I spent a large part of my career believing that success was straightforward.
If you have better ideas, work harder than everyone else, and execute with excellence, people will notice. Recognition, growth, and opportunities would naturally follow.
It sounded logical.
In many ways, it still does.
After all, we grow up believing that effort and quality are the greatest differentiators. We are taught to become better engineers, better designers, better managers, and better problem solvers. Rarely does anyone tell us to think about where we should apply those abilities.
Over the years, however, I’ve started noticing something that challenged this belief.
I’ve seen incredibly talented people solve complex problems that most people wouldn’t even know how to approach. They built sophisticated systems, automated tedious processes, introduced innovative ideas, and created genuine value for their teams.
Yet their work barely travelled beyond the boundaries of that team.
Outside of a handful of colleagues, almost nobody knew what they had accomplished.
At the same time, I’ve seen someone make what appeared to be a relatively small improvement. It wasn’t technically revolutionary. It wasn’t months of research or engineering excellence. Sometimes it was simply improving an existing process or solving a visible business problem.
But it happened in the right place.
It happened in a team working on a strategic initiative. It happened in front of the right stakeholders. It happened when leadership was paying attention.
And suddenly that piece of work became widely known.
The recognition wasn’t necessarily because the work itself was better.
It was because the work existed where attention already existed.
The Context Multiplier
For a long time, I struggled with this observation.
It felt unfair.
Shouldn’t recognition be proportional to effort?
Shouldn’t innovation speak for itself?
Shouldn’t solving harder problems naturally create more opportunities?
The more I observe organisations, the more I realise that they don’t evaluate work in isolation. They evaluate work within context.
Imagine two engineers building equally valuable solutions.
One spends six months creating an internal automation tool for a small support team. The people using it love it. It saves hundreds of hours every year, but only twenty people ever interact with it.
The other spends three weeks improving a workflow for a company-wide initiative. The technical challenge is much smaller, but thousands of employees experience the improvement. Leadership discusses it in reviews. Multiple teams benefit from it.
Who receives more recognition?
In many organisations, the answer is obvious.
The difference wasn’t capability.
The difference was context.
It’s Not Just Engineering
This isn’t limited to engineering.
A marketer can create the best campaign for a product that’s nearing the end of its lifecycle and receive little recognition. Another marketer launches an average campaign for the company’s flagship product and becomes highly visible.
A designer can completely transform an internal tool used by one department. Another designer changes a small feature on the company’s homepage.
The first project may require significantly more creativity.
The second one reaches millions of users.
The same principle appears again and again.
The value of your contribution is often amplified—or diminished—by where it happens.
A Different Question
That realization has changed the kinds of questions I ask myself.
Earlier, my questions were always centred around execution.
- Can I build this?
- Can I solve this problem better than anyone else?
- Can I innovate here?
Those questions still matter.
But I’ve started asking another one before all of them:
Is this the right place to invest my energy?
Notice that this isn’t about chasing visibility.
It’s not about office politics.
It’s not about abandoning teams that need help simply because they’re less visible.
It’s about understanding leverage.
If you’re going to dedicate months of your life to solving a problem, shouldn’t you also think about how many people will benefit from that solution? Shouldn’t you consider whether the problem aligns with the organisation’s priorities? Shouldn’t you understand whether you’re building something that influences decisions beyond your immediate circle?
I’ve come to believe that career growth isn’t determined only by how good you become. It’s also influenced by whether you place yourself where your abilities can create the greatest impact. Sometimes we spend years optimising our skills while ignoring our positioning. We become exceptional at solving problems that very few people know exist. Then we wonder why someone else, with fewer years of experience or a simpler solution, seems to move ahead faster.
Maybe they weren’t more talented. Maybe they were simply standing where the light was already shining. I’m still learning this lesson. I don’t have a perfect formula for choosing the right projects or the right teams. There will always be situations where meaningful work happens quietly behind the scenes, and that work deserves respect regardless of recognition.
But if there’s one thing I’m trying to become more intentional about, it’s this: I don’t just want to build great things. I want to build great things where they can create the greatest impact. Because the same idea, the same effort, and the same person can have completely different outcomes depending on one often overlooked decision: Where you choose to contribute.