When we moved into our new office, the team had to decide where we’d sit. There were two real options: an area all the way across the floor from the managing partners, or the area right next to them.
I said I wanted to be next to them.
I was the only one. The pushback came fast. People didn’t want to sit near the MPs. They didn’t want someone looking over their shoulder. They didn’t want to feel watched.
Our managing partners don’t do that. They don’t hover, and they don’t count keystrokes. The worry was about a kind of manager none of us actually work for. I understand where it comes from. A lot of people have had a boss who watched that way, and that fear travels with you into the next job.
It’s still the wrong instinct. Sitting where leadership never sees you doesn’t protect you. It just makes you harder to think of.
Here’s what sitting close actually buys you.
Your managing partners walk past your desk. They see you’re in the office on a Monday. They hear you helping someone debug something. Maybe they notice you’re the one who ran the retro when the lead was out. None of that is a performance review, and none of it goes in a document. It just accumulates.
Then an opportunity comes up. A project needs someone to lead it. A client wants a senior person in the room. Someone is putting names on a proposal. In that moment, a few people come to mind, and they come from what leadership has seen recently and repeatedly.
Compensation works the same way. When they sit down to make those calls, they’re working from what they know about you. If all they know is your name, there’s nothing to weigh. The value you brought to your team, your client, and your project only counts if somebody in that room can describe it.
There are staffing conversations you’re not in.
Over 20 years in the industry, I’ve been in the conversations where people get assigned to projects. I’ve watched good developers get passed over for work they would have been great at.
It’s usually not about their code. It’s that when someone asks, “Can they lead this one?”, nobody in the room has seen enough of them lately to say yes with any confidence. Presence is what makes everything else about you legible.
Projects with people early in their careers raise the bar further. Whoever leads one has to be around those people, in person, regularly. Answering well in Slack is not the same job. If you haven’t been around, nobody considers you for that seat, and your skill isn’t the question.
Mentorship works the same way. The kind that changes your career is offered when someone senior watches you work, sees something in it, and decides to spend their own time on you. Nobody makes that offer to a person they’ve never talked to.
Invisible means you don’t get picked. It means you don’t get mentored. It means you don’t move up, and when comp comes around, nobody in the room can make a case for you, because nobody has anything to say.
Sitting near your boss is the cheapest version of this.
You still have to do good work. Nothing here replaces that. But good work nobody witnesses leaves you hoping someone eventually goes looking for it. People are busy. They rarely go looking.
There are plenty of ways to be visible. Speak up in meetings. Give a lunch and learn. Answer a question in Slack when you know the answer, and ask your own questions there instead of DMing one person. Ask your question in the quarterly meeting when the managing partners are the ones presenting. Volunteer for the thing nobody wants. Most of that is just being willing to talk when it would be easier not to.
Sitting where leadership walks past you costs nothing. You pick a chair. That’s the whole action.
When you get to choose, choose to be seen.
If your team is picking desks, take the one near the people who decide things.
If you work remote, none of this happens on its own. Nobody walks past your desk. Everything anyone knows about you is something you put somewhere on purpose. So keep your camera on. Be in the channels where the work actually gets talked about, not only the ones someone added you to. Say what you’re working on before somebody asks. When there’s a reason to come into the office, take it, and be there for the parts of the day when people are actually around.
If your manager can’t say what you did this quarter, that’s a problem you can fix this week.
You want the people making decisions about your career to know you exist, know what you’re good at, and know what you want next. Make that easy for them.