Early in my career at Google, my first manager noticed that I would often do some awesome thing on a project, but I didn’t talk about it. I would have a skillset that was a great fit for a particular project, but I wouldn’t push too hard to get it. I didn’t want to talk about myself in a way that sounded like I was bragging or ask for too much and push too hard that I was… pushy.

Naturally, at almost every 1:1 meeting I had with her, she would remind me: advocate for yourself!

“No one knows about the awesome work that you’re doing as well as you do, so speak up.” - My first manager @ Google

I don’t know if I believed her at the time, but her advice was valuable to me so I tried my best to internalize it. From then on, before every single 1:1, I would prepare an agenda of the work that I was doing and I’d spend 10 minutes before our meeting hyping myself up to talk about the awesomeness of my work.

I’ve luckily had so many wonderful mentors at Google who’ve worked tirelessly encouraging me to do the same. Two promotions and almost 5 years later, I think I’ve gotten to the point where I almost have no shame “bragging” about my accomplishments.

I was reflecting on this after a recent 1:1 with my current manager. I’d been working on a pretty big project that was coming together, so I was excitedly telling him about the progress and all the cool work that I had done. I realized that I was advocating for myself! without having spent 10 minutes hyping myself up beforehand.

A few different factors came into play here:

1. I’ve had the privilege of working for 3 wonderful managers in my career at Google and each and every one has been incredible at pushing me to advocate for myself. They always unwaveringly reminded me to advocated for myself. For example, my current manager since day 1 has told me that he wants to know about every success and problem that I have. His job is to celebrate my wins and to remove any blockers that prevent me from doing my best work. At this point, he’s just made it a normal part of our 1:1 conversations to talk about wins and blockers. Sort of like exercising a muscle: the more I do it, the easier it gets.
2. Sometime between now and my first day at Google, my mindset has shifted. At some point, I’ve stopped thinking about it as “bragging” about myself, but simply talking about the cool stuff that I’m excited to work on. Sort of like show-and-tell in elementary school.
3. I’m surrounded by mentors and teammates who are constantly telling me I’m doing good work. The knot-in-my-stomach feeling that I’m overhyping myself and my work tends to subside when the people that I admire the most validate my “bragging” by telling me that they also think I’m doing great work.
4. Finally, I’ve realized that advocating for myself also means that I get to advocate for my teammates. Working in DevRel is collaborative by nature, so I get to work on projects with some really great folks. Because of that, talking about my work also means that I get to talk about the great work that my teammates are doing too. While I hate bragging about myself, I love bragging about my teammates. One of my favorite parts about working at Google is getting GRAD (performance feedback) requests for my teammates. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I appreciate these reflective moments where I get a chance to look back and see how I’ve changed and progressed over time. In this case, I came to Google as a wide-eyed new grad who had zero clue how to talk about herself, her skills, or her accomplishments. Little did I know that 5 years later, that knot-in-my-stomach feeling has mostly gone away, and I can sit in a meeting with my manager and casually talk about my work as if it were just any other Thursday. No 10 minute hype up needed.