02 Dec 2025 7 min read Advice

Career Advice - Why Showing Up Matters

In my corner of the engineering corporate world, “showing up” really is half the battle. And no, I'm not talking about keycard-in, butt-in-chair. I’m talking about being present: in the room, on the call, in the conversation, over and over again, for years. Across firms from 500-person outfits to 80,000-employee mega-machines, one pattern has been consistent: the people who show up are the ones who get the interesting projects, the stretch assignments, and eventually, the promotions.

Let’s unpack why that happens and how to use it intentionally without turning into a “face-time zombie.”

My Story

I stumbled into this concept completely by accident in my very first year on the job.

One evening, after a client meeting that ran late and a miserable commute back to the office, I stopped in around 7 p.m. just to drop a few things off. To my surprise, a handful of principals and senior executives were still there. Earlier that week, I’d been trying to get a moment with one of them to ask a few questions, but he was impossible to pin down. Too many meetings. Too many fires.

But at 7 p.m.? His door was open.

I took a chance. He actually turned away from his computer, looked at me, and answered everything - calmly, patiently, like he finally had the mental space to give a proper explanation. He told me that his days were a wall of meetings, but after hours he was more than happy to help if I needed guidance.

So I started showing up after hours a few times a week. Not to impress anyone, just to work on my skills and ask questions when I had them. And honestly, those late-night conversations were worth more than anything I could get from peers or slightly-more-senior coworkers. These were people with 30+ years of hard-earned experience. They were running the show. And they were willing to share it all… if I showed up.

A few months later, he began pulling me into his office after hours to help with small tasks. Then small projects. Then, within a year, he trusted me to run actual jobs. And it wasn’t just him - other senior leaders started doing the same. By my third year, I was ahead of my peers in experience, opportunities, and salary. And the doors just kept opening.

When I eventually moved on to other jobs, I took the same strategy with me but I expanded it. I started rotating through different offices, just to be visible to people who didn’t normally work with me. I did the same with clients. Sure, I could have sent deliverables electronically, but showing up in their offices created relationships and trust no email ever could.

By showing up, I built a massive network, accelerated my learning curve, and opened up opportunities that genuinely changed my career, and my income. To the point that now… well, now I’m burnt out and in way too many meetings. I still need to work on saying “no.” But that’s a story for another time.

Why visibility quietly drives your career

There’s a slightly uncomfortable truth about big organizations: people make decisions based on what (and who) they see.

Research on “face time” has shown that simply being more visible at the office increases your promotion chances, because managers unconsciously infer traits like commitment and reliability from physical presence even when no extra work is being done.

In the hybrid/remote era, this got a new label: proximity bias. Harvard Business Review defines it as the tendency for people in power to favor those who are physically closer to them.

More recent data backs up what a lot of us have felt:

An analysis reported by Forbes found remote workers were promoted 31% less often than their in-office peers.
Surveys of employers (e.g., Robert Half and others) show most leaders believe in-office attendance boosts promotion chances.
Other work on proximity bias notes that remote employees often worry they lack “enough visibility to be considered” for development and advancement.

Is this fair? Not really. Should promotions be based on outcomes, not eyeballs? Absolutely. But ignoring how humans actually behave is a bad career strategy.

So, when I say showing up is half the battle, I mean: in a system that over-values visibility, you should at least make sure you’re visible for the right reasons.

“Showing up” ≠ sitting in enough chairs

Important nuance: I am not advocating for performative long hours or living at your desk.

There’s a difference between:

Passive presence – logging hours, lurking in meetings, being on the email thread but never speaking.
Strategic visibility – being present where it matters, contributing in ways that others actually notice and remember.

Career advice pieces on “strategic visibility” emphasize making your impact visible, sharing outcomes, speaking up, and placing yourself in situations where decision-makers can see your work, without turning into a self-promoting caricature.

Think of it this way:

Time in the building doesn’t get you promoted.Time in the right rooms doing useful things does.

Show your work (yes, literally)

One of my favorite books that accidentally doubles as corporate career advice is Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon. It’s aimed at creatives, but the core message applies to engineers and office humans too: don’t just ship the final thing - show the process.

Key ideas that map perfectly to corporate life:

Document, don’t brag. Instead of “I’m amazing,” say: “Here’s what we tried, what failed, and what finally worked.”
Teach what you’re learning. Lunch-and-learns, short internal write-ups, or a 10-minute demo in a team meeting are all corporate versions of “showing your work.”
Be findable. Over time, when people think “who understands X?” your name should be the one that pops up.

If you’re the person who keeps calmly surfacing useful artifacts like design notes, lessons learned, templates, quick how-tos, you become the go-to. And the go-to people get pulled into more interesting things.

Relationships: “Invisibility is a fate worse than failure”

Keith Ferrazzi’s networking classic Never Eat Alone is technically about relationship-building, but one line summarizes corporate life perfectly: “Invisibility is a fate worse than failure.

You can be the most competent engineer on your floor, but if:

People don’t know you,
They don’t remember working with you,
They can’t picture you in the room…

…you’ll often get skipped over for opportunities.

Ferrazzi’s whole thesis is that regularly “showing up” in small human ways - grabbing coffee, joining group lunches, checking in with former project teammates - is what builds the network that quietly supports your career later.

In corporate engineering, that looks like:

Saying yes to the project kick-off meeting instead of hiding behind email.
Attending the client lunch and asking one thoughtful question.
Following up with “Hey, if you ever need help on another noise/vibration job like this, I’d love to be involved.”

None of this is fake schmoozing. It’s showing up as a consistent, helpful human in your professional ecosystem.

The boring academic name for “showing up”: OCB

If you like nerdy framing, there’s a research term for a lot of this behavior: Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) - all the helpful, voluntary stuff you do that isn’t strictly in your job description (helping colleagues, mentoring, volunteering for committees, representing the firm, etc.).

Studies have found that:

OCB is linked to higher individual performance ratings and career success.
Employees sometimes intentionally use OCB to increase their future career prospects and development.

In normal people language: when you consistently step up in visible, useful ways, managers tag you mentally as “high potential” and “good team citizen.” That mental tag follows you into performance reviews and promotion discussions.

So what does “showing up” actually look like?

Here’s what this has looked like in my own engineering-firm world.

Think of these as high-leverage ways to be visible:

1. Show up to the “messy” meetings

Anybody can show up to a polished final presentation. The more valuable visibility happens earlier:

Design coordination calls where there are still real problems to solve
Risk reviews, scope-change discussions, internal “pre-mortem” sessions
The ugly whiteboard meeting where no one is sure yet if the idea will work

You don’t need to lead the room. Asking good questions, summarizing decisions, or following up with notes is enough to make you memorable.

2. Put your hand up for small but visible roles

You don’t need to own the $50M mega-project on day one. Instead:

Offer to own a small package on a larger project.
Volunteer to present your piece of the job in a client or internal review.
Take responsibility for a small internal initiative, like standardizing a template or improving a checklist.

People remember the person who stepped up and actually drove something to done.

After a project or milestone:

Write a one-pager “What we learned from X” and share it internally.
Build a simple template (spreadsheet, script, checklist) that others can reuse.
Turn your debugging war story into a short internal tech talk.

You’re not saying “look how smart I am.” You’re saying “here’s something that might save you 3 hours next time.” That’s pure Show Your Work in a corporate wrapper.

4. Be the consistent presence

This is the unsexy one:

You reliably attend the recurring project check-ins.
You respond when someone asks for help in the team chat.
You show up prepared, having read the drawing set, the minutes, the RFI log, so your contributions are actually useful.

Consistency - being the person who is just there, prepared, non-dramatic, compounds massively over a few years.

“Showing up” when you’re remote or hybrid

If you’re not in the office every day (hello, modern life), you can still show up, it just looks a bit different.

Given the data that remote workers see fewer promotions and raises, visibility becomes even more important.

Some ways to close that visibility gap:

Cameras on with purpose. Don’t live on video 24/7, but for key meetings, turn your camera on, engage, and speak at least once.
Own async updates. Post clear weekly updates to your manager or project channel: what you shipped, decisions made, risks you see.
Schedule intentional touchpoints. A 20-minute monthly 1:1 with someone senior will do more for your career than silently doing great work in the background.
Make your wins legible. Articles on overcoming proximity bias emphasize using objective criteria and digital-first collaboration tools so impact, not just physical presence, is visible to everyone.

Remote doesn’t have to mean invisible, but you do have to be more deliberate.

The uncomfortable but empowering conclusion

Is “showing up” the only thing that matters? Of course not.

Results matter.
Structural biases exist.
Some leaders are great at spotting quiet contributors; others are absolutely not.

But from what I’ve seen (and what the research keeps hinting at), visibility is a multiplier on everything else. Competence × invisibility = slow progress. Competence × consistent, strategic visibility = opportunities.

So in practical terms:

Do good work.
Put yourself where that work is seen.
Keep showing up to rooms, conversations, and problems where you can add value.

Over time, that pattern of simply being there, prepared and helpful turns into reputation.

And reputation is what gets you tapped on the shoulder for the next cool thing.