Writing solid code isn't your end goal. It's a starting point.
Your code is only valuable when it helps customers, reduces friction, or enables your team to move faster. Once you shift your mindset, common workplace frustrations make a bit more sense:
- Internal tools that no one adopts after launch
- Migrations that stall midway because their value is unclear
- Tech debt that keeps getting deprioritized
These issues reflect misalignment, not lack of skill. Real impact comes from aligning your work directly with what your team and customers genuinely need.
How Your Work Is Actually Judged
Engineers typically focus on code quality, velocity, or technical metrics. The rest of the company, however, assesses your work using broader business-focused standards:
- Did customer support calls decline noticeably after a release?
- Did onboarding completion rates meaningfully increase?
- Did system uptime or recovery times improve?
These metrics often dominate planning meetings, leadership check-ins, and reviews.
If your work isn't clearly linked to these outcomes, your contributions may feel invisible. Aligning with these business outcomes helps others appreciate the actual value of your efforts.
The Actions That Build Trust
You don't need to participate in leadership meetings to adopt a strategic mindset. Small, consistent shifts in your daily approach can make a big difference:
- Clarify the goal before diving into the implementation
- Keep stakeholders updated without being asked
- Follow up after release to better understand usage
Strategic thinkers also adapt on the fly. When speed is critical, they simplify. When a teammate is blocked, they make time. When a decision needs context, they write things down.
None of that shows up in a pull request, but it builds the kind of trust that changes your trajectory.
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How to Make Your Value Obvious
Your company won't notice the impact of your work unless you take the time to highlight it. Communicating results ensures your team understands what's effective and why.
Simple ways to highlight value:
- After resolving a recurring bug, share ticket reduction numbers with the support team.
- Demonstrate performance improvements, like faster load times, during team demos.
- Communicate improvements in user onboarding completion rates after you streamline a process.
Clear, visible results help teams make informed future decisions and build trust in your recommendations.
How Small Changes Make a Big Impact
Early in my career, I worked on a Facebook game where new users kept dropping out of the tutorial.
The fix wasn't complicated. I added a small arrow pointing to the next step in the flow.
That one change more than doubled our onboarding completion rate.
Real value frequently comes from targeted, practical improvements—not just major technical overhauls.
Consistently delivering measurable results earns trust, autonomy, and influence within your team.
Instead of struggling for visibility, you naturally become the trusted go-to person for significant decisions. You get involved earlier in the planning process, your voice holds more weight, and your recommendations gain credibility.
If you want more meaningful projects, greater influence, and more explicit purpose, focus on defining outcomes, demonstrating results, and consistently repeating this approach.
Is there a place in your current work where you could help make the outcome clearer, cleaner, or more useful?
Start there. And let me know how it goes—I read every reply.