Understand the Context, Make Yourself Visible

At Airbyte, we have a community devs team. They're folks who participated in our hackathons and did really well, so we established the team with a bounty program. I work closely with them, and folks asked me for career growth advice. Here's what I put together for one of them.

• Built a strong, VERY direct relationship with your manager, and your manager's manager. Ask about your manager's goals. Know how their work is evaluated, and work on things that make them successful.
• Know what's critical for the company, and push the company forward, then make sure you get recognition. Have a work log or a brag list — a document with your highest leverage contribution for each month or quarter. Demonstrate exactly how your work pushed a company-wide metric up.
• Ask your manager to make a growth plan for you, with you. Ask your manager for frequent check-ins to see how they evaluate your work. Monthly is good. Early in your career, it's reasonable to expect to level up every year (if you put in the effort and work on right things). Level up, or grow out of your current team. If the company does not appreciate you, find another gig. If you can't find another gig, maybe you suck and your manager does not help you grow the right way. Figure out what's wrong.
• Lift everyone around yourself. Help everyone on your team. Help people on other teams when they have questions about your team's work. Rince, repeat. Make friends. Someone someday will go work for {your dream company}, and you want them to refer you.
• If you're in a remote office, it's critical to talk to US office people, establish at least monthly 1:1s with them. Make sure they know your name, what you're working on, what you're interested in. If your work is very visible, you're doing great, and there is a new role or a task they have, you want to be considered for it.
• Unfortunately, it's very common for US folks to think "oh, they're in {country}, we have language and culture barrier, and with the timezone gap — they hate Zooms". Sure, this is unfair, but that's what it is — people are biased, and not a lot of folks know how to make remote people successful. You have to take this into your own hands.
• Work in the open. Do daily or weekly check-ins even if you're not asked to. Record short videos and demo your work. Show your ideas, ask for feedback. You want to be on the radar.