by ninetyninenine | 2025-10-25 09:17:16+00:00
>But the team got the credit for being on top of things as a whole, not me. As it should be. >If only! 70% of the work I do is invisible small course corrections here and there across multiple orgs that fix things no one ever hears about but would be disasters down the road. >For the vast majority of what I do other people get 100% of the credit and my name is a small footnote at best.

Then your case is the exception, not the rule. To reach the level of principal, you generally have to be recognized for delivering high impact. Visibility is not just ego, it is how organizations perceive value. If your work earns you no visible credit, then no one really knows what you contribute. And if no one knows, how could anyone justify promoting you in the first place.

That is the ideal. In the ideal world, principals are elevated because they have a visible history of making the system better. They build frameworks that others rely on. They turn chaos into structure. They guide teams through impossible projects. Their reputation is not something they chase, it forms naturally from the wake of their work. In the ideal, visibility is the residue of real impact. People talk about them because their fingerprints are on every success.

But the corporate world rarely functions on ideals. In the real world, power accrues to whoever is closest to power. Titles often flow through social gravity more than technical merit. Some people climb because they deliver, others because they simply survive long enough to become unmovable. The higher you go, the more politics matters and the less evidence is required. Impact becomes subjective. Influence becomes reputation. And reputation, once earned, decays slowly.

In that reality, being invisible is not a liability. It can be a strategy. A principal who keeps their head down, avoids controversy, and stays on friendly terms with the right directors can outlast a dozen brilliant but abrasive engineers. The irrelevant survive because they are not a threat to anyone’s ego. The company quietly carries them, paying tribute to their title while forgetting their function.

Even the ideal, though, cannot escape the need for visibility. A principal who does great work in secret still fails the fundamental requirement of leadership: to be seen. Influence requires perception. You cannot guide a culture if nobody knows you are there. Quiet impact might keep systems healthy, but it does not create belief, and belief is what organizations promote. The best engineers learn to make their results legible. They translate their impact into stories others can tell. Without that, the work disappears into the background noise of everyone else’s effort.

So there are really two systems running in parallel. The first is the ideal, where promotion is earned through visible excellence and quiet authority. It demands both impact and awareness. The second is the reality, where promotion is often granted through time served, connections maintained, and an ability to avoid friction. The ideal rewards contribution; the reality rewards endurance.

You can succeed in either system, but they ask for different currencies. The ideal asks for mastery, courage, and the discipline to lead by example. The reality asks for patience, diplomacy, and the instinct to stay useful enough but never threatening. One builds respect. The other builds stability.

And most companies, if we are honest, prefer stability. Stability requires engineers to act the way you describe but talk the way I do. You talk about the ideal, you even believe you walk it, but because no one can see your impact, no one can tell the difference.

I've held the ranking of staff in many companies. I've interacted with principals, staff, and distinguished engineers and I can tell you visibility is required to fulfill the ideal. If visibility wasn't there, than the person earned the rank through other un-ideal means.