Why Career Growth Needs Self-Advocacy<br>Shine Garg

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Jul 26 • 7 min read<br>Why Career Growth Needs Self-Advocacy

~9 minute read | Read in browser ​

By Shine Garg

Staff+ Career Coach | Former Staff Engineer

[This edition also includes a meaningful update from my world: I’m launching the Uncharted Career Series with two free Uncharted Office Hours sessions, beginning August 6.]

I had an epiphany some years ago when I realized that I had not outsourced self-advocacy in any other area of my life as much as I had done it at work.

If the dentist’s office did not call, I followed up. I did not wait indefinitely because the dentist “knew better” about teeth.

If a friend regularly missed social commitments, I held them accountable with empathy and offered help.

And I regularly set healthy boundaries on pending household chores with my partner. When I did those chores, I let him know, instead of relying on the completed chores to speak for themselves. 🙂

But at work, I did the opposite.

I kept absorbing more work to prove that I was capable and ready for the next level, and I waited for my manager to know better about my promotion.

When a coworker did not keep a commitment, I shied away from saying anything because I did not want to appear difficult.

Worst of all, I relied on my good work to speak for itself.

After I had worked at Microsoft for a year and a half as a new graduate, my manager mentioned at the end of a 1:1 that he had put my name forward for a promotion.

The news was positive, but I internalized the wrong message from it: Career advancement naturally follows good work.

I suspect many engineers internalize a similar idea because of how growth can work early in our careers. The work is often more clearly defined, our managers may be closer to our day-to-day execution, and competence and reliability can carry us a long way.

But as our careers progress, that strategy becomes less reliable.

Career growth happens in a larger system

Managers do not see or remember everything. They are responsible for several people, projects, priorities, and organizational pressures.

And as you grow more senior, your career is increasingly shaped by people beyond your immediate manager and team.

New projects, broader scope, invitations to strategic conversations, and promotion momentum often depend on people who do not work with you closely. They may know the name of the project you shipped without understanding the judgment behind it, the complexity you navigated, or the larger value it created.

This is how valuable work can remain locally understood.

Your immediate team may trust you deeply and rely on your expertise, while the larger organization still has only a partial picture of what you contribute.

That partial picture shapes opportunities long before formal review conversations. Throughout the year, leaders are deciding who to involve, who to trust with ambiguity, and who seems ready for broader responsibility.

Waiting to be noticed is career autopilot.

It keeps you busy, but it does not move your career forward.

What self-advocacy makes possible

Self-advocacy is often reduced to sharing accomplishments. In practice, it helps close four key information gaps that otherwise limit career growth.

1. It helps people understand the value of your work

You know why the problem deserved attention, which constraints shaped the solution, what tradeoffs you made, and what might have happened if no one had acted.

Other people may see only the project name and final output.

A sentence such as “I built a tracking API” may be accurate, but it leaves the listener to infer its significance.

A fuller explanation may reveal that product teams were reluctant to adopt a shared notification service because they could not connect its events to the company’s analytics system. The API removed that barrier and enabled broader adoption.

Career decisions depend on more than whether work was completed. People are also trying to understand what the work reveals about your judgment, ownership, leadership, and readiness for broader scope.

2. It makes your direction explicit

Your manager may know that you are performing well without knowing where you want to go.

You may be known as the person who rescues difficult projects, whereas you want to build systems that reduce the need for rescue. You may be repeatedly proving your execution skills while wanting opportunities to shape technical...