This transcript was produced by robots and left as-is. Accuracy and elegance are not guaranteed.

In the last episode, I talked about why this podcast exists and why so many engineers end up unprepared for the human side of the job. This episode’s a bit different. It’s based on a recent newsletter, and I’m going to read parts of it and think through them out loud. I’ll pause along the way to add some context so this actually makes sense in the real world. So let’s get into it. a while back, another coach was walking me through his impressions of my business.

Not feedback I asked for, not a pitch, just an outside perspective. And he said something that genuinely caught me off guard. He said, you have a really clear sense of what you’re building. You’re not scattered like most coaches I talked to. My reaction wasn’t pride. It was confusion. I remember thinking, really? I just assumed I was doing what everyone else was doing. Posting content, refining offers, trying to be consistent. Nothing special, nothing remarkable, just normal. And that moment exposed something I see constantly with engineers. We can’t see what we’re good at. Now let me pause for a second. If that sentence makes you a little uncomfortable, it’s not an accident. Most engineers I work with would never say, I don’t know what I’m good at. They’ll say, I’m just doing my job or this is basic stuff. That’s the tell.

The better you get at something, the harder it is to recognize it as a skill. Your brain builds efficient pathways. The thinking becomes automatic. The decisions feel obvious. And once something feels obvious, your brain quietly labels it as not valuable. This isn’t humility and it’s not imposter syndrome. It’s a cognitive blind spot. And engineers get trapped in this more than most people. And here’s why.

We’re trained to believe that there is a right way to solve problems. So when we develop a systematic approach, something repeatable and reliable, we assume everyone else learned it too, except they didn’t. Let me make that a little more concrete. If you’re an engineer listening to this, you probably do things like this every day. You see dependencies in a project plan that others miss.

You troubleshoot complex systems in your head. You translate technical risk into language that a non-technical stakeholder can actually act on. You anticipate failure modes before anyone else even notices. To you, that feels like a baseline competence. You tell yourself, that’s just being thorough. That’s just how I think. Anyone can do that. No, they can’t.

And this is where I want to slow down for a moment. Because when I say that to engineers, they usually push back internally. They think, well, if somebody else had my experience, they’d see it too. Sure. And if someone trained for 25 years, they’d also be an engineer. The ease you feel is not evidence that the skill is common. It’s evidence that you’ve practiced it for a long time.

Once you see this pattern, you start noticing it everywhere. I see it constantly in coaching. Engineers who feel overlooked, under-recognized, stuck. When we dig in, they’re discounting the exact capabilities their organization relies on them for. They compete on credentials, titles, hours worked. While the things that actually differentiate them stay invisible. To their boss, to their clients and to themselves. That’s exactly what happened to me in that conversation. The other coach didn’t point out something I needed to develop. He pointed out something I’d already developed, but I could no longer see. And this isn’t just interesting, it has real consequences. When you can’t see your own expertise, you under price it, you under communicate it, you don’t advocate for it, and you assume advancement comes from doing more work instead of different work.

Meanwhile, someone else is packaging a weaker version of your capability and getting paid more for it. Not because they’re better, but because they can see it. So the obvious question is, what do you actually do with this? Well, you don’t introspect harder. And this is important because engineers love introspection. We replay conversations, we analyze decisions.

We assume that if we just think about it long enough, clarity will emerge. But blind spots don’t disappear through reflection. They disappear through data. Here are three simple ways to start collecting it. First, think about tasks you complete in under 30 minutes that would take most people hours. Don’t dismiss them. The speed difference is the expertise. Second, ask someone you work with, what do I make look really easy that you find difficult? And when they answer, don’t argue with them. Don’t qualify it. Don’t explain it away. Just write it down. Third, look at problems you solve repeatedly and ask yourself, what breaks if this isn’t done well? That downstream impact is where your value actually lives.

So if you’re listening to this and feeling a bit exposed right now, that’s actually a good sign. If you’re technically strong but feel overlooked, this is often why. You’re not missing skills, you’re missing visibility into your own self. And that’s what this podcast is about, making the invisible visible, translating what you already do into language that creates trust, influence and leadership impact, without asking you to become someone else. Because being a great engineer isn’t enough anymore. But the good news is, you already have more than you think. Before we wrap up, here’s one simple thing to try this week. Ask one person you trust, what do I make look easy that you find difficult? And then just listen. In the next episode, we’ll build on this and talk about why certainty the thing engineers are often praised for can quietly undermine credibility. We’ll pick it up there. Thanks.