Kelsey Hightower

I just wanted to make sure that they understood what I was doing and I was aware that I wasn't just trying to play the game.

I was trying to approach this process authentically.

And I got promoted off of that packet.

And look, it could just be sometimes, the work sometimes speaks for itself.

But a lot of times, people can't see the work if it's not presented correctly.

And so that kind of slingshot, I mean, and the reason why I tell this story is that

Every distinguished engineer doesn't get there the same way.

Everyone thinks like, oh, how much code did you write?

What complex thing did you build?

And for me, I think it was the impact on Google Cloud's culture.

The empathetic engineering thing became an official thing that they used to onboard other engineers.

It became things that had a whole team behind it.

They used to go give them in a product manager that would evolve the program and integrate into HR.

the philosophy around other engineers saying, Kelsey, we just did an empathy session.

I want to show you the results of it because we're about to ship it.

And then engineers started really thinking about the customer.

I mean, Amazon was always known for that to some degree, but to help Google get on the same page,

I mean, I'm pretty sure other people had an impact, but there was a direct line of impact from those type of programs.

And also me diversifying, moving away from Kubernetes into the serverless realm, moving to the world where you're helping out the Postgres or the Spanner team at a Postgres interface, the Go team, getting a little bit better with cloud, just making other people successful around you is one of those things that helps you become distinguished.

It's the impact, the ability to influence.