Intro

Today is a very important topic. The reason?

I see a lot of engineers struggling with gaining respect from their peers, their manager and also the leadership. And this is something that is holding you back with your progression in your career or worse, you might be a part of the next layoff.

The unfortunate thing is that it’s hard to be self-aware and notice it yourself, without someone pointing it out.

And I see that at all levels. It’s common in entry-level engineers, but I see a lot of Senior-level engineers struggle with that as well or even managers and Staff+ level engineers. And I’ve been there as well.

I didn’t notice it at the time, because I wasn’t really focusing on that. But I could see now clearly as I grew from engineer all the way to CTO and made many mistakes and some wins along the way!

So, in today’s article, I’ll be pointing out the importance of gaining respect, the differences in peer vs leadership view + a step-by-step actionable guide on how you can gain respect from both your peers and leadership.

This is an article for paid subscribers, and here is the full index:

- Ever had a great idea ignored and then someone else proposed a similar idea and got accepted?
- What is respected by your peers is not the same as what is respected by leadership
- Example #1: Learning Sessions
- Example #2: Writing Online
🔒 Step-by-step guide on how to gain respect from your peers and leadership
🔒 Try to find out your unfair advantage
🔒 Step 1: Questions for reflection
🔒 Step 2: You may have past experience or skills outside traditional software engineering that give you an advantage
🔒 Step 3: Double down on what scales your impact
🔒 Step 4: Connect it to business or team needs
🔒 Next steps
🔒 Last words

Let’s get straight into it!

Ever had a great idea ignored and then someone else proposed a similar idea and got accepted?

The unfortunate truth is that it’s not always about the idea → WHO proposes it makes all the difference.

The reason is that the person who is “accepting” the idea has certain risks associated with the acceptance. And that person wants to minimize it as much as possible.

Especially if the person in charge doesn’t have the necessary expertise to really distinguish between a good/bad idea.

So, having the necessary respect is the key differentiator here. Focus on building it and you will be able to get many more ideas accepted.

And if you build it to enough level, you will be able to get ideas accepted, even without that specific person taking a closer look at it.

Now, let’s get to the important difference next.

What is respected by your peers is not the same as what is respected by leadership

This is a very important thing to understand and it’s a big difference. And in some cases, what gets you respect with leadership may be frowned upon by your peers.

Let me share examples next.

What is respected by your peers as an engineer:

• Great work and effort

• Your overall knowledge and detailed understanding of topics

• Helping others and making others around you better + how well you can contribute to success

What is respected by leadership:

• Overall visibility inside the organization, social presence, social proof, internal + external credibility

• Successful startup exits or startup fails, entrepreneurial endeavors or internal achievements that have highly contributed to the business success

• Writing online, public speaking, evangelism, thought-leadership and being able to influence larger groups of people

Here is also a graphical representation:

The reason for such a gap is that each group has a different meaning of “what hard is”. and this is important to understand:

What is hard to do or hard to achieve is respected.

You need some form of both if you want to move to lead roles and be successful at it. And then the more you wish to grow in a lead role, the more you need to focus on the second part.

Now, let me share 2 examples of how I was able to get respect, even if I didn’t think of it like that when I started doing them.

Example #1: Learning Sessions

As a Senior Software Engineer, I was asked if I would be interested in running and organizing Learning Sessions across the company. The current organizer decided to move on to a different role and change companies.

Well, I had a feeling that I wasn’t the first to be asked and that other engineers might have said no, because I was quite new to the company. But then, the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea, because it’s how I could potentially show my value.

So, I accepted it.

As soon as I accepted and then ran a few of the first learning sessions, I had a feeling that some other engineers might not be too happy about me taking the lead on organizing the sessions.

The reasons could be different and it’s hard to point to one main reason (possibly they might have been asked and said no or maybe because I was one of the youngest engineers in the company).

But I had a feeling that my manager and also a part of the leadership team, was happy with me doing it. So I kept doing them.

Over time, my peers got used to me doing them and I think this was one of the reasons why I got asked to become a Team Lead later.

Which was quite a step in the right direction for me and I don’t think I would be writing this newsletter if I hadn’t been offered that position.

Example #2: Writing Online

When I started as a VP of Engineering, I was quite at the beginning of my writing journey. I was posting on LinkedIn 2x/week and sending out the newsletter 1x/week. I didn’t get much traction at that time.

An interesting thing here is that this has already helped me with my fellow leadership team and also with my team that I was managing as well.

The reason is what I mentioned above. Overall social presence is respected when you are in a leadership role. I heard about people mentioning my posts and that they liked them.

And then the more my following grew and the more people became interested in my writing, the more my credibility in the eyes of the leadership team and also with my engineering team grew as well (I wasn’t expecting it).

I believe this was also one of the reasons why I got promoted to CTO after being 6 months in the company as a VP of Engineering.

And currently, when people get in touch with me for potential coaching or advising/consulting, I could sense in some cases that they know a lot about me already and that I have already been able to build credibility to a certain extent, so it really makes it a lot easier to move forward and find mutual fit.

Now, let’s get to the actual step-by-step guide on what you should do to gain respect both with your peers and also leadership.

Step-by-step guide on how to gain respect from your peers and leadership...