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Principles of Work - Be Your Own Advocate

Summary

This episode presents a rational argument for why individuals must learn to advocate for themselves in their careers. The host begins by establishing the premise that no one else could possibly be a better advocate for you, assuming you are generally healthy and capable of self-advocacy. The discussion is framed within the bounded context of career development, where the stakes and dynamics make self-advocacy particularly crucial.

The first major reason explored is the principle of self-interest. The host explains that while others may advocate for you, they do so with their own interests in mind—whether fulfilling personal values or preserving their identity. When advocating for you conflicts with their self-preservation, they are unlikely to continue. This natural human tendency means you are the only person who will consistently prioritize your interests above others’ in the long term.

Another key argument is that your success has the longest-lasting effect on you. While a boss or colleague might benefit from advocating for your promotion, you carry the consequences on your resume and future career trajectory. You have the highest incentive and the most to gain from your own advocacy, making you the most motivated advocate possible. This incentive structure creates the strongest foundation for effective self-advocacy.

The host also emphasizes that you have direct access to your own desires, emotions, and experiences. This intimate knowledge reduces information loss and creates a tight feedback loop that external advocates cannot replicate. While others might know positive aspects about you, only you understand the nuanced details of your strengths, preferences, and what truly matters to you in your career.

Finally, the episode clarifies that self-advocacy doesn’t mean you must know everything about career paths or roles. Rather, being your own best advocate means recognizing when you need help—whether through coaching, feedback from coworkers, or other resources—and proactively seeking what will benefit you. The host encourages listeners to conduct a monthly audit of their self-advocacy efforts, emphasizing that if you’re not advocating for yourself, you’re missing out on the best possible advocacy available.

Recommendations

Actions

  • Monthly self-advocacy audit — The host recommends checking in monthly to assess how you’ve advocated for yourself, suggesting this timeframe provides a good balance for regular reflection without being overwhelming.
  • Seek career coaching when needed — The episode mentions that being your own best advocate includes recognizing when you would benefit from career coaching to help inform your self-advocacy efforts.
  • Gather feedback from coworkers — The host suggests reaching out to coworkers to learn about feedback and how to act on it as part of effective self-advocacy and personal development.

Communities

  • Developer Tea Discord community — The host invites listeners to join the Developer Tea Discord community at developertea.com/Discord to discuss career questions and topics with other engineers.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to self-advocacy in career contexts — The host introduces the episode’s focus on why learning to advocate for yourself is crucial. He establishes the bounded context of career advocacy for generally healthy individuals and presents the core argument that no one else could be a better advocate for you than yourself.
  • 00:02:24 — The principle of self-interest in advocacy — The host explains how self-interest affects advocacy. While others may advocate for you, they do so while fulfilling their own values or preserving their identity. When advocating for you conflicts with their self-preservation, they’re unlikely to continue, making you the most consistent advocate for your own interests.
  • 00:04:36 — Long-term impact and personal incentive — This section discusses how your success affects you most profoundly and longest. While others might benefit from advocating for you, you carry the career consequences permanently. You have the highest incentive and most to gain from your own advocacy, creating the strongest motivation for effective self-representation.
  • 00:06:51 — Personal knowledge and reduced information loss — The host emphasizes that you have direct access to your own desires, emotions, and experiences. This intimate knowledge creates a tight feedback loop that external advocates cannot replicate. While others might know positive aspects about you, only you understand the nuanced details crucial for effective advocacy.
  • 00:08:20 — Clarifying what self-advocacy means in practice — The host addresses potential misunderstandings about self-advocacy. He clarifies that being your own best advocate doesn’t mean you must know everything about career paths. Rather, it means recognizing when you need help—through coaching, feedback, or resources—and proactively seeking what will benefit you most.
  • 00:11:53 — Practical application and monthly audit — In the conclusion, the host encourages listeners to conduct a monthly audit of their self-advocacy efforts. He reinforces that self-advocacy isn’t selfish when done alongside considering others’ needs. The episode ends with an invitation to join the Developer Tea Discord community for further career discussions.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2024-03-29T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:12:45

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] You’ve probably heard this advice before to advocate for yourself in today’s

[00:00:17] episode, I’d like to give you an optimistic, but rational argument for

[00:00:23] why it’s so important that you learn how to advocate for yourself.

[00:00:29] The basis for this, the importance of this is what I want to drive home today.

[00:00:39] And it’s based on a simple argument that no one else could possibly be a

[00:00:47] better advocate for you.

[00:00:50] Now recognize that what we’re talking about here is within a reasonably

[00:00:55] bounded context, right?

[00:00:57] We’re not talking about situations where your ability to advocate is

[00:01:01] compromised for some reason.

[00:01:04] Assuming you are generally healthy and well, and you are capable of

[00:01:09] advocating for yourself, then this should apply to your situation.

[00:01:14] You are going to be your own best advocate.

[00:01:19] We can look at this from two angles, either by proving that you are your

[00:01:23] own best advocate on its own merits.

[00:01:26] Or by proving that no one else could be your best advocate.

[00:01:30] And we can kind of look at both of these.

[00:01:33] This is not a purely logical proof, but I have not encountered anyone who

[00:01:38] could destabilize this proof entirely without entering into the categories

[00:01:45] mentioned before, where you are not able to advocate for yourself for some reason.

[00:01:51] And generally speaking, we’re applying this to advocacy within your career.

[00:01:58] If we start talking about other parts of your life, advocacy and other parts of

[00:02:03] your life, then the stakes change in certain circumstances.

[00:02:08] So advocating for yourself in your career, you are almost certainly the

[00:02:15] most important advocate that you have.

[00:02:17] The first reason for this is because of the simple principle of self-interest.

[00:02:24] This is not a violation of any kind of ethics.

[00:02:31] This is not a problem per se.

[00:02:33] It is a natural part of being a human.

[00:02:38] We are going to watch out for ourselves before we watch out for others.

[00:02:46] Before we watch out for anyone else.

[00:02:49] Now, importantly, notice that we didn’t say instead of anyone else.

[00:02:53] We’re saying before.

[00:02:56] So it is very unlikely that any advocate you have would advocate for you at their

[00:03:03] own peril and certainly not for an extended period of time.

[00:03:08] In other words, those kinds of risks often do actually have a long-term

[00:03:15] benefit for the people who are taking them.

[00:03:18] And these benefits are not easy to quantify necessarily.

[00:03:21] We’re not necessarily talking about benefits in the way of compensation, etc.

[00:03:28] Someone kind of advocating on your behalf is not doing that entirely without self-interest.

[00:03:35] They may be, for example, fulfilling their own values, which is valuable to them.

[00:03:42] There’s nothing bad about that necessarily.

[00:03:44] There’s nothing wrong with that.

[00:03:46] But what it does mean is if they were presented with the situation where advocating

[00:03:51] for you did not fulfill their values, did not fulfill some self-preservation at all.

[00:04:00] And here we’re not just talking about survival.

[00:04:02] We’re talking about self-preservation of identity.

[00:04:06] Then it’s very likely that they will not advocate for you in that situation.

[00:04:11] And here we don’t necessarily need to prove that someone wouldn’t advocate

[00:04:15] for you at their own peril.

[00:04:17] Instead, we need to discuss whether that makes them the best advocate for you,

[00:04:24] which is the kind of the premise that we’re presenting here in this episode.

[00:04:28] Who’s the best advocate for you?

[00:04:30] Another kind of rational reason why you are the best advocate for yourself is

[00:04:36] that your success has the longest lasting effect on you.

[00:04:43] Out of anybody who is affected by your success or by your advocacy,

[00:04:49] you are the most impacted by this.

[00:04:52] In the average case, for example, let’s say that your boss advocates for you.

[00:04:58] You get a promotion.

[00:04:59] You do a great job.

[00:05:00] Your boss has some kind of kickback benefit from this, but then you leave the company.

[00:05:06] Now your boss may still receive some kind of latent benefits from that promotion

[00:05:11] that you got by way of, let’s say, ripple effects of the work that you did

[00:05:16] while you were at that company or maybe in the form of a relational capital with you.

[00:05:23] Maybe you refer people to your boss in the future, but you are the one who’s going

[00:05:30] to have the most potent consequences in that scenario.

[00:05:35] You’re the one who will carry that as a mark on your resume.

[00:05:40] You’re the one who perhaps went on to a new job based on the experiences you had

[00:05:48] in that previous job.

[00:05:49] It’s going to impact you more than any other single person.

[00:05:54] Now, again, an argument could be made that another person is impacted perhaps close

[00:05:58] to the same amount, but again, we’re trying to make the original argument,

[00:06:04] which is how does this actually make you a better advocate for yourself than anyone else?

[00:06:10] That is because you have the highest incentive.

[00:06:13] You have the most to gain from your own advocacy.

[00:06:18] This is perhaps the strongest part of the argument.

[00:06:21] You have the most to gain.

[00:06:24] You have the most incentive, the highest incentive, positive incentive as well,

[00:06:29] the highest incentive out of anyone to advocate for you.

[00:06:35] When you combine all these factors, and there are more, when you combine these factors,

[00:06:40] it continues to paint the picture that you are your best advocate.

[00:06:45] Another supporting piece of evidence is the fact that you are directly in tune

[00:06:51] with your own desires, emotions, nuances, your own experiences you know the most about yourself.

[00:06:59] Now, you could argue that another person who knows only the good things about you might

[00:07:04] serve as a good advocate, but this kind of gets into the detail of what an advocate

[00:07:10] really is going to do for you.

[00:07:12] In this case, understanding the nuanced details of your strengths and the nuanced details

[00:07:21] of what you care about, the things that you like, these are going to be important

[00:07:26] data points that you use in your self-advocacy.

[00:07:30] It also reduces the risks associated with any kind of delay or any kind of message transmission,

[00:07:38] something we’ve been talking about on the show recently.

[00:07:43] Being your own advocate, you have this very tight feedback loop.

[00:07:47] There’s very little loss of information between the venues of advocacy, if you will,

[00:07:54] and your own parsing of those experiences.

[00:07:58] There’s plenty of other reasons why you would make a great advocate for yourself,

[00:08:01] but I want to clear up some kind of predict and then clear up some misunderstandings about what

[00:08:08] I’m saying here, some potential misunderstandings.

[00:08:11] One misunderstanding is the idea that advocacy that I’m talking about here is coaching or

[00:08:20] you know, somehow getting you placed in a role, you know, acting like a recruiter might

[00:08:26] and advocating for you to receive some specific benefit.

[00:08:31] While advocacy is part of the things that we just mentioned,

[00:08:37] that is not necessarily what we’re talking about here because the pushback that I anticipate

[00:08:43] from this is that, well, people may not necessarily know what’s best for them.

[00:08:48] People may not know what roles are out there for them or they may not know

[00:08:52] what role am I best suited for.

[00:08:56] People may not necessarily know what kind of advice they should be giving themselves

[00:09:01] and is in a particular situation at, you know, let’s say in their current role.

[00:09:08] Really, these kinds of terms can start to get a little bit fuzzy because an advocate

[00:09:15] doesn’t cover all of those bases and advocate in the framing that I’m using here

[00:09:21] is someone who is incentivized to do the thing that will be best for you.

[00:09:27] Someone who has an incentive, a reason to go to bat for you.

[00:09:34] Of course, it helps if you can evaluate on your own behalf what you may benefit from.

[00:09:44] What kind of role do you think would work well for you?

[00:09:48] And then use that information to inform your self-advocacy, right?

[00:09:55] So this may mean that because you are your own best advocate,

[00:10:01] you know that you will benefit from someone helping you.

[00:10:06] You will benefit from getting career coaching.

[00:10:09] You may benefit from reaching out to your co-workers and learning a little bit about

[00:10:17] some feedback from your co-workers and learning how to act on that feedback.

[00:10:21] Whatever it is, your advocate will kind of stand in the gap for you, right?

[00:10:28] You can stand in the gap for yourself in this case and seek out information that would benefit you.

[00:10:36] And the important thing here is that the advocate is focused on

[00:10:40] what is the best thing that I can do for this person.

[00:10:44] Once again, you are the best person for that.

[00:10:47] You will be your own best advocate.

[00:10:52] Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Developer Tea.

[00:10:56] This idea of self-advocacy is not easy all the time.

[00:11:00] Doing what’s best for ourselves is not a selfish thing

[00:11:05] in and of itself.

[00:11:07] We can do things that are good for us and good for others.

[00:11:11] Recognizing that all of us are advocating for ourselves

[00:11:16] and that that’s probably the best possible option for each person.

[00:11:21] Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Developer Tea.

[00:11:24] I hope you enjoyed this kind of diversion.

[00:11:27] This is a basic principle.

[00:11:29] We’ve been talking about principles on the show recently.

[00:11:32] A basic working principle that you can apply in your career.

[00:11:35] If you are not advocating for yourself, there’s no one who is doing it better than that.

[00:11:41] The worst possible thing, the best possible advocate is going to be you.

[00:11:47] And if you are not advocating for yourself,

[00:11:49] that is the best advocacy that you are receiving at that moment.

[00:11:53] So I encourage you to do kind of a quick audit.

[00:11:57] Check in and see how have I advocated for my own self.

[00:12:02] This month, that’s probably a good range to put on it.

[00:12:05] Thanks so much for listening to this episode.

[00:12:07] If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review for the show on iTunes.

[00:12:12] This is the easiest and kind of highest impact way

[00:12:16] to help us reach more engineers like you who may enjoy Developer Tea.

[00:12:21] Also, come and join us on the Developer Tea Discord community.

[00:12:24] Head over to developertea.com slash Discord.

[00:12:27] That community is continuing to thrive.

[00:12:30] It’s a great place to discuss your career and questions you have about your career.

[00:12:33] That’s developertea.com slash Discord.

[00:12:35] Thanks so much for listening.

[00:12:37] And until next time, enjoy your tea.

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