Seeing What You’ve Shipped: Recognizing Yourself at Work
What do you do when everyone around you is getting recognized, and you feel oddly invisible?
In many tech companies, "recognition-rich" cultures are the norm, promotions are celebrated, peers give each other spot awards, and Slack shoutouts happen daily. But for senior women in tech leadership, it is easy to feel left out of the celebration. Often, you are the one responsible for recognizing others, and because public praise typically flows through you, it rarely lands on you. On top of that, promotions at the senior level are slow and infrequent, meaning you can't rely on them as a visible signal of success.
In Episode 1 of Women Who Ship, we tackle the taboo topic of feeling unseen at work, and why women, and especially women of color, who often have to outperform their peers to receive the same praise, need to change how they measure their own value.
The Big Idea: Stop riding the external praise rollercoaster When you don't get recognized, your brain might tell you a painful story: I'm not helpful enough, or my work isn't impactful. But relying solely on external praise puts your self-trust on a rollercoaster. Instead, you need to build a more grounded confidence by practicing intentional self‑recognition so that external validation becomes a nice bonus, not a requirement.
Three tools to build self-trust at work:
Separate fact from story: Before you spiral over a lack of praise, get curious. The fact might be that you didn't get an award. The story is that you aren't doing good work. Once you see the story you are inventing, you can decide to let it go.
Run a weekly "Recognition Retro": Block 30 minutes every week to write down 3-5 specific things you are proud of, and exactly why they mattered. This trains your brain to notice your wins and builds a private "evidence file" you can use during performance reviews.
Determine your preferences: Do you prefer 1:1 feedback, public praise, or being trusted with a massive stretch opportunity?. Figure out how you like to be recognized and explicitly share that with your manager.
Bonus Tip: Redefine recognition for senior leaders At senior levels, the best compliments are often the quietest. If people are constantly seeking your advice, or if you are consistently trusted to stabilize messy, ambiguous projects—that is recognition.
Your action item: Schedule a 30-minute Recognition Retro with yourself this week. Write down three things you did that mattered. For a bonus challenge, practice letting yourself be seen by sharing one of those wins with your manager or a trusted peer.
🎧 Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! If this episode helped you see your own value, please share it with another woman in tech who might need to hear it.
