what went wrong 1

[Qo]

"I was always the quiet one"
......as my mother says.

am still quiet I guess..me and my work. But now its affecting me.

Here's my situation.

I joined on the same day with some other colleagues..all had same educational qualification and same work experience.

now I find that all of them have moved ahead with respect to both salary and job position. and I am left
trying to figure out what went wrong or whether I was downright incompetent.

I dont think I am incompetent as I always come up with the brightest ideas in the group meetings, but problem is always that someone adds a few of his own things to my idea and in the end he ends up with all the credit.

This has been for quite a while now.Problem is my efforts and hardwork are never noticed by the higher ups.

so my question is --
How do I get my work noticed?
How do I prevent others from getting credit for my work?

Thanks

 

[onpnt]

Hi There,
There's not much anyone is going to be able to tell you here anyhow how to fix your problems with not moving ahead in regards to self-presence. That is something you really need to get going on your own. Not sure the topic is the right one for the forums on this being something other then a technical developmental issue.
The main thing I can say is that if you don't let yourself be heard then no one will hear you. Let everyone know what you're doing. Talk about what you're doing and the accomplishments you've found on a daily basis. If you found a solution to a coding problem then walk over to the cube next to you and tell someone. The rewards of just communicating your good work is far more generous then sitting there doing a good job tight lipped.


_________________________________________________________
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$Nstr = ereg_replace("sleep","coffee",$str); echo $Nstr;}

http://www.onpntwebdesigns.com

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[AIXSPadmin]

Before I was laid off a Project Manager said to me, "you are always so quiet, I never hear anything from you, you just do your work. But the rest of them are so noisy and I don't think they do anything most of the time."

My manager said to me, "you are too quiet, you are not a team player."

Now, excuse me, since when does the one with most of the knowledge and actually doing work and being quiet (I am an introvert, always have been) vs. acting like you're in grade school have anything to do with being a team player? In my eyes not a damn thing. I always helped anyone who asked, I just didn't act like a 5 year old.

Moral of the story. Those who are loud, whether competent or not are the ones who move forward, because they are seen and heard.

 

[mmorancbt]

I can't remember if I posted this here and I'm not taking time to look. First, there is truth to the idea that you must be noticed. Loud is probably an over-simplified idea but here are some ideas on being "noticed" and not being passed over....


First, meet with your manager and even two levels. State a career objective and ask them what things you can do to get there. Follow up in writing their suggestions and your plan of action. Do the plan and then meet with them again (6 mos, 1 year, 2 year), whatever. I'm giving broad ideas, not specific timetables because that is something you and management must determine.

Many professionals, not just technologists, wait passively for promotion. It is simpler to create an understanding of objectives with management prior to simply plodding along, working hard, for years before you realize that you worked hard but not at the things most important to them.

Second, create a weekly report with the following sections:

Week in review
- What I did?
- What I didn't complete? Why?
- What came up that was unexpected and its impact?

Week in preview
- What I am going to do?
- What may come up and its impact?

This is a simple "look at me" document but also gives you a plan of action for the upcoming week. It allows management to see what you did, what your planning, and what is coming up to impact your work. This allows them to pro-actively monitor and make changes, if necessary.

It also gives you a written record of what you performed over the year. Don't over-complicate the report and it rarely has to go into too much detail. 1-2 pages, bulletted items.

Regarding being "loud", which I don't believe is necessary. The real question is exposure. Often people say, it is not what you know but who you know. This is wrong. It should be modified as: it is not what you know but who knows you and what you know.

You see, they have to know you but they must also know what you are able to do. That is the key to advancement.

Matthew Moran

 

[dilettante]

AIXSPadmin, I think you ran smack into a real truth of the workplace: managers like people like themselves.

You hear a lot of claptrap about "being a team player." I think that expression is often used as code for "being one of my boys" (or "girls" as the case may be).

I see this sort of thing all the time when I'm brought in as a troubleshooter. The people who hold up their end (produce good code, exhibit a depth of understanding, will stay late to help finish things up) are usually on the fringes of the organization they work in. The hacks with the spaghetti code who fail to follow the interface specs they agreed to and always want to blame the manuals, the specs, the platform vendor, compiler vendor, somebody, anybody else but themselves... and disappear on the dot (if not before) always seem to be well connected.

My role is to play Dr. Frankenstein and animate a collection of dead body parts. I don't get much work in smooth-running IT shops. I can only assume they are managed differently, perhaps based upon merit rather than patronage or the sort of "collective" principals I see practiced each day.

Surely somebody must have published some honest research on this by now?

I worked in a place once where one year my manager said "yeah, you've earned a bonus, but I'm going to have to give it to people who need it more than you do." Wasn't that a Soviet credo: "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs?" Needless to say I quit shortly afterward. In the current economy it isn't so easy to walk away from a sick organization like that, which may be why they are thriving.

 

[BoulderBum]

When I was working at my last temp job, my co-worker wrote code to fix the bugs in guy X's code. I, on the other hand, wrote code to automate a tedious process based on guy X's code.

Both of our code proved invaluable to the job we did (though we weren't hired to code). However, he quietly sat and just did his work, while I talked excitedly to my bosses about what I developed.

I got a little attention about the macro I wrote for a while, and a good letter of recommendation out of the deal. I think my co-worker was a little jealous because no one seemed to notice what he did.

It was about that time I realized... it doesn't matter how good the product is, some people won't buy without clever marketing. Accomplishments are much like products in this way. They are most appriciated when properly advertised.

Try actively having discussions on your plans with people that matter. Verbally lay claim to an idea before someone else does.

I don't know if that helps, but it worked for me.

PS- I'm the most introverted person I know. We can overcome!!!

 

[flapeyre]

I , too, am an introvert. But while I just sit here and code most of the time, when I do talk with my supervisor, it's mostly along the lines of "how can we improve these applications?" That kind of interaction is slowly paying off. Although, you have to have a boss who's willing to listen and give you the credit, not hijack your idea. I'm fortunate in that regard.


"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, for here you have been, and there you will always long to return."

--Leonardo da Vinci

 

[cmpgeek]

i used to be the quiet one - until it bit me...

i had a meeting with my boss one day a few months ago. she told me that others were complaining that i had pulled away from the project and that they never knew what i was doing anymore. they also had said something about my withdrawing from "the group activities" (the office staff and their group lunches).

my eyes bulged out of my head for a minute - i gained my composure and then let loose... i told her that i thought it was rather funny that these people would say that i wasnt doing my job, because they sure had no problem coming to me when something needed fixed.

i then went on to tell her that it was absolutely ludicris for them to say i had withdrawn from the project; when what happened was that i had moved on to a different level of the project that did not involve them directly.

as far as withdrawling from the group "activites", i told her the fact was that i was more interested in working than being a social butterfly (a trait that is lacking in some employees here). i was not withdrawing form the people, just form the lunches that usually ended up being an hour or so..

ultimately, i told her, as long as she and the boss right underneath her knew what i was doing - and was happy with my work - that was all i cared about. She was glad to see that i was sticking up for myself (the only major thing she had said needed improvement on my eval last year).

if the girls in the office dont holster their spoons (for stirring stuff up), she will see a lot more of it.

i hope things work out for you. good luck