"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

An interesting question posed by philosophers. To begin, what is sound? According to Merriam-Webster:

sound (noun): mechanical radiant energy that is transmitted by longitudinal pressure waves in a material medium (as air) and is the objective cause of hearing.
Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sound

I propose that if a tree falls it "[radiates] energy that is transmitted by longitudinal pressure waves in a material medium". The deeper question then is "does the radiant energy being transmitted still qualify as sound if there isn't anyone or anything present to perceive that energy with their eardrums?".

Let's pose a different question. If you produce quality output at work but no one knows about it, is the effort futile?

If you are a top performer at work, but no one knows you are responsible for what is being produced at least the work is still getting done. On the other hand why put in so much effort if you don't personally gain from it? Is personal satisfaction reward enough?

What if we flip the question on it's head? If you are putting in your best effort, why doesn't anyone else know what you are doing?

The Unsung Hero

Many years ago I was working on a project with a couple other developers at work establishing the architecture for an upcoming rewrite of our company's product. I was assigned to work on the front end, while my team mates tackled the back end. It was a very engaging assignment for me. I really enjoy this type of work and I found myself immersed in what we were doing.

It didn't take long before I started voluntarily staying late into the evenings, often until 2-3 AM, working on my part of the project. The late nights began to wear on me and as a result I was coming into the office later and later. For me the 9-6 shift evolved into the 11-3 shift. I wasn't worried about strolling into the office a few hours late because I was also staying nine to ten hours later than most people. In my mind I was killing it. I was going above and beyond (the name of an actual company award; more on that in a bit). I was putting in 15 hours a day (don't do this, it's unsustainable) working on something that I was very excited about and producing some pretty cool stuff.

What I didn't realize at the time was what the rest of my team's perception of me was. While I was off working in my silo, thinking I was a shoe in for the "Above and Beyond" award that month, the other developers on my team were frustrated with my apparent lackadaisical attitude. Communication was bad on both sides. I had little interaction with these developers prior to this project, so I didn't have any personal rapport with them. They never formally called me out, though their demeanor said a lot. On the other hand I never explained that I was staying hours after they left. I mean it was all recorded in the SVN logs. Why did I need to explain myself? I consistently had commits at all hours of the night. Didn't they ever look at the logs?

The short answer to that question is no.

If you don't communicate your efforts, don't expect anyone else to put in the effort to discover it for themselves. This isn't CSI. No one is trying to uncover the mystery, nor should they be.

I mentioned the "Above and Beyond" award our company had. Each department had someone who earned the award each month and it was based on peer nominations for people who went "Above and Beyond" the expectations for their role. So basically it was a popularity contest. Whoever had the most clout in their department would typically win it month after month.

This particular month I fully expected to win based on all the work I had been doing. Instead that month one of the other developers on my team won. He was praised for everything he had done on the project and for "bringing it across the finish line". I was pissed. It wasn't anything personal against my team mate. I actually have a lot of respect for him. It was that I felt invisible. I was unaware that everyone else was unaware of my efforts. In retrospect it was my own fault and it was a hard lesson to learn.

Sing Your Own Praises

A few years later I was working for the same employer and had an experience that starkly contrasted the previous one that I recounted.

Our product was a web application that on several screens had an activity feed of things that were happening in context to the data you were viewing. If you added a comment it would display the comment text with the author's avatar and a formatted timestamp. When the comment was first created the timestamp would say Just Now. After five minutes passed it would read Five minutes ago. You get the idea. The only problem was that it was static. The only way you would see the formatted timestamp change was if you refreshed the page, or navigated away and came back.

This became very apparent to me one day as I had entered a comment the previous day, left the tab open in my browser, and was returning to the same screen a day later. There in my activity feed it read Just Now even though it had been closer to Yesterday.

Part of me was embarrassed that our app was so static, but another part of me saw a challenge and took it upon myself to improve the product. To improve this experience in our activity feed I wrapped all the formatted timestamps in a <time/> element then created a NaturalTime plugin for our app. The plugin was pretty simple and looked something like this:

setInterval(() => {
  document.querySelectorAll('time[data-naturaltime]').forEach((el) => {
    let timestamp = parseInt(el.getAttribute('data-timestamp'), 10)
    if (!isNaN(timestamp)) {
      let formatted = DateUtil.formatNaturalTime(timestamp)
      let text = document.createTextNode(formatted)
      el.innerHTML = ''
      el.appendChild(text)
    }
  })
}, 60000)

The code itself didn't take very long to write. Including time to find and replace all the instances in our app where we were displaying a static formatted timestamp I invested about two hours of work. To make sure all the other engineers were aware of the change and to educate them on how it worked I sent out a quick email with a description of what changed along with some documentation.

In my mind it was no big deal. It was trivial code with a minimal time investment. The response however was huge. I had other engineers responding with kudos. The UX team thanked me for improving the usability. The VP of Engineering sent me a message saying "I like seeing this type of innovation with the drive to make it happen".

What the hell just happened?!

I had put in far less effort than the previously described experience, yet here I was receiving accolades, when I was completely overlooked before. The difference was simply communication.

I had done something and I let other people know that I had done it. It wasn't with the intent of bragging or showing off what I had accomplished. It was a simple message to keep the rest of the team informed.

Market Yourself

When a company comes up with a new product or service they have teams of people in charge of getting the word out and marketing to the world that they have produced something new and noteworthy.

As an individual contributor on a team it is unlikely that anyone else will market your efforts for you. It's up to you to market yourself and communicate to the rest of the organization that you have put in the effort and done the work and produced something useful.

Don't be the tree that falls in the forest, but collapses unheard in spite of it's grandeur.

You're putting in the effort. Make sure that you communicate it.

Thanks to Justin Searls for his tweet which inspired this post.
Thanks to Kent C. Dodds for reviewing this post.