• Tech employees share their salary negotiation tips, which helped boost their pay by tens of thousands of dollars.
• Their negotiation strategies include practicing pitches, using data, and leveraging multiple offers.
• Research and transparency are key in negotiating better compensation in tech roles, they said.

Sarra Bounouh has worked at consulting giant Accenture and three Big Tech companies.

But she still deals with imposter syndrome, especially when talking compensation.

"Going into a negotiation is always, at least for me, a very uncomfortable discussion," Bounouh told Business Insider. "I just want to push through and ask for what I deserve."

She and four other tech employees from Meta, Google, and Cisco shared their salary negotiation tips before joining a company or when trying to get promoted. They have used these strategies to add tens of thousands of dollars to their original offers in recent years.

Product manager at Meta

Avoid offering the first number. If you must, back it up with research, said Bounouh, a product manager who joined Meta earlier this year.

She suggested using resources like Levels.fyi or Glassdoor and selecting your role and geography to see recent offers and compensation that makes sense for that job.

"I personally don't like having detailed conversations about level and compensation from that first call with the recruiter because I want to meet the team, I want to meet the hiring manager, I want to get excited about the role," she said.

Bounouh prefers to negotiate her level and compensation once there's an offer on the table.

She said she often gets asked about salary expectations early in the process because recruiters say they want to save time for both sides.

She politely declines to share a number by telling the recruiter: "I don't have a number for your right now. I will need to do some research before getting back to you. At this stage of the process, I'm more focused on meeting the hiring manager and team."

Rehearsal is key for conversations about promotions or raises, she said.

Bounouh said she practiced her pitch for every job after Accenture and increased all three jobs' initial salary offers: Microsoft by 32%, Snap by 19%, and Meta by 37%.

Product manager at Oracle

Internal transfers between teams or offices are also an opportunity to negotiate your compensation package.

Ketaki Vaidya, who moved from Oracle's India to California office in 2022, said she approached her negotiation with an "everything under the sun is negotiable" mindset.

First, Vaidya looked at Glassdoor and talked to people who'd made the move to gather salary data. She wanted to ensure she was getting a fair offer for the US' cost of living.

"I was being given this offer for the credibility that I had built in the organization. I felt like I had an upper hand in negotiating," she said. "I was much more confident in asking for the things that I deserve — so it ended up being a very smooth transition."

After negotiating her base salary up to $80,000, she discussed other compensation components, including the timing of her next review, sign-on bonuses, relocation costs, paid leave, and remote work. She negotiated a sign-on bonus of $15,000 and a relocation allowance of $15,000, which weren't part of the initial offer.

Now, her compensation is about $130,000 annually, including stock units and bonuses.

Product manager at Cisco

When Varun Kulkarni switched from consulting to tech to work on more artificial intelligence projects, he was careful not to come off as aggressive during his pay negotiations.

Once he had offers from Cisco and others in hand in 2022, he was transparent with recruiters and mentioned other offers, without introducing his own counter number.

He asked recruiters how high they could go and what they thought about other offers.

"You want to kind of not be too pushy" he said.

His offer from Cisco already matched the market rate and what several competitors were offering, but he managed to negotiate it by 5%, bringing his total compensation to $180,000.

Product manager at Google

During his 2022 recruitment process at Google, Yung-Yu Lin used his employer at the time, PayPal, to land better offers from both companies.

He interviewed and landed jobs at several places — but their pay did not compare with Google's offer.

Lin decided to negotiate a retention package. PayPal countered with a 10% pay bump. He then renegotiated with Google.

Google offered a 20% raise on his original compensation at PayPal, which brought his offer to the $350,000 to $400,000 range as a senior product manager, including stock-based compensation.

Software engineer at Meta

Hemant Pandey, a senior software engineer at Meta, used other offers and research in his most recent job search.

After two years at Salesforce, in 2021 he applied to Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, and two other companies. He used offers from these companies to negotiate his compensation at Meta.

"Be very transparent that you have other offers. Even if you have interviews going on, mention those, because it's also leverage," he said. It signals to the recruiter that they have to move fast and work with your parameters.

Meta's recruiters matched the base salary and restricted stock units from the highest of all offers.

Aside from being transparent, Pandey said it is important to be proactive and research how compensation works in different companies. For example, candidates should compare how stocks are refreshed, he said. A refresher is when the stock option portion of an employee's compensation is updated.

"I also negotiated my sign-on bonus and said, 'Hey, at Salesforce, I'll be leaving my $30,000 to $40,000 of annual bonus if I join you. Can you help me accommodate that?'"

Pandey was offered $520,000 in annual pay, including stock options, in that 2021 move.

"The most significant thing happened in my career when I made the move from Salesforce to Meta, which was close to almost 80 to 90% hike" in pay, Pandey said.

Do you work in tech, consulting, or finance and have a story to share about your career journey? Please reach out at [email protected].

• Jamie Jackson worked in HR for over 20 years and is now a podcaster and consultant.
• Jackson said when you're no longer engaged or growing at work, it could be time for a new role.
• Updating skills and preparing a job search toolkit can aid in career transitions.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jamie Jackson, a 43-year-old podcaster and consultant in Nashville. It has been edited for length and clarity.

As someone who has worked in HR for over 20 years, I've had this conversation countless times. People often confide in me, saying, "Jamie, I don't know what to do next."

They feel stuck in their roles, want to advance, or are considering a new job — but that can be just as scary because it means stepping outside their comfort zones. I've been there, too, wondering whether it's time to quit my job for something new.

If this is you, here are four key signs you've been in your role too long and what you can do next if you need to make a change.

1. You no longer feel motivated

Your engagement level is a good indicator of whether you've been in your role for too long.

For example, you may have previously felt engaged in meetings but now find it harder to do so because you no longer feel motivated.

Or, perhaps you once enjoyed conversations with coworkers at the watercooler or over coffee — asking about their weekends or holiday plans — but now you simply do what you need to do and move on.

2. There's no room for growth

Another sign is feeling stagnant in your growth.

For example, I once worked at a company for five years and kept being promised a promotion. Over time, it became clear it wasn't going to happen — they didn't see me moving up.

For a long time, I believed their promise was coming, but it never did. To advance, I realized I'd need to change companies because the growth I wanted wasn't going to happen there.

Sometimes, there simply isn't room for growth, and when that's the case, it's a clear sign that it's time to make your next move.

3. Your feedback has plateaued

Or, you might find yourself hitting a feedback plateau.

For instance, you may consistently receive the same performance reviews, with your manager saying that you're meeting expectations but not exceeding them — suggesting you've reached a stopping point.

If you're thinking to yourself, "I don't have anything else to offer. I'm doing the same job I was doing three years ago without additional constructive feedback or recognition," it might be time to switch roles.

4. You're burned out

Another sign is burnout. In the past, I had a job where I felt physically sick going into work.

I remember one time needing to pull over to the side of the road to puke because I was so stressed.

As I sat in a parking lot trying to compose myself, I thought, I have to find another job. I knew my mental health was more important — but as I didn't have the luxury of quitting on the spot, I found another job first.

For others, there are times when environments are insanely toxic, and they need to get out immediately — and they should, but when possible, it's important to have a plan in place.

Either way, burnout or feeling physically sick from work might be a sign that it's time for a change.

If you realize you're no longer happy in your role, you need to do some self-reflection

Ask yourself, what are my goals? Where do I want to be? In your mind, try to understand where you want to be in six months, a year, or even further into the future.

Do you need a new title or a promotion, and if so, how do you get there? Before doing anything, it's really important to understand what you want. Then it's time to take aligned action.

Brush up on your skills

Maybe you're perfectly content with your current role; you just need to be challenged more. By learning new skills, you can push for more responsibilities.

You can use resources like LinkedIn or YouTube to brush up on skills like Excel or explore additional training or certifications offered by your current company. New skills can help you stand out in your current role or make you more appealing to potential employers.

Get your tool kit ready

If you're looking to land a new job, you need to learn new skills and prepare your toolkit.

This includes updating your résumé, refreshing your LinkedIn profile, and researching the salary you should be making.

When you start looking for a new job, knowing your market value is key — especially if you've been in your current role for a while and aren't sure what the going rate is. From there, talk to your mentors, colleagues, and friends, and let them know you're looking for something new.

You might say something like, "Hey, I think by March, I'm really going to start looking for another job — so can you keep your eyes and ears open?"

That can really help.

December isn't the easiest month to get a new job, with the holidays and people taking time off. However, January can be a better time as companies enter the new fiscal year — new budgets and new positions are being rolled out. But you can always be passively looking.

Some of us are content where we're at, but if you're no longer interested in stepping up or taking on new challenges, it might be time to reassess your role.

If you're an HR professional with unique career advice you would like to share, please email Manseen Logan at [email protected].

• Michael Dell says humor is vital and workers need to laugh and play and relax sometimes.
• The Dell Technologies chief said people shouldn't always listen to their parents' advice.
• Dell said he goes to sleep early, works out around dawn, and enjoys Texas barbecue.

Laugh and play pranks, balance work with downtime, and don't always listen to your parents' advice, Michael Dell says.

The Dell Technologies founder and CEO shared the colorful life advice during a recent episode of the "In Good Company" podcast. Dell, 59, ranked 13th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a $115 billion fortune at Thursday's close.

The personal-computing pioneer said humor plays a key role at his company.

"If you can't laugh, joke around, play tricks on people, you're doing it wrong, right?" he said. "You have to be able to laugh at yourself."

Dell said he toiled tirelessly as a young man to build his company, which generated $88 billion of revenue last year. But he warned against overworking and burnout.

"I learned a long time ago that there's a diminishing return to the number of hours worked in any given day, " he said. "And if you're going to do something for a long time, you better find the [right mixture of] working and playing and relaxing."

Dell said he goes to bed at about 8:30 or 9 p.m. each night and wakes up around 4 or 5 a.m. to exercise.

"You won't find me at the nightcap," he said. "I'll be asleep."

Barbecue and bad advice

The Texan businessman also voiced his love for one of his home state's delicacies, even if he doesn't prepare it himself.

"I believe in the theory of labor specialization, so I personally am not cooking a lot of barbecue, but I'm definitely eating barbecue," he said.

Dell also offered some general advice for young people: "Experiment, take risks, fail, find difficult problems, do something valuable, don't be afraid, and, you know, be bold."

He recalled his parents encouraging him to become a doctor and urging him to set aside his passion for building computers. On the other hand, he remembered his mother telling him and his two brothers when they were little to "play nice but win," which became his company's guiding philosophy and the title of his 2021 book.

"Well, yeah, your parents aren't always right, but they're not always wrong either," he said, adding people's "mileage may vary on the parents."

• 51-year-old Alan Stein worked in the corporate world for 25 years at companies including Google and Meta.
• Now, as the CEO of Kadima Careers, he advises against following certain career advice clichés.
• He suggests focusing on referrals rather than creating multiple résumés and posting on LinkedIn.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Alan Stein, CEO of career-accelerating service Kadima Careers. The story has been edited for length and clarity.

After 25 years of working in the corporate world, including at companies like Google, Meta, Salesforce, and American Express, I now help people get jobs at the world's best companies.

My company, Kadima Careers, is a career accelerator. We work for candidates and we help them get better jobs quickly, competently, and with lots more money. We've helped hundreds of people get jobs and negotiate offers.

Last time I checked, there were thousands of career experts on LinkedIn, sometimes, without any verification or certification.

These are some of the pieces of advice that I think you should avoid.

Posting often on LinkedIn

Don't expect that your posting or commenting is going to get you a job. You have to hope that your posts get seen by the right people. It's not easy to do that.

You should definitely keep LinkedIn up to date and make sure you are marketing yourself effectively on there because you will get people to come to your profile. But the way you'll do that is not by posting content but by proactively reaching out to people or people tangential to the people that you want to speak to.

Then, before they meet you, they'll look at your profile and understand that you're a program manager with 12 years of experience or you're a sales executive working at some of the best SaaS companies in the world.

You're wasting your time if the listed salary isn't what you want

You should decline to talk about compensation until after you get the offer.

I've seen so many times that there is flexibility with the compensation, and the best leverage you have as a candidate is after you have the offer. Furthermore, you get more practice. The more practice you get, the better you will become at interviewing — and you might learn things, you might meet people, and there might be other opportunities that pop up along the way.

There are three exceptions, including if you're grossly overpaid.

When I was at Google, sometimes I would just put the number out there to short-circuit things to see if it's not worth my time. Secondly, if they give you a homework assignment to do, you want to make sure it's worth your time.

The third reason is if you have so many interviews that you need to figure out which one to take and which one's going to compensate you if you get to the finish line.

Research the heck out of a company

Some people say you should research the heck out of a company and impress them with all your knowledge and that will lead to an interview. Don't do unsolicited work.

I've interviewed so many people in my time and some people come very well prepared and they've done research. But to put together a project, a presentation, a one-sheeter, a cover letter, or anything that is not asked for doesn't make sense. It might work for small organizations, but the better way is just to connect with the decision-makers at the company.

You should definitely check the company values out, understand the products, and research the role and who you're meeting with. But you don't need to research more than an hour for most interviews about the company. You will be surprised at how little most companies ask about the company itself.

Customize your résumé for every job

There are a couple of times when you want to have two résumés.

If you're going for an individual contributor role and you're going for a manager role, there are some different dynamics you do there. Also, if you have a disparate background and maybe you've done customer success and product management, you might want to have two different résumés.

Also, don't overcomplicate things and think you need to have the right search terms on there for the application tracking software.

Have a strong résumé that reflects your impact and what you've done and uses the right words for your industry — and then keep your résumé.

Your résumé is just table stakes. It's not going to make or break your search. So, focus on getting the referrals. That will get your résumé to the hiring manager.

• Ketaki Vaidya joined Oracle in 2017 as a new graduate in India.
• Vaidya advanced from associate software engineer to AI product manager in seven years.
• She said for overseas transfers, there's more than base pay to negotiate.

Ketaki Vaidya had worked in Oracle's office in Hyderabad, India for about five years when she wanted a change.

As a software engineer, she was keen to be part of Silicon Valley's innovations. She negotiated a move to California in 2022 and has since transferred to Seattle.

Vaidya shared how, over seven years with Oracle, she navigated two promotions, a career change, and the international transfer.

Associate software engineer

She began her post-college career as an associate software engineer at Oracle's office in Hyderabad, India.

One of the first things Vaidya did was gauge what her entire team wanted from her, instead of focusing only on her supervisor.

"Managers always take 360-degree feedback, and they go around the entire team and talk to the entire team to get a sense of what your work is like," she said. "When you keep your team happy, you automatically keep your supervisor happy."

She also scheduled regular check-ins with her manager to get feedback and she highlighted her aspirations, like working with particular software, so that her manager could tap her when the opportunity came up.

She made about 900,000 Indian rupees, or $10,700 annually.

Software engineer

Vaidya was promoted to software engineer after two years.

She said she followed female role models who reminded her to credit herself, not just the team.

Being vocal meant always discussing her next promotion and growth opportunity with managers. She made sure to document and communicate her successes.

"They knew that I was very invested in my career, and then my managers would really help me all around the year to get better projects."

In this role, Vaidya was paid 1.2 million rupees, or $14,200 annually.

Senior software engineer and team lead

After four years at the company, Vaidya was promoted to senior engineer, where she led a team of seven.

At the end of her projects, Vaidya said she found ways to demonstrate her work to leadership, like sharing what she learned on the team's group chat.

She also carefully filled out her annual appraisal documents, drafting them several times.

"I've seen that a lot of people don't take that very seriously, but it's something that goes into the system," she said. "That's going to be taken into account every time you move up the ladder."

In this role, Vaidya was paid 2 million Indian rupees, or about $24,000 annually.

Shifting roles and US transfer

As she progressed, Vaidya felt pulled to product management. She used her free time during the pandemic to chart what a job with more business strategy could look like.

"I set up 15-minute sessions with about 200 people on LinkedIn to understand what this field was," she said. "The more I talked to people, the more I realized it was something that I wanted to do."

She didn't think she had all the necessary skills, so she applied for master's courses specializing in product management in the US, so that she could better understand global work culture.

But when she tried to resign, Oracle "didn't want to let me go," she said. Her job was critical to releasing a product, so the company offered her a product management role in the US instead.

She negotiated a new salary with an eye toward the much higher cost of living in the US — even though Oracle was taking on significant costs, including for her visa.

"You can't let the excitement show in the conversations that you're having with your hiring managers," she said.

To gather salary data, Vaidya looked at Glassdoor and talked to people who had made the move before.

"I was being given this offer for the credibility that I had built in the organization. I felt like I had an upper hand in negotiating," she said. "I was much more confident in asking for the things that I deserve — so it ended up being a very smooth transition."

After negotiating her base salary up to $80,000, she discussed other compensation components, including her next review's timing, sign-on bonuses, relocation costs, paid leave, and remote work. She negotiated a sign-on bonus of $15,000 and relocation allowance of $15,000, which weren't part of the initial offer.

"Everything under the sun is negotiable and you just have to start with that mindset," she said.

The 2022 move took her to Redwood City, California, where she is an artificial intelligence product manager.

She has since moved to Seattle and plans to explore working in other US states.

Vaidya said that she has picked up two things from the work culture in the US: She has been inspired to work on projects beyond her job, such as speaking at conferences and hosting tech podcasts, and she has learned how to set better work-life boundaries.

Now, her compensation is about $130,000 annually, including stock units and bonuses. Business Insider has verified her work history and current compensation.

Do you work in tech, consulting, or finance and have a story to share about your career journey? Please reach out at [email protected].

• Natalie Fischer quit her corporate job to become a solopreneur creating financial content.
• She's generated over $150,000 from her business in 2024.
• Fischer shares 4 tips for transforming a side hustle into a career.

Being an investing influencer started as a hobby for Natalie Fischer during the pandemic. Now, it's her full-time job.

Like many people, Fischer started seriously getting into the stock market in 2020. The pandemic was a prime entry point: markets were volatile, rates were low, and she had built up a healthy level of savings.

She began sharing her investing journey on social media through Instagram stories and received an outpouring of feedback and questions from family and friends. Fischer couldn't keep up with the barrage of DMs and started a TikTok account, @investwithnat, to create videos answering common investing questions.

In 2023, Fischer took a leap of faith and quit her corporate job to focus full time on finance content creation as a solopreneur, or a one-person business. Now, Fischer creates videos about financial independence on social media platforms and partners with different brands to create user-generated content.

She's been quite successful: so far in 2024, Fischer's brought in over $150,000 in revenue, contracts viewed by Business Insider show. And that's in an increasingly cutthroat creator economy — according to Goldman Sachs, only around 4% of content creators globally generate over $100,000 a year.

If you want to transform your content creation side hustle into an actual career, Fischer has the following advice.

Take the transition slowly

Fischer's success didn't emerge overnight. She started creating TikToks in 2020 but didn't actually start money until a year and a half later, primarily through producing user-generated content for companies. From there, Fischer began getting more sponsorships. She did this while working her full-time job as a data analyst.

"The best way to transition is to actually just start that project on the side while you're working a full-time job and basically wait to see how it goes," Fischer told Business Insider in an interview.

It's helpful to collect data on how your content is performing and monitor progress. Fischer waited until she had a year and a half of revenue data from her side hustle before deciding to take the leap.

"If I just quit my job not knowing how much money I was going to make, that would just be so stressful," Fischer said.

Once Fischer realized the paychecks from her side hustle were at the same level as the paychecks from her corporate job, she felt confident enough to go all in.

Prepare your emergency fund(s)

It's standard budgeting practice to have an emergency fund that can cover three to six months of living expenses. As a solopreneur, Fischer made sure she had not one, but two, emergency funds: one for personal use and one for her business, with enough money to cover six months of expenses for each.

Having a backup plan gave Fischer more bandwidth to focus on growing her business. A business emergency fund also ensured that Fischer would be able to sustain her business even if it encountered financial challenges as she transitioned to becoming a full-time content creator.

If being a solopreneur didn't work out, Fischer's backup plan was to go back to the corporate world, and the emergency fund would help Fischer weather the financial transition.

"That gave me a lot of comfort knowing that if worse comes to worse, I can always get another job," Fischer said.

Monthly income fluctuates, so diversify your income streams

Part of the reason why Fischer wanted to prepare emergency funds was because, unlike receiving a steady biweekly check in the corporate world, her monthly income as a solopreneur fluctuates.

The unpredictability of her income can make financial planning more challenging. Fischer makes sure she has a variety of income streams so she's not overly reliant on a single source of revenue.

Fischer built her baseline income around user-generated content by signing contracts to create content for companies' social media pages, websites, or advertisements. These contracts are month-to-month and easy to project. On the other hand, the frequency of sponsorships are more variable and therefore harder to forecast.

Fischer is also looking to upskill and expand into interactive events. She recently completed her certification in financial education and hosted a money workshop at a conference. Thinking ahead about new business lines, Fischer has her eyes on being a speaker at universities and schools.

You can do both

Being a solopreneur and working a corporate role aren't diametrically opposed.

A year after quitting her 9-to-5, Fischer is now considering getting a part-time corporate role in addition to running her own business.

"I'd be interested in a part-time project management or marketing role to diversify and expand my potential," Fischer said.

Not only does a part-time role provide more predictable income streams, it also provides exposure to new work environments and skills. Fischer has found that as a full-time content creator, she has a lot more flexibility with her time than she did at a traditional office job. Fischer has seen fellow solopreneurs balance a content creation business, a corporate role, and even write a book at the same time.

Fischer's takeaway from the last year of running her own business is to not limit your options as a solopreneur — there are countless ways to build your brand and business.

"I found that I have a lot more time on my hands, and so I'm able to explore different avenues," Fischer said. "I can do it all."

Are you a successful solopreneur looking to share your story? Reach out to Christine Ji at [email protected]

• Nolan Church is a former Google recruiter who says you could be holding yourself back from a promotion.
• Performance gaps, lack of roles, and budget constraints can also hinder career advancement.
• Advocating for oneself and seeking feedback are crucial for securing promotions.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nolan Church, a 35-year-old former recruiter for Google and Doordash and now the cofounder and CEO of FairComp from Salt Lake City. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Before becoming the CEO of FairComp, a company that helps employees understand if they're paid fairly, I was a recruiter for Google for three years and led recruiting at Doordash for another three years.

I often saw colleagues and friends get overlooked for promotions. There are several reasons for this — here are four of them.

1. Performance gap

The first one is a gap in performance. There could be a misalignment in how an employee thinks they're doing and how management thinks they're doing, most likely due to a lack of feedback.

Many people are bad at giving feedback. An employee could have poor communication skills, a negative attitude, or be a pessimist, but they may not know it. Or, when they do receive feedback, they argue about it instead of trying to remediate and improve. These things surface when it comes time for a promotion, but they're hard to fix when you're unaware it's a problem.

When looking for a promotion, make sure to ask for feedback on your current performance and actually listen. Then, document the feedback, improve, and ask your manager, "Can you help me understand the gap between where I'm at and the next level?" That way, you may get promoted in the next round of promotions.

In your one-on-one meetings after the initial conversation, you could say, "This is what we talked about in the past, and this is what I've been doing to improve. What's your feedback on how my performance has been progressing?"

This is also helpful if you aren't getting promoted due to a skill gap, like if you're trying to get promoted into a management role and you've never managed people before. Ask your manager what you need to work on to move on to the next level.

2. No job 'big enough'

You might be killing it at your job, but if the business doesn't have an open role or a scope big enough to justify your promotion, you typically won't get promoted.

For example, when Google employees reach level five, or terminal level, many will never get promoted again. Typically, there's no job big enough for them to go into next.

Once you reach the top, you might not see any additional compensation increases either. Some companies may make exceptions and offer more, but that's not the rule.

If this happens, you have a few options. You can stay put and try to keep learning within your role, search for other roles inside the company where there are opportunities to grow and ascend, or you might choose to leave the company.

3. Budget constraints or business challenges

If a business isn't doing well, promotions are most likely not happening or are occurring at a significantly decreased rate. If a business is experiencing some sort of struggle, it has no incentive to promote people, and your likelihood of getting promoted is significantly less than at a business that's doing well.

Typically, promotions come with a salary increase, but not all companies can always provide that. When this is the case, the solution for an employee seeking a promotion is situational.

If the economy is up but your company is not doing well, it might be time to look for another opportunity elsewhere. If the economy is down, you may consider staying put in your current role, as leaving in a bad economy can be risky.

Otherwise, if you leave and, six weeks later, your new company decides to run a layoff, you're more likely to be impacted because you lack tenure — "last in, first out," can still be true today.

4. You aren't advocating for a promotion

You must advocate for yourself to get a promotion, but people are often terrible at doing that — especially when working remotely. Instead of thinking, "I'm just going to do great work, and people are going to notice," you need to think, "I'm going to do great work, and I need to tell people about the work I'm doing."

I remember having a big mental shift in my career when I realized I needed to take responsibility and own it. I thought, "I can't expect my manager, who has a ton on their plate and a lot going on, to always be the one checking in on me. Instead, I need to advocate for myself."

Start by scheduling regular touchpoints with your manager so they understand the value you're providing to the organization — something harder to see when you work remotely.

If you work from home, you need to overcompensate to combat this. When in person, people can see that you're working and can ask you questions without friction. To ensure your manager doesn't think you're slacking off, send snippets on Fridays that include everything you did that week and your priorities for next week. Also, send no-update updates, which update stakeholders on where things stand without them asking you.

That way, they're always aware of what you've done and what's coming next. If they want to provide feedback, you've given them an opportunity.