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Answer by John L. Miller, software developer who has worked at Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Oracle:
Should you stay behind the scenes and work or be aggressive and self-promotional?
It all depends on your industry and your goals. I’ve worked in software at Microsoft and other large multinationals. I’ve managed individual contributors and managers of individual contributors. I’ve alternately been quietly productive and aggressive. I prefer being more visible.
If your goal is to quietly earn a paycheck with a minimum of fuss, then being behind the scenes is a good choice. Get your work done competently, do what you’re told, and ask someone in authority when you need more to do. Don’t hide, but don’t rush to volunteer.
There are risks with the quiet path. You’re not as valuable as someone who shows leadership in addition to doing what she’s told. You’re a cog, which makes you replaceable. If the company is doing well, there’s little danger. But when lean times come or it’s time to clean house …
Further, you don’t typically have a voice in where things are going, and you find out about their directions later, which can lead to feelings of powerlessness.
Someone who is self-promotional will more often succeed at advancing and getting more responsibility and compensation. If she works in the same place for very long (a few years), however, she needs to be better than simply noticeable; she needs the hard skills to back up her claims. Otherwise she is sidelined.
People who have both hard skills and the self-promotional, cross-team leadership qualities will go far. They will typically be better rewarded than other employees. They will be given more responsibility and be promoted more quickly. They will also often be more stressed, have more demands on their time, and experience increasingly fierce competition as their career matures. They succeed big or fail big.
It comes down to ambition and the need for recognition. If you need to be broadly recognized for your contributions, if you want to move up the corporate ladder, or if you want to move past a certain pay grade, you need to be visible and self-promoting.
Or you can be a cog, a happy individual contributor, for as long as the company is willing to let you.
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