Me, with a career that overlaps a time when one or two people building a datacenter with a little help from contractors for e.g. the electrical work and hvac, wasn't unheard of, for about three seconds, in my head: "Damn, that's pretty impressive"

Me, by the end of the three seconds: "Oh, he means he told other people to build four datacenters and that was very likely the extent of his involvement."

I'm going to assume that you are not in a management position from this statement? It's virtually impossible, unless you have extremely high-functioning workers, to do this.

People need oversight so they don't go off the rails, management so others don't step in to distract them, leadership so they can be guided in the right direction, etc.

Even with awesome direct reports, I can't think of a time when I just handed someone an extremely complex project and left them alone and was presented with perfect success a few months later.

Management is a skill; don't disregard its importance.

Ego is a hell of a drug

Personally, I prefer to call out leadership explicitly: "lead teams who built out four data centers."

"Hi. I'm Name. I'm on BossName's team. I work on AppN."

Like a normal person.

Please be better tactically than getting your direct manager to hate you. Managing your manager is one of the most overlooked skills. Engineers almost always lack it.

If you want credit, maneuver yourself to get it once you're on-site. You went to work for a hybrid company, but are fully remote. Not only that but you’re in Bali while they’re in New Jersey for a significant time zone difference. That's on you. Ask to be included in demos and meetings -- make up a reason if you need to. You want to be there to answer technical questions or get feedback directly for example. In those meetings, actually participate when appropriate and slowly gain visibility.

It's very obvious to many of us who've been doing this for a while which folks are tactically aware of the politics and norms of a workplace and those clueless. Don't be that person.

On the plus side, if a project's gone really well and is very important for the personal prestige of your line manager and the line manager is a little bit nervous about being unable to maintain and expand the thing he's getting credit for .... that sounds like a good time to ask for a pay rise or other improvements to your contract. That might be far more useful than the boss publicly conceding how little of the work was his own, and he can even spin the outcome as how effectively he saved the company money by hiring such a good quality remote subcontractor at initially below market rates!

Nobody expects honest answers when it comes to this sort of questions. If you reply honestly, you are condemning yourself to a life of 9-5 jobs. The correct answer to this sort of questions is a generic response "I am looking to explore new opportunities", or something similar.

DON'T DO IT. You are cornering your boss, implicitly showing your conflict/concern. It'd backfire on you

Was this said in a way that may have been trying to get you to feel like you're missing out and encourage you to come back to office? Not saying that's appropriate, but your other comment makes me think this org doesn't have a strong remote culture, and so likely one to stack the optics against remote work.

I'm wondering if the comment was made more in the spirit of "[as the remote member of this project] the CEO doesn't even know who you are, and thinks I made the whole thing [which is clearly a shit deal, and so by implication you should really come work in the office]" (bracket context as unsaid, but implied)

Anyhow, this sucks, and I feel for your sense of being mistreated. Attribution is important, and a failure to offer it (nevermind their views on remote work) is a bit of a smell

Something else to consider - maybe the board is ecstatic because it's not actually solving the right problem but looks very streamlined? You say the boss was only giving you one sentence saying what to build.

I don't know how well requirements were communicated in those sentences, but if they told you exactly what you needed to know, I'd say your boss has done a very good job, along with you.

EDIT: I want to say that it sounds like you and your boss are a great team. Don't screw that up over your apprehensions right now. See how it goes.

Do you want a promotion? Pay bump? In that case you have to look at how happy your manager is with you. At the end of the day your manager has a major say in these two things, and if they're looking good because of your hard work, that's good for you.

The issue is if the manager takes credit and then turns around and tells you that your performance is not doing great. This does happen and the only, slim, chance you have of rectifying it is reaching out to a skip level. But again this also means you have to "want" to stay at the company and grow there.

I can't tell just from your comment so this could fall into either category of "that's just office politics" or "that's really a toxic org". It is quite possible that you actually don't want to deal with either of these and will likely be happier as a freelancer.

To answer your other question: I've been remote for many years, before the pandemic, and have not had trouble getting credit for my work when it matters. Generally good managers do like to show off the success of their team members because that also can make them look good.

Taking credit for other's work though... that usually ends badly for the individual who is taking credit.

Maybe I've been fortunate in my career but the pattern I've observed is that good bosses always attribute successes to their team (e.g., we were able to do it) and failures to themselves (e.g., I missed that).

The time someone takes credit for my work and refuses to fix this, I run. I can, there are so many nice places one can work at, especially with the raise of remote work which I happen to like.

I would not expect my bosses to take my credit. And I do recognize their involvement too. Actually, we edit a public open source project and publish extensions for it, and individual contributors are listed as authors, instead of just the company name.

You have to look at things at the right level of abstraction.

Bosses "program" people, they set them to work on things that need doing. They can be more or less involved in the actual process, but ultimately they're responsible for delivering the thing.

Developers write all the code. Some may feel that they built the whole thing (I have been that person) but that neglects the role others play in figuring out what needs building and actually making it happen.

Edit: I don't believe it's right for others to take credit for someone else's work. I just think that when an executive hears a boss "built" something, they don't think "wow, what an amazing coder". They don't think about code at all. This person delivered a thing that was built. They built it in the organization. That's all it means.

Who is he? Sounds like he is just gossiping to you and stirring the pot.

I would hold off on getting upset till you are there in person to say, "So I heard yall liked the app I built" and that will be that.

You are doing yourself no favors by working from Bali. It isn't your fault, but it sounds like the company isn't used to remote. They hear "our developer in bali" as "some $4 per hour dev code monkey" (doesn't matter what they are actually paying you). Of course you aren't getting actual credit with that bias.

You seem to already have delivered value to them, so you are in a good position to tell them what you would like to happen or how you feel about it.

If they are a good manager, you’ll get a good response and things will improve. If they are not, you wouldn’t want to work for them for much longer I guess…

But I also want to mention: have their been any actual outcomes from this project, or is the board just "excited about it"? Has there been revenue realized? If you ask for "credit" before there is real outcomes, you are basically asking for the boss to name drop you to their boss. While that's not _egregious_, personally I would wait until there are business outcomes as collateral to ask for real recognition: a promotion, more responsibility.

In my experience, the higher ups are usually pretty aware of this kind of thing and will figure it out, and if they don't they're just going to get annoyed at you if you try to point it out.

Also, just an observation -- if you can build an app from scratch, in 3 months in Bali no less, can do freelancing to pay the bills, and don't like the corporate hierarchy -- what's stopping you from just doing your own app?

Building an app does not equate to owning an app.

Absolutely fight back and claim credit. If your director or senior manager (ie, your boss's boss) knows you built it in its entirety, it's easier to get promoted this way rather than through your direct boss. That's because at cross calibrations, when the managers all get together to rate their reports for that enticing bonus/promo, the senior managers have to be convinced as to who should get what. So if your senior manager or director knows your name, then it's much easier to get that promo, and your boss can't hide it from them for his own gain since your name is already so well known.

That's just office politics, and everyone has to play whether you like it or not, unfortunately. Claim your title, don't depend on others if you did the work. Make yourself known, it's the only way to win.

1) Put your name as Author in every bit of code you have written.

2) Document everything about the app and publish it in an internal wiki.

3) Find a way to distribute the wiki internally so everyone is aware of it.

4) Appreciate that the boss is taking your app to the board and is getting their sponsorship. Now ask for a good raise.

5) You don’t have to live in anyone’s shadow. Let people know what you do and get more familiar with the business side of things.

6) Credits Just like everything else in real world is complex and multidimensional.

No raise, good luck, you're heading to greener pastures.

Isn't that was `git blame` is for?

So it's best to add the author name as many places as possible and distribute it.

If you identified an opportunity, presented it to him, drove the process of getting it prioritized and built it, then you deserve credit and he should 100% be mentioning you.

Depending on how the board behaves, it may well be that he's doing you a HUGE favor by keeping them off your back. Also, there's a good chance that everyone knows that he can't code, and if he says "I built it" then everyone will know to look at his coders in the org chart and they'll find you there.

Management saying "I did X" when they mean "I coordinated my team to do X" is quite common in some companies, so I wouldn't assume bad intent based just on that. If that's the case here, he'll probably be happy to endorse you for your skills on LinkedIn. And your coworkers will notice ;)

Doesn't sound like it. He may not be outwardly evil, but... there's not much he needed to say when presenting this to people. "I didn't do this on my own - pmanning11 worked with me on this".

Unless he's screwed up by not following some particular policy about 'work being done offshore' or something similar, in which case... he's still not 'a nice guy'.

If there's any support/modifications that need to happen to this, everyone will find out pretty quickly that whoever they thought built it didn't build it.

This makes me wonder if maybe you working remotely isn't exactly kosher and your boss is covering his and your behinds until you are in the office.

Before I address your concern, May I know who presented the app to the Board 3 times? If it's you, then they already know you are running the show. May you can stress you on few things like - challenges, uncertainty, ambiguity - you faced

Did you do all the UX design?

Did you write the backend?

Did you do the QA testing? Did you get feedback from users and change the design based on their feedback?

If you did all of those things then you can say "I built it", if not, that you can say I was part of the team that built it. A major part perhaps, but a part.

Is he?

This shit is old, if you've got a problem with it you can agitate the situation and most likely lose the gig. Or find other socialists to complain to, they will understand.