How do you know when you are starting to lose trust at work? Sometimes the signs are obvious. Sometimes they look like fewer assignments, meaningless work, weak feedback, or people simply avoiding you. In this episode, Steve and Jake break down the warning signs that an engineer may be underperforming and, more importantly, how to turn it around. Not theory, practical, tactical advice for rebuilding trust, earning better work, and proving through execution that you deserve more responsibility.

Key Topics Covered:
• Why getting fewer meaningful assignments can be a warning sign
• What it means when coworkers and managers stop engaging with you
• Why meaningless work may signal a loss of confidence in your performance
• The danger of receiving feedback and doing nothing with it
• How defensiveness makes people stop giving you honest feedback
• Why better feedback has to be earned over time
• How small assignments can become opportunities to rebuild trust
• Why excellence matters even when the work feels beneath you
• How helping overloaded teammates can create your own opportunities
• Why technical skill alone will not make people want to work with you

Actionable Steps:
• Pay attention if meaningful work starts disappearing
• Ask directly for feedback instead of assuming everything is fine
• Receive criticism without immediately explaining or defending yourself
• Ask for specific examples when feedback is unclear
• Take visible action on the feedback you receive
• Follow up later and ask whether your changes are being noticed
• Treat small assignments like they matter, because your execution does
• Look for ways to take work off the plates of overloaded teammates
• Deliver work at a level that makes your effort undeniable
• Rebuild trust through repeated execution, not promises

Who This Episode Is For:
• Early-career engineers unsure whether they are performing well
• Engineers who feel overlooked or underutilized
• ICs who are frustrated by low-value assignments
• Engineers who struggle with defensiveness or feedback
• Anyone who needs to rebuild trust with a manager or team

Why It Matters:
Your career expands when people trust you with more. When that trust starts disappearing, so do meaningful assignments, visibility, responsibility, and growth. You do not rebuild it by demanding better opportunities. You rebuild it by taking ownership, acting on feedback, and demonstrating excellence with whatever is already in front of you.

Where to Listen:
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Or wherever you get your podcasts

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If this episode hit home, send it to someone. The Impactful Engineer grows by word of mouth, just like the best careers do.

Engineers are trained to analyze, validate, and reduce uncertainty. That becomes a problem when analysis turns into an excuse to delay action. In this episode, Steve and Jake break down two career-defining skills: urgency and agency. For early-career engineers, the order matters. You may not have enough experience yet to make every call confidently, but you can learn to reach a good-enough decision point quickly. Not theory, practical, tactical advice for engineers who want more responsibility, better projects, and faster career growth.

KEY TOPICS COVERED:
• Why urgency and agency are different skills
• Why early-career engineers should build urgency first
• How excessive analysis disguises procrastination
• Why working hard does not automatically mean you are moving fast
• How to recognize when you have enough information to proceed
• Why confidence comes after repeated decision-making experience
• How urgency accelerates learning early in your career
• Why high-agency engineers earn greater responsibility
• How managers evaluate new engineers beyond technical skill
• Why speed and judgment eventually have to work together

ACTIONABLE STEPS:
• Define what "good enough to decide" means before starting analysis
• Ask experienced engineers what information actually matters
• Set a limit on how long you will investigate before making a recommendation
• Separate missing critical information from information that would simply make you more comfortable
• Make a recommendation instead of only presenting data
• Take action once the decision threshold has been reached
• Review your decisions afterward to sharpen future judgment
• Use experienced teammates to shorten your learning curve
• Notice when "I need more information" is really fear of being wrong
• Build urgency now so agency has something to grow from later

WHO THIS EPISODE IS FOR:
• New graduates entering engineering roles
• Early-career engineers who overanalyze decisions
• Engineers frustrated by slow career progression
• ICs who want larger projects and greater responsibility
• Engineers trying to build confidence without pretending they know everything

WHY IT MATTERS:
The engineers who grow fastest are not the ones who somehow eliminate uncertainty. They learn how much certainty is actually necessary. Urgency creates more decisions, more feedback, and more opportunities to learn. Over time, that experience becomes agency. If you want more trust, visibility, and responsibility, you have to learn to move before everything feels perfectly clear.

WHERE TO LISTEN:
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Or wherever you get your podcasts

SHARE:
If this episode hit home, send it to someone. The Impactful Engineer grows by word of mouth, just like the best careers do.

It is easy to explain why you are stuck. A teammate is late. Your team lacks a skill. Someone assembled the product wrong. A competitor has a better network. You never had the internship. In this episode, Steve and Jake break down how engineers turn legitimate constraints into excuses, then show how to flip them into action. Not theory, practical, tactical advice for taking ownership when the obvious answer is to blame someone else.

Key Topics Covered:
• Why excuses feel good now but cost you later
• How to separate a real constraint from surrendered ownership
• What to do when your work depends on someone else delivering first
• How to make progress without doing every task in sequence
• Why poor assembly results may point back to design, training, or instructions
• How leaders create systems that make mistakes harder to make
• Turning skill gaps and resource limits into capacity-building plans
• How to compete when someone else has a stronger network or built-in advantage
• Why discipline can outperform natural talent over time
• How to position nontraditional experience when your resume looks weaker on paper

Actionable Steps:
• Capture the excuse you are using instead of letting it pass unchallenged
• Ask, “What part of this is still under my control?”
• Check dependencies before the deadline, not after they fail
• Ask what can be completed in parallel while you wait
• Build instructions and systems that reduce reliance on perfect execution
• Verify whether people actually have the skills you expect from them
• Create capacity by systemizing work that does not require your direct involvement
• Translate another person’s advantage into a behavior you can reproduce
• Reframe missing experience around the value of what you did instead
• Choose the harder action now when it creates the better outcome later

Who This Episode Is For:
• Engineers who keep getting blocked by other people
• Early-career engineers worried they are already behind
• Technical leaders frustrated by execution mistakes
• Engineers comparing themselves to better-connected or more experienced peers
• Anyone who knows their explanation is becoming an excuse

Why It Matters:
Your career does not move forward because your reasons are valid. It moves forward when you take responsibility for what happens next. The engineers who grow fastest learn to turn constraints into decisions, disadvantages into work, and frustration into action. That is how you build trust, visibility, performance, and leadership capacity.

Where to Listen:
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Or wherever you get your podcasts

If this episode hit home, send it to someone. The Impactful Engineer grows by word of mouth, just like the best careers do.