Stop telling your engineers to "work on visibility"

Every brag doc and skip-level hack is a symptom of a management system that isn't working.

👋 Hey, it’s Stephane. I share lessons, and stories from my journey to help you lead with confidence as an Engineering Manager. To accelerate your growth see: AI Interview Coach | 50 Notion Templates | The EM’s Field Guide | CodeCrafters | Get Hired as an EM | 1:1 Coaching

Paid subscribers get 50 Notion Templates, The EM’s Field Guide, and access to the complete archive. Subscribe now.

There’s popular career advice aimed at engineers: keep a brag doc, schedule skip-level 1:1s, post your wins in Slack, update your manager after every your big wins. The advice isn’t wrong, exactly. It works. Engineers who do this stuff consistently do get promoted faster.

But if you’re an engineering manager reading that list, you should feel uncomfortable. Because every item on that list is a symptom of a system you’re supposed to be running - and it’s clearly not working.

When an engineer has to build an entire personal marketing apparatus just to get recognised for doing their job, something has broken …