Get your work recognized: write a brag document (2019)

by momentmaker • 3 years ago

81 69 3 years ago

tonydev• 3 years ago

This is (unfortunately) great advice for large companies like Google, MSFT, Meta, where the internal mechanics of vying for and achieving promotion tend to drive behavior. Promo packets, calibration sessions, etc. OTOH, this is not good advice for any organization that maintains the capacity to (1) recognize and (2) value great work on merit. Better to spend your mental energy on doing something you and your colleagues deeply value, towards some shared goal.

ttymck4• 3 years ago

How do I find these organizations?

dandigangi2• 3 years ago

False. This is great for any job. Not saying it will always be successful but its a red flag if you do this and it has no impact on your compensation or promos.

Giant red flag.

Scubabear68• 3 years ago

This really depends on the organization and the manager. I have been in orgs where my manager knows very well what I am doing and my impact. A list like this would be fairly useless in that case.

I have worked for bigger corps where my manager has no idea what I do, especially consulting service companies. If I’ve worked with 7 clients over 3 different account groups, I am the only one who knows what those 7 clients are, and what I did for them. In those cases I do document my accomplishments. I have even gone as far as create a brief presentation for when I get a new manager.

This also differs from a CV not only in being more detailed, but also flagging things like “successfully worked with XYZ account manager, who is widely known to be difficult to work with”.

kasey_junk3• 3 years ago

I couldn’t disagree more. In healthy organizations your manager and your peers can observe your impact and and calibrate correctly.

It’s only on teams and organizations that are disfunctional that such artifacts are useful. If I have to keep a document for this I’m already looking for a new job.

bradknowles• 3 years ago

Not just one document for "achievements". Have a separate section for the big "bar raiser" moments.

If you don't keep this document constantly updated on a daily basis, you will quickly forget what you did and when, and then you won't have a document for any of your achievements.

You need to show this document to your manager and discuss each item on the list during your weekly 1-on-1 meetings.

Failure to do so is pretty much guaranteed to keep you from being promoted. Failure to be promoted is pretty much guaranteed to get you pushed out the door.

The U.S. Military has a concept of "too much time in grade", a.k.a., "up or out". The big companies have a similar process -- if you're not moving up the ladder fast enough in comparison to all the other people at your level, then you need to leave.

My biggest problem is recognizing when I've done anything worthy of writing down as an achievement.

marginalia_nu• 3 years ago

This is arguably good advice in most circumstances, even in private projects. Like it or not, self-promotion gets you noticed. Getting noticed grants you opportunities. Opportunities let you show off what you can do. Rinse and repeat.

Doesn't need to be embellished.

avikalp3• 3 years ago

So untrue. Creation of this kind of a brag document comes under the "retrospective" process - which is one of the core requirements of any culture that maintains capacity to recognise and value great work.

If you think you are able to do that in your company without a prioritised retrospective process, I would be very curious to know how that happens.

(From my experience of working in 10+ organisations, people who think so usually are lying to themselves that they are recognising and valuing great work. They are (without exception, in my experience) running a very political organisation. But I would love to be proved wrong.)

ttymck4• 3 years ago

Has anyone had success with this approach at startups?

StevePerkins• 3 years ago

If people don't already know what you're doing at a startup, then you have REALLY chosen the wrong startup!

I have no doubt that the LinkedIn addicts and self-help book cultists will swoop down to insist that this advice applies to all companies. But really, it is most heavily tilted toward tech giants and large enterprises.

mhss7• 3 years ago

In my experience this is more important at large companies, because your work is more likely to get lost in the noise. At startups work is often much more visible and perhaps there's less of a need for this, but not a bad idea to do it either way and you can KISS, ask for a quarterly check-in with your manager to go over your work accomplishments, ask for feedback, etc;

jdudkeidnn5• 3 years ago

While I agree with and appreciate the pragmatism of this, I think there’s a fundamental problem if an employee has to report their work to their manager (or employer, etc). Management that is not deeply aware of what their reports are doing is either unnecessary or incompetent.

I think this trend is mostly a result of management looking to squeeze more labor out of their reports for the same price. As soon as you make working on braggable things your reports problem, you have a lot less work to do and your reports have (more) perverse incentives to both overwork and ignore “unbraggable” work. These incentives are more aligned with contract work, not full time employment - the former usually being much pricier.

ttymck4• 3 years ago

I strongly agree with this intuition, and I worry that we software engineers are gaslighting each other into believing otherwise.

its-summertime• 3 years ago

I go to a mechanic, ask them to give my car a look at. They do so, and then give me a report of the work to be done.

jdudkeidnn5• 3 years ago

I’m not quite following…this would be equivalent to a manager asking a dev what work needs to be done (I think). Which is good and healthy - and requires the manager to understand the report (as well as have a record of it, so no need for a brag doc). If they’re unable to understand it, they’re not suited to evaluate that report.

Nearly every time I’ve needed work done on a car different mechanics give me different lists. It’s pretty expensive when I’m unable to evaluate those reports because I don’t understand cars.

xboxnolifes2• 3 years ago

Managers aren't "going to a mechanic". They are managing the entire shop. If they are managing the shop and don't know what the mechanics are doing, then they aren't doing much managing.

mhss7• 3 years ago

Management that is not deeply aware of what their reports are doing is either unnecessary or incompetent.

I am biased as a manager, but, for context, I was a senior IC for a long time before management though. I also transitioned first being a TL/manager "deeply aware" (reviewing most PRs, coding large parts myself, etc) and then eventually as a more traditional manager.

Sometimes management can be unnecessary or incompetent, but also you're excluding the possibility of companies trying to find a reasonable organizational balance of management costs. A manager that is deeply aware or involved, is also a manager that cannot manage more than maybe 5-6 people. If you want a manager to manage more people and focus in coaching, cross-team dependencies, unclogging stuck projects, roadmap building, etc; you rarely can have a manager doing IC work still and that means they cannot be involved in every PR or conversation their team is involved. If you give autonomy to the team members to make decisions and progress, by definition you won't be involved nor "deeply aware" all the time. Your 1:1s are an opportunity to address this divergence and a brag document helps feed your 1:1 with your manager to bring them up to date.

bastardoperator2• 3 years ago

They're called reports for a reason, they report back to you. When you hire capable professionals, they tell you what time it is and what support they need. The entire purpose of management is to ensure success of the IC and team not to be a mind reader or micromanager.

zallarak• 3 years ago

Ironically I think these types of exercises are part of the problem at major software companies; terrible efficiency and over hiring.

Because you need to “brag” to get rewarded, everyone ambitious has a list. And each list is nearly impossible for middle managers to evaluate. Someone may solve a hardcore engineering problem that has no business impact. Another person might redo some docs. Someone may create a design system version. Lots of token achievements, but not real work.

Real work should stand on its own and competent managers should be able to identify it. Mediocre managers rely on lists, so then people start showing up to work and making lists.

bananapub• 3 years ago

everyone ambitious has a list. And each list is nearly impossible for middle managers to evaluate.

have you worked at one of the megacorps you're talking about?

everyone has a list, because their manager gets them to write one, and it's very possible for managers to evaluate them because that is their job and they are largely reviewing their direct reports while getting bollocked by their peer managers.

mhss7• 3 years ago

Ironically I think these types of exercises are part of the problem at major software companies; terrible efficiency and over hiring.

They're not the problem they're a consequence of the problems.

Because you need to “brag” to get rewarded, everyone ambitious has a list. And each list is nearly impossible for middle managers to evaluate.

This will be read mostly by your manager not a middle manager. It's up to your manager then to represent your accomplishments to middle managers and above. Good thorough middle managers will still be able to assess them though.

Another person might redo some docs. Someone may create a design system version. Lots of token achievements, but not real work.

Competent managers can distinguish between those, if you don't have competent managers that's the problem, not the "brag doc".

Real work should stand on its own and competent managers should be able to identify it. Mediocre managers rely on lists, so then people start showing up to work and making lists.

No because even competent managers have often a wide span at large companies and cannot be involved in the day to day details for all the work their team does and things can fall through the cracks. This would only be solvable by having first line managers have less reports or less manager overhead so they can be immersed in their team's work. I have done both, but at large companies is often not possible to be immersed in the work of all of your reports, no matter how competent you are. As mentioned in the article, even you often forget what you have done last week.

jdudkeidnn5• 3 years ago

Competent managers can distinguish between those

How do you do this without deep knowledge of what your reports are doing?

dustingetz• 3 years ago

how can we recognize a competent manager? serious question. (Will all the incompetent managers please raise their hand)

tail_exchange• 3 years ago

If rewriting your docs and solving these hardcore engineering problems have zero impact, then you shouldn't do them in the first place. If these changes are important, then they do have impact, but the engineers may not know how to communicate it.

Learning to communicate impact is difficult, but it's a really good skill to have. Do these doc changes/engineering problems help reduce KTLO? Does it reduce on-call toil? Is it going to bring security patches? Is it going to make the system more efficient and save money? Are these frequently asked features? Do you have other people (preferably seniors) who can vouch in favour of these changes? All these things are measurable and can be communicated as impact.

There are instances where a change has 0 impact and it's still nice to have, for example, fixing a typo in the internal docs. But these changes are usually very easy to do (take less than 5 minutes), and it won't affect your other tasks. On the other hand, spending several days fixing typos everywhere may seem like a great idea, but if nobody cares about them and it does not move any needles, then you are just wasting the company's time and money. The effort you put in these no-impact changes should be a defining factor for prioritization.

closeparen• 3 years ago

Tech firms and their systems are enormously complex and interrelated. Most business impact doesn’t accrue neatly to one person. To the extent that it does, you have just bizarrely chosen to aggregate a large number of independent startups under one roof vs. build an actual organization with specialization or economies of scale. At best equal to the sum of its parts, when it should be greater than.

faeriechangling• 3 years ago

Mediocre managers rely on lists

They’re just a data structure… and a useful one at that… competent managers work in diverse ways. Schedules are made up of lists of information, do 10x managers not use schedules?

icholy• 3 years ago

At my company we have a shared "wins" document where team members add entries for things they're proud of. It's annoying to maintain, but it's definitely been helpful when asking for a raise.

User232• 3 years ago

I don't keep a brag document, but I do keep a daily journal of what I've done. It certainly makes 1:1s considerably less stressful. And it does make it easier to pad out a promo packet too.

ttymck4• 3 years ago

Are your 1:1s primarily a way for you to share what you did last week?

User232• 3 years ago

It depends is usually a kind of lame answer, but... it depends.

Yes, generally speaking since I tend to work with a fairly low level of supervision, my manager wants to know what I've been up to. And what I'd like to do, and what the rough spots were, and where I might be able to benefit from help. All good things to have journaled! We also look at the bigger picture like setting me up for success at the next review and promotion.

Are your 1:1s primarily something else?

euroderf• 3 years ago

Marketers shall inherit the Earth. Including self-marketers.

flir2• 3 years ago

That's a CV.

striking• 3 years ago

Love this article so much. The only thing I'd add is that Slack is a really nice way to collect braggable items. Just forward brags to a private channel. Invite your manager if you want.

justinlloyd4• 3 years ago

9,999 people out of 10,000 telling you "don't do this, if your manager doesn't know what you did 10 months ago, the manager isn't doing their job" would have difficulty telling me what they had for breakfast last Tuesday.

Keep a log of your work. In fact, keep a log of everything you do. It gives you a sense of accomplishment, it gives you an idea of where your year went, and it lets you refer back to key highlights during your negotiations for a raise or promotion.

You think your memory is bad? There is not an organization out there that will ever recognize anything you ever did beyond the last sprint planning session or Jira ticket you closed. I've yet to work for a manager, ever, that hasn't required a hard push to hit a deadline for months on end, only to then forget that effort and opine that you took off early on Friday. They'll remember the extended lunch you took yesterday, they'll forget you worked 19 days straight without a day off, whether it is a large tech organization or a small start-up of six people.

I am sure many of you will no doubt attempt to regale me with tales of awesome managers who made sure to give you "atta boy" pats and remembered that thing you did when it came to year-end review, but those stellar managers are few and far between, and most of us will never get to encounter such a rare shiny creature.

So don't be like all those times in college when you thought to yourself "I don't need to write this down, I'll remember it", because you won't.

jdudkeidnn5• 3 years ago

Keep a log of your work. In fact, keep a log of everything you do

This is exactly how contract work is done. If you’re doing this as a full time employee you’re underpaid (assuming it’s for your employer - doing it for yourself is a great idea!)

ChrisMarshallNY2• 3 years ago

I had an employee that did this (I was his manager), and I was quite grateful.

He wasn't our most productive or "rockstar" engineer, but he was highly organized, and I appreciated it.

justinlloyd4• 3 years ago

I do it only for myself, and as supporting evidence when it comes time to negotiations, or a CYA moment, and if it has reached a CYA moment, I am usually putting one foot out the door anyway because the working relationship is probably deteriorating.

nrr3• 3 years ago

As something of a corollary, set a timer to go off every 15 minutes (or otherwise regularly enough that it isn't obtrusive to you) such that you're poked to checkpoint what you're doing throughout the day. This was necessary when I worked for a professional services organization and had to fill out timesheets, but I've kept the practice since.

I'm low tech and prefer to use a notecard with a grid on it, the squares of which bear enough space for only a word or two maximum, but you can just as easily use a spreadsheet or something fancier.

It makes putting together a better summary at the end of your day a lot easier, and it also helps with future forays into time estimation since you have a clearer picture of how long things take.

It also helps show when it's time to go take a walk.

troad• 3 years ago

> Keep a log of your work. In fact, keep a log of everything you do.
Set a timer to go off every 15 minutes

I realise this won't be a popular point of view with the folk who are always 'life-hacking' or what not, but my goodness that sounds mortifying to me.

I have worked in professional services too, and I had to bill for my time in 6 minute intervals, but I found it much easier to just switch between set of running timers when I changed tasks. No need to put together any timesheets at the end of the day, just note/submit the final times. I think a repeating 15 minute timer would literally cause me to go insane.

I'm all for people staying on top of their schedules, but I doubt that for most people the benefits of something like recurrent 15 minute timers could ever outweigh the costs (concentration, flow, mental health).

justinlloyd4• 3 years ago

I think setting a timer for every 15 miunutes is the perfect way to destroy your productivity, especially for when doing deep thinking type of work. I use the Pomodoro technique if I am unfocused and cannot make a start, which happens on occasion, but once I'm going, I turn that timer off.

avikalp3• 3 years ago

Every 15 minutes would be excessive. I follow Pomodoro, so that kind of check points my progress. But when I document my daily progress, this rarely comes in handy.

The daily update in the spreadsheet is extremely useful though.

dang• 3 years ago

Get your work recognized: write a brag document (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32236407 - July 2022 (1 comment)

Get your work recognized: write a brag document (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28612015 - Sept 2021 (3 comments)

Get your work recognized: write a brag document - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25727976 - Jan 2021 (1 comment)

Get your work recognized: write a brag document - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20665225 - Aug 2019 (78 comments)

bad_username• 3 years ago

I started doing this a few years ago and my career dynamics markedly improved. To reduce the brag factor, I present it as voluntary status updates, and also I include lessons learnt to make it more sincere.

randall• 3 years ago

This is why I left meta.

Literally.

Performance reviews give me crippling anxiety.

avikalp3• 3 years ago

This looks great. We have a ritual in our company (Vibinex) where we get everyone to fill a self-evaluation form every 6 months with 4 questions:

1. What did you achieve in last 6 months? 2. What did you plan but were not able to achieve (and why)? 3. What do you plan to accomplish in the next 6 months. 4. Any thing else you want us to know.

This is very similar to the brag document you mentioned in terms of utility (and it is part of our performance review process).

Get your work recognized: write a brag document (2019)

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