I've seen brilliant engineers plateau.
Great at coding. Smart in design reviews. But somehow, they never got the big projects. Never got promoted to staff.
The difference? Other engineers didn't want to work with them.
The people who grow aren't always the loudest. They're the ones who understand:
What gets you hired: Technical skills, interview performance, resume credentials, LeetCode score.
What gets you promoted: People trust you with critical systems. People want you on their team. People listen to you in meetings. People advocate for you when you're not there.
Building this takes time. Years. But it compounds like interest.
Forget personal branding. Forget Twitter followers. Focus on:
Deliver on time, without surprises.
Week 1, Monday: "I'll have it by Friday"
Week 1, Friday: "Done, here's the PR"
vs.
Week 1, Monday: "I'll have it by Friday"
Week 1, Thursday: "Actually, I need more time"
Week 1, Friday: "Still working on it"
Week 2, Tuesday: "Found more scope"
Week 2, Friday: "Almost there..."
If you say Friday, it's Friday. If it's slipping, you say so Monday, not Thursday night.
Know your systems.
2 AM production incident:
Engineer A:
"Where are the logs?"
"What service is this?"
"Who owns this?"
"Can someone help me find the dashboard?"
Engineer B:
"Check the auth-service, it's hitting rate limits
on the identity provider. I'll bump the quota.
Here's the runbook: [link]"
Who do you want on-call?
When production breaks at 2 AM, be the person who understands what's happening. Not the one asking "where are the logs?"
Share credit.
Bad: "I shipped the new checkout flow"
Good: "We shipped it. Sarah figured out the race condition,
Mike handled the load testing, I connected the pieces."
Nothing destroys reputation faster than taking credit for team work. Nothing builds it faster than giving it away.
Handle feedback well.
Instead of "That's not a bug" — try "Good catch, I'll fix that."
Instead of "You don't understand" — try "Let me explain my thinking."
Instead of "It works on my machine" — try "Let's debug together."
Instead of "That's how it was designed" — try "Fair point, let's reconsider."
Listen without getting defensive. Thank people. Act on what makes sense.
Trust builders:
Trust destroyers:
Once reputation is established, opportunities find you:
Year 1-3: You apply for interesting projects
Year 3-5: People ask you to join interesting projects
Year 5+: People advocate for your promotion
when you're not in the room
Year 7+: People follow you to new companies
Your manager's opinion matters. But 10 engineers saying "I want to work with this person" matters more.
Takes years to build: Consistent delivery. Helping teammates. Technical credibility. Collaborative attitude. Calm under pressure.
Takes weeks to destroy: One missed critical deadline. One thrown-under-bus moment. One arrogant design review. One political play. One public meltdown.
It takes years to build. One bad quarter to damage.
Your code ships once. Your reputation ships with you everywhere.
— blanho
You don't have to prove you deserve the role. You already got it.
Stop chasing job titles. Start chasing knowledge. The title doesn't make you competent.
Everyone talks about clean code. Nobody talks about the feature that never shipped because someone was too busy renaming variables.