would rather just talk. I have both kinds of 1:1s right now.

Regardless of that, I keep my internal note to quickly bring up to date on the things I’ve done and the things I’m up to. This helps with visibility, validating my intentions, and getting any advice or support I may need.

Basma

I keep a shared document between me and my manager. I open it every 1-1 or when I need to. To track my progress on the plan we’ve set for my growth.

In every goal, I keep a bullet point list of how I tried to apply it. And, I have attached links to the work as future evidence.

This also works great for me when I write my yearly self-review.

To my surprise, my manager always doesn’t know about quite a few of the work I mention. So, it’s a win-win!

#5 Post Like a Pro In Cross-Team Slack Channels

❓ What are those Slack channels for?

We all have Slack channels with people in the same building, same organization, or same interests.

Share knowledge in those, and you’ll become well known in that topic.

⭐ How to best apply it?

Post regularly on the developer tips or tech-related channels.

Pick an interest you have, you’ll find a channel for it. Post there.

Share your knowledge in company-wide tech update channels.

🏆 Your Wins

Networking: You will likely get people to talk to you, ask you questions, or just be interested in your work. Networking is very powerful in our career, it opens doors for potential.
Company-Wide Recognition: Get your work and knowledge recognized across the whole company not just your team.

🫡 How we applied it:

Fran

I always try to share learnings with the widest reasonable audience possible. It’s more scalable than sharing in private messages. Remember the AI writing assistant? I shared in Slack channels too, and it validated it was good content for a demo. I didn’t apply this directly to grow my newsletter, but I have seen it multiple times.

Jordan Cutler

started a #jordans-frontend-learnings channel. Another example is Jorge Pando, he started with an internal Slack channel at Amazon, then he did workshops and an internal newsletter, then an external newsletter.

Basma

I make an effort to stay consistent across the company's tech-wide channels. I usually do that by sharing our team's big wins. I frame it as a team effort.

But honestly, I have been doing such a bad job of staying active on other tech channels where AI and tools are discussed.

But, I've noticed folks who are really active there and how much recognition they get throughout the company. Their posts about learning new tools or sharing developer tips are such great resources for learning.

🎬 Final Words

In conclusion, there's no one-size-fits-all approach to gaining visibility for your work.

Experiment with the various ideas presented in this post and apply what works best for you.

Feeling ashamed about sharing your work is often more about your perception of reality than your actual actions.

Remember, the solution isn't to stop promoting your work but rather to encourage others to share theirs as well. You're not alone in this!

It's not a race to perfection. Make sure to showcase the struggles, mistakes, and challenges along with the eventual successes. This helps people better connect with your work.

We hope this inspires you to share more of your outstanding work and helps you garner even more recognition within your team or company!

Thanks,

for collaborating with me on this one! Make sure to check out

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👏 Weekly applause

My good friend
Alexandre Zajac
launched his already successful newsletter
Hungry Minds
in Substack! If you feel overwhelmed keeping up with all the AI news going on, read his weekly digest every Monday. It’ll save you tons of time.
My 25-Year Engineering Career Retrospective by
The Hybrid Hacker
. A reflection on multiple activities that compound over time. These are what I like calling “core activities“, those that you take as habits and their results come after doing them for long enough.
Most micromanagers are blind to being seen as one by
Leading Developers
. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. The biggest micromanager is the person who cares too much about the project and about others. I think the same applies to Senior engineers. You have to let others work and you can’t be in all places. This breaks the trust and autonomy of others.

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