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Because nobody rewards invisible effort.
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I used to think silence was strength. When shit hit the fan, I didn’t talk about it. I got to work. Head down, headphones on, fixing the problem quietly while everyone else stayed in meetings. I believed the work would speak for itself. That results would earn me respect.
It didn’t. Silence cost me trust. It made people nervous. Leaders weren’t sure if I was on it or completely lost.
Even when I was busting my ass, all they saw was the absence of updates. The absence of presence.
They didn’t hear from me until the fire was already out, and by then, the damage was done. The part they remembered wasn’t the recovery. It was the silence while things were breaking.
That’s the part nobody teaches you. If you’re great at solving problems but bad at showing your work, you’re replaceable. Not because you’re not good. But because you’re invisible.
And invisible people don’t get promoted.
The more senior you get, the more silence looks like risk.
When I was still a senior engineer, I thought visibility was a distraction. Posting updates, joining check-ins, sharing blockers. I avoided all of it. I told myself, “Real work happens in the terminal, not in Slack.”
Then I got handed a massive project.
We were doing a system-wide migration. I owned a core pipeline that fed progress data into the executive dashboards. The whole thing hinged on it. Without that pipeline, no one could track migration velocity. No one could make resourcing calls. Everything was bottlenecked behind my work.
And my pipeline started failing.
The staging environment couldn’t handle the load. The velocity blew up column widths. I was deep in debugging mode, rewriting pieces, testing new patterns, running validation over and over again.
And the whole time I went quiet.
No standups. No async updates. No “Hey, here’s what’s going wrong.”
Just me. Alone. Trying to solve it before anyone noticed.
Silence feels safe. But it reads like incompetence.
Most data engineers grow up inside the code. You and I build trust by shipping things that work. Fixing what breaks. Making pipelines run smoother than yesterday.
We assume people will notice. That results will speak. That the craft is enough.
It’s not.
We’re taught that talking about problems makes us look weak. That if we admit something broke under our watch, we’ll lose credibility.
So we stay quiet.
We hide the bugs, bury the blockers, and chase the fix in isolation. It feels responsible. Noble, even.
But to everyone else, silence looks like you don’t get it. Like you’ve gone missing. Like someone else needs to step in and figure things out for you.
And once that doubt creeps in, it sticks. Especially with leadership. They don’t reward effort they can’t see. They reward presence. They reward clarity. They reward momentum. And if you’re not providing it, someone else will.
I thought I was fixing the problem. They thought I was the problem.
That pipeline failure became a full-time firefight. I worked nights. Skipped meetings. Ignored messages.
I kept telling myself, “Just one more fix. Then I’ll update everyone.” But that moment kept slipping further away. And the silence kept growing louder.
One morning, my boss called me into a meeting with the VP of Operations. I didn’t know what it was about. Thought maybe they needed clarity on the numbers.
Instead, the VP looked straight at me and said, “I just want to make sure you understand how critical this project is. We can’t afford delays.”
That hit like a truck.
Of course I understood. I was living in the logs. But they didn’t know that. To them, it looked like I didn’t get it. Like I didn’t care.
That moment rewired something in me. Not because I got in trouble. But because I realized I had made myself invisible during the most important project of my career.
A few months later, I applied for a promotion. My manager said no. He referenced situations like that one. He said trust had been broken, and it hadn’t fully recovered.
He wasn’t wrong.
Talking about problems isn’t weakness. It’s leadership.
The thing I didn’t understand back then was simple.
Transparency builds trust.
Not perfect uptime. Not solo heroics. Not staying late and suffering in silence. Just showing up, sharing the truth, and making the work visible.
Every leader I know would rather hear “we’ve hit a blocker, here’s what I’m doing about it” than find out through backchannel panic two weeks later. Updates don’t make you look bad. They make you look in control.
Even bad news, delivered clearly and early, makes you trustworthy.
That’s when people start leaning on you. That’s when they start involving you in bigger bets. Not because you fixed everything, but because they saw you own it.
Now, I don’t just post when things are going well. I post when shit’s stuck. I show my thinking. I surface risk early. I make the work real, so people can trust it, and trust me.
That’s the shift.
Visibility isn’t fluff. It’s the foundation of influence.
The 3-line update that builds trust (even when things are breaking)
Here’s a dead-simple framework to share progress without sounding like you’re making excuses.
You use this when:
You’re blocked
You’re running behind
You’re still figuring things out
This is the update that makes stakeholders feel calm instead of concerned.
1. Context
What was supposed to happen? What’s the original goal?
Today’s task was finalizing the pipeline updates for the schema migration.
2. Current reality
What’s actually happening? What’s the risk or blocker?
During testing, we hit column width issues in staging that are causing failures under load.
3. Response plan
What are you doing about it? When’s the next update?
I’m testing a new normalization strategy and running performance checks now. Will post a progress update by 5PM.
That’s it.
No rambling. No pretending everything’s fine. Just honest, clear, forward-moving info. It gives everyone what they want: confidence that someone is steering the ship.
Even better? These updates document your leadership. They become receipts.
Want to go deeper? I’ll link your playbook post here:
Get the full conversation scripts here
Final thoughts
You’re great at your job. That’s not the problem.
The problem is, nobody sees it.
You stay heads-down. You ship quietly. You think if you just fix the issue fast enough, you’ll earn respect. That your work will speak for itself.
But it doesn’t.
Because perception drives trust. And trust drives opportunity.
If you’re not visible, you’re not considered. Not for leadership. Not for budget. Not for the next big project.
When a critical system fails, and you go dark for three days to fix it alone, you think you’re being responsible. But everyone else starts to worry.
They don’t know if you’re stuck or just not prioritizing it. They start pulling in backups. They start asking questions without you in the room.
And when it’s time to talk promotions, they don’t remember your late nights. They remember your silence.
Here’s the hard truth:
Politics isn’t manipulation. It’s perception management.
And if you don’t manage it, someone else will.
You don’t need to brag. You don’t need to become a people pleaser.
But you do need to own your narrative.
Be the one who shows up early. Names problems clearly. Shares progress without being asked.
Because great engineers solve problems. But visible engineers get promoted.
Thanks for reading,
Yordan
PS: Are you serious about stepping into career development? My Stakeholder Influence System will teach you everything you need to become a strategic data partner and get more buy-in.
"Politics isn’t manipulation. It’s perception management"👌🏻