You know how in school, you’re often told to be quiet, to raise your hand, to wait your turn, that the teacher will notice you?

That doesn’t work at work.

Even when you have excellent managers, there will almost always be times when your accomplishments are invisible, your desires and goals are overlooked, and you feel like you’re getting screwed or left behind because the teacher didn’t notice you, sitting in the back with your hand up. You’re doing everything right, and getting passed over.

There are a lot of reasons for this. Sometimes, it’s because some kinds of work are totally invisible. Make a systemic change that improves everyone’s efficiency by 5%, but adds no new features? Likely to get overlooked. Sometimes being really great at your job means that your manager feels no “pain” coming from you or your area of responsibility, and so they start ignoring you because other things are painful and on fire, and those things need attention. And they begin to take your accomplishments and efficiency for granted.

That sounds like a “bad boss”, but honestly, it’s just “most bosses”.

Sometimes, you need to be more proactive and vocal about telling people what you want. I wanted a game design position, and busted my ass working toward it. Then got passed over. Why? Because when I talked to my boss, they *didn’t know I wanted the job*. I thought it was obvious – I was doing the work. But I didn’t *tell* them, and it took me years to realize that was my failing and not theirs. Once I told them, I got the next opening that came up.

Squeak, sometimes.

We’re told the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Then we see unqualified self-promoting hucksters squeak all the time and get rewarded, and feel resentful and bitter about it. That sucks. But sometimes, you need to make some noise.

It’s not that you need to inflate your accomplishments, or steal other peoples’ credit. That’ll all get back to you in a bad way in the end. But you need to be upfront and often more aggressive about letting people know about the work you’ve done, and what your goals are. It feels bad if you’re an introvert or used to “being recognized for your accomplishments”.

But think of it from the manager’s perspective. They need to try to understand what their employees are doing, and what kind of impact they’re having. A great manager does the work and takes the time to understand these things, and they’ll still overlook a bunch of stuff. All you want to do is help them form that understanding easily, and make sure that you can’t get overlooked. Done well, that makes their lives easier, not harder.

So yeah – make some noise.