Feedback Is a Mirror—But Some Mirrors Lie

We’re told to treat feedback as a gift. But no one warns you that some gifts are wrapped in distortion.

It’s not that people are lying to you.
It’s that they’re reflecting back something partial—something shaped by their vantage point, their incentives, and their assumptions.

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Let’s start with a common one.

An engineer is told in their review that they need to be “more visible.”

They’ve shipped high-impact features. Mentored junior devs. Quietly fixed incidents before they escalated. Their name’s all over the repo.

But they’re not in high-level meetings. Not chiming in on strategy threads. Not mentioned in leadership syncs.

So they walk out of the review wondering:

“Am I actually underperforming?”
“Should I start speaking up more just to be seen?”
“Am I not playing the game right?”

This is how engineers slowly start trading impact for optics.
And once you start optimizing for visibility, you’re no longer optimizing for the work.

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Here’s another one that stings for the wrong reason.

Two engineers deliver equally complex systems.
One gets praised for “leadership potential.”
The other is told they “need to work on communication.”

The difference? One of them is louder in meetings. Better with slides. Talks fast, sounds sharp.

The quieter one? Thinks before speaking. Prefers writing to talking. Solves hard problems and lets the work speak.

But here’s the reality:
The work doesn’t speak. People do.
And feedback often reflects who’s better at being seen, not necessarily who’s better at doing.

This is the Charisma Trap—when feedback rewards style over substance.
You’re not getting evaluated on your impact. You’re getting evaluated on your packaging.

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And then there’s the most misleading kind—the one that sounds like criticism but hides a compliment.

An engineer is told they’re “too heads-down.”
They take it as a red flag. Maybe they’re disengaged? Too siloed? Not proactive enough?

So they start jumping into more meetings. Talking more in threads. Chasing visibility just to fix a “problem” they didn’t know they had.

But later, they realize the truth:

Everyone trusted them so much, they stopped checking in.

They had built such a strong track record that no one felt the need to double-check their work.
They weren’t invited to daily standups, alignment calls, or status syncs—not because they were being excluded, but because people assumed:

“They’ve got it.”
“No need to slow them down.”
“They’ll raise it if something’s off.”

They weren’t overlooked. They were trusted.
They had become infrastructure—so reliable that no one even thought about it anymore.

But when this kind of feedback is misunderstood, engineers overcorrect. They contort themselves into a noisier version of who they think they should be—diluting the very strength that earned the trust in the first place.

This is how misinterpreted feedback becomes self-sabotage.

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But it gets trickier when it comes from above.

Because feedback from managers isn’t just about you.
It’s also about how you fit into the org’s current shape, story, and constraints.

You might think you’re getting a clean reflection of your work.
What you’re actually getting is a filtered memo—shaped by:

• Your manager’s goals and pressures

• Org-level headcount and promotion narratives

• Second-hand perceptions from skip-levels or peers

• Timing, politics, and power dynamics

Here’s what that looks like in the wild:

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“You need to think more strategically.”

Sounds like: You’re not smart enough.
What it usually means: You’re not zooming out enough. You’re solving the right problems, but not telling the story behind them. You’re not making your work legible to leadership.

So the engineer starts posturing—talking in abstractions, trying to sound strategic in every meeting.
But what the feedback really called for was a shift in framing, not personality.

Strategy isn’t about sounding smarter.
It’s about surfacing the "why" behind the "what"—and aligning it with where the org is going.

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“You could delegate more.”

Sounds like: You’re a micromanager. You don’t trust your team.

So the engineer pulls back completely. Stops reviewing code. Removes themselves from decisions. And things start to slip.

But what the feedback actually meant was:

“You’re great at execution—but everything still runs through you. We need to see if your leadership scales.”

It wasn’t about control. It was about leverage.

The right response isn’t absence—it’s intentional delegation.
Stay close enough to guide. Step back enough to grow others.

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“You’re not seen as strategic / visible / impactful.”

These phrases are common in manager feedback—and they feel vague because they are vague.
But they often carry subtext, like:

• “I can’t make a promo case for you right now.”

• “You’re delivering, but not influencing across boundaries.”

• “You’re doing the job, but not shaping the narrative.”

• “You’re easy to rely on—but invisible at the level where decisions happen.”

The danger? You react to the surface message without decoding the signal underneath.

You either overdo it—flooding Slack with updates, inserting yourself in meetings, adding noise.
Or you freeze—unsure how to “fix” something you don’t fully understand.

How to Decode Feedback Without Losing Yourself

We’ve all been there.

You get feedback that rattles you.
It sounds serious.
It feels personal.
And you’re not quite sure what to do with it.