If you aren’t communicating what you’re working on, it’s hard to get credit or recognition. And it’s not an ego or bragging thing: It’s just fundamental team communication.

For example, there may have been constraints that the manager knew about that sheer velocity was key for some reason. Or maybe the manager disagreed that Tim was adding enough value floating around all day. Who knows. But if Tim and his manager were in open communication, at a minimum there wouldn’t be confusion so great that a good engineer almost got shit-canned.