--- title: Giving and taking credit in big tech companies | daily.dev description: Engineers who assume their manager will notice and reward good work are operating on a leftover 'school fantasy' that doesn't apply at big tech companies.... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/giving-and-taking-credit-in-big-tech-companies-dqebxgc1c twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Giving and taking credit in big tech companies | daily.dev og:description: Engineers who assume their manager will notice and reward good work are operating on a leftover 'school fantasy' that doesn't apply at big tech companies.... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/giving-and-taking-credit-in-big-tech-companies-dqebxgc1c og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/DQEbxGc1c.png og:image:alt: Giving and taking credit in big tech companies og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Giving and taking credit in big tech companies **[Tech Lead Digest](https://daily.dev/sources/techleaddigest)** · 8 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Engineers who assume their manager will notice and reward good work are operating on a leftover 'school fantasy' that doesn't apply at big tech companies. Managers can't reliably assess technical work themselves, so they rely on informal networks of trusted engineers to judge quality behind the scenes. This means engineers need to actively take credit for their work through internal posts and visibility, but hoarding credit backfires: sharing it with collaborators builds allies who talk up your work and shields you from being scapegoated when things go wrong, since blame follows the same informal, politically-influenced process as credit. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why doesn't doing good technical work automatically get noticed by my manager at a big tech company? Managers are usually not qualified to directly assess the technical quality of your work, since software systems are too complex for anyone outside the project to fully understand. Instead, they rely on informal networks of trusted engineers who they quietly ask for opinions on your performance, meaning visibility and reputation matter as much as the work itself. _daily.dev surfaces career essays like this for engineers figuring out how visibility actually works at their company._ ### Why would sharing credit with coworkers on a project actually help my own career instead of hurting it? Sharing credit gives collaborators a reason to speak positively about the project when informal performance judgments happen behind the scenes, since it becomes partly their success too. It also protects you from blame during failures, because a network that shares in a project's credit is less incentivized to pin blame on it when something goes wrong. _engineers weighing solo recognition against team credit can find perspectives like this through daily.dev._ ### Why do engineers who work alone on a project sometimes get blamed unfairly when something breaks? When credit for a project is concentrated in one or two people, the people who informally decide blame after a failure have every incentive to attribute fault to the unfamiliar, solely-owned part of the system rather than the parts they helped build. Because complex failures rarely have one clear cause, this bias toward blaming isolated projects is common even among well-meaning colleagues. _daily.dev helps engineers dig into workplace dynamics like credit and blame allocation beyond the code itself._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Responsibility Is Taken Before It Is Given](https://daily.dev/posts/responsibility-is-taken-before-it-is-given-7alerrvx3) · Tech Lead Digest · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Large tech companies don't need heroes](https://daily.dev/posts/large-tech-companies-don-t-need-heroes-swhqcsgfj) · sean goedecke · 52 upvotes · 5 comments - [Your engineering team looks healthy. It probably isn't](https://daily.dev/posts/your-engineering-team-looks-healthy-it-probably-isn-t-to0izfpfa) · Lobsters · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Big tech engineers need big egos](https://daily.dev/posts/big-tech-engineers-need-big-egos-tchc6lm28) · Programming Digest · 4 upvotes · 0 comments - [Managing Up](https://daily.dev/posts/managing-up-nk0dekmil) · Josh Hornby · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#career](https://daily.dev/tags/career), [#leadership](https://daily.dev/tags/leadership), [#big-tech](https://daily.dev/tags/big-tech) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/giving-and-taking-credit-in-big-tech-companies-dqebxgc1c) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Giving and taking credit in big tech companies","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/giving-and-taking-credit-in-big-tech-companies-dqebxgc1c","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/giving-and-taking-credit-in-big-tech-companies-dqebxgc1c"},"datePublished":"2026-08-13T15:50:56.264Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T21:22:40.510Z","description":"Engineers who assume their manager will notice and reward good work are operating on a leftover 'school fantasy' that doesn't apply at big tech companies....","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/479e95ee2af112c350fa09a341f0c630?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/479e95ee2af112c350fa09a341f0c630?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Tech Lead Digest","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Tech Lead Digest","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/6ed1ee1a2e5c49f698265a6b2912b80d","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/techleaddigest"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/giving-and-taking-credit-in-big-tech-companies-dqebxgc1c","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"career,leadership,big-tech","timeRequired":"PT8M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Tech Lead Digest","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/techleaddigest"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Giving and taking credit in big tech companies"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/giving-and-taking-credit-in-big-tech-companies-dqebxgc1c#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why doesn't doing good technical work automatically get noticed by my manager at a big tech company?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Managers are usually not qualified to directly assess the technical quality of your work, since software systems are too complex for anyone outside the project to fully understand. 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