🤫 The Silent Career Killer #34

Mistaking Effort for Identity (And Why “Working Harder” Stops Working) | Unmasking 50 hidden threats to your UX career | part 34 of 50

There’s a career lesson most UXers learn late, usually after a lot of late nights and weekends nobody remembers.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve already built a reputation as someone who delivers.

You fix what’s broken, you pick up the slack, you smooth out the mess when deadlines slip.

In short: you do the work.

But if you’ve ever watched someone with half your work ethic get the title, the raise, or the stretch assignment, you know there’s a disconnect.

Here’s what nobody tells you:

Effort keeps you employed.
Identity moves you forward.

The difference isn’t subtle, AND it isn’t fair.

The workplace doesn’t run on fairness; it runs on perception.

If people see you as “the producer,” they’ll always see you as the producer, no matter how many times you save the day.

It took me years (and a lot of tough promotion cycles) to really see it.

And I’m not the only one.

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The Wake-Up Call Nobody Preps You For

A quick story—

A couple of years ago, I coached a senior designer (let’s call her “Asha”) who had been quietly holding the team together.

Every handoff, she’d jump in to fix the docs.

Every project, she took on the messy user flows no one wanted to touch.

She was the “go-to” when something fell through the cracks.

Then promotion time rolled around…and nothing.

“Asha is a rockstar producer,” her manager said. “But I’m not sure she’s quite operating at a strategic level yet.”

What hit her wasn’t even the lack of promotion.

It was the realization that she’d - unknowingly - been playing the wrong game.

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This is something I see again and again, and it’s why I posted this as a quick note earlier this week ↴

This simple post struck a nerve for a reason.

Most of us are conditioned to believe that working harder - being the reliable one, the fixer, the “safe pair of hands” - is what earns recognition and promotion.

But after a certain point, it actually cements your identity as the one who “gets things done,” not the one who shapes what gets done.

If you want to accelerate your career, you have to shift from being seen as a producer to being seen as a peer.

And that means changing not just what you do, but how you’re positioned, and how you show up.

Let’s break down what this really means, and how to actually make the shift.

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The Mistake ↴

Equating Value With Visible Effort

Most UXers start by being “useful.”

You want to be known as reliable, fast, the one who sweats the details.

It feels safe.

But after a certain level, “useful” is where careers plateau.

Here’s what gets you stuck: