One recurring theme that comes up in my mentoring conversations is visibility. Engineers ask how to make their work more visible, often with the goal of advancing their career.
Visibility is viewed as a necessary evil - a chore to be done in order to be noticed by management. But what if we flipped that narrative? The real question isn’t why you need to make your work visible - it’s can you afford not to?
The lone programmer
Let’s start with a seemingly simple question: What makes a great engineer?
The answer is equally simple - They solve the problem. As with most simple things, there is more hidden. Depending on the problem, solving may require deep knowledge in a specific field, being able to keep track of multiple work streams at the same time or convincing a group to agree on a way forward. So there is no single definition, no skill tree for what a great developer is. It depends.
The better the engineer, the bigger the problems they solve. And big problems are easier to tackle when doing it with a team. The days of the lone programmer that sits in a corner and has no contact to anybody, putting out lines of code and solving issues are long gone. These people may still exist, but if I have to make a bet on who is more productive, a team or a single person, my money is on the team. If that was not the case, engineering teams would not be the norm.
Coming back, what makes a great engineer then? They solve hard problems together with their team.
Know what your team is doing
When working in a team, you don’t want visibility - You need it. You need it to keep growing and to be efficient.
If you don’t share your work, the things that worked well and the things that did not work well, how would the team learn? Imagine stumbling across a flaky test that takes you a day to debug and fix. How would you react when you find out that your team mate actually had almost the same issue two days ago and spent a lot of time as well? I would be mad about the lost day that could have been 5 minutes of work. You don’t want to be that team mate, so you share with the team what happened - Creating visibility.
The same thing applies to good solutions, when my team found a good way to eliminate a race condition from a system we shared that with others. To get their feedback, to allow them to learn and to make them aware of what we have done. This kind of knowledge sharing is often not seen as creating visibility, but it is exactly that.
When engineers solve complex problems, they not only need to solve the problem technically but also need to communicate the impact of their solution to others—whether through documentation, presentations, or discussions. And it makes the whole team more productive, because you keep growing together.
Stay Motivated
Aside from getting recognition from management in the form of career advancement and supporting the team, making our work visible also helps us be more productive for another reason: motivation.
Being recognized by others is a strong intrinsic motivation. It feels good to be praised for work well done. Yet we rarely praise each other as often as we should. Because it is sometimes hard to see the great work others are doing if you are not aware. They need to give you the chance to know. And you need to give them a chance to know about your great work.
A great example I recently came across was a Slack message from an engineer that adapted a CI/CD pipeline. The message said that they made a minor change that results in the pipeline no longer running the full build when only internal documentation is updated - Since the team is writing ADRs directly in code, this saves 20 min for each document change. It’s not a game changer, but it is nice - And telling others about the change gave us the opportunity to thank the engineer for doing so.
These little gestures can make the receiver happy. And if they are happy, they are more motivated, which will result in higher productivity. So by sharing your work with others, you enable yourself to be more productive.
Conclusion
Visibility isn’t just about getting ahead in your career—it’s about enabling your team, fostering collaboration, and building a stronger, more motivated engineering culture. When we share our work, we amplify its impact, prevent wasted effort, and create opportunities for learning and recognition.
A great engineer isn’t just someone who solves problems in isolation; it’s someone who elevates the team by ensuring that knowledge flows freely, achievements are celebrated, and challenges become shared opportunities for growth.
So, the next time you hesitate to make your work visible, remember: it’s not a chore, but a cornerstone of effective teamwork and personal growth. Visibility isn’t just something you do—it’s how you thrive.