Issue #15: Excellence in Private Is Worthless (The Visibility Equation)

You've been learning to code for six months. You've built three functional projects. Your GitHub has real work in it. You can solve problems that would have paralyzed you three months ago.

But when someone asks what you do, you say "I'm working in [old field], but I'm learning some coding on the side."

When you finally share one of your projects on LinkedIn, you apologize in the caption. "Just a small thing I've been working on. Probably full of bugs. Still learning!"

You tell yourself you're being humble. What you're actually being is invisible.

And invisible people don't get opportunities, no matter how good their work is.

Here's what most people get wrong.

You think the equation is: Skill + Time = Opportunities.

Get good enough at something. Wait long enough. Eventually, someone will notice. Eventually, opportunities will find you.

This is not how it works.

The actual equation is: Identity Growth = (Knowledge + Proof) × Visibility × Action.

Notice what happens when Visibility equals zero. The entire equation collapses.

You can have deep knowledge. You can have impressive proof. You can take consistent action. But if you multiply by zero, you get zero.

Not small opportunities. Not slow growth. Zero.

This is not a metaphor. This is the mathematical reality of how professional identities get built.

I learned this the hard way during pharmacy school. I was teaching myself how to code, building projects, solving complex problems and getting better every single day.

And nobody knew.

Then I made one decision that changed the entire trajectory.

When I started my software engineering bootcamp, I started documenting everything publicly, every lesson learned, every project completed and every bug conquered on daily basis.

Six months into the bootcamp, before I even finished, I had job offers. Not because my code was dramatically better than my peers. Because my code was visible.

The hiring managers who reached out all said variations of the same thing: "We've been watching your journey. We know you can learn. We know you ship. Let's talk."

My peers who were just as skilled but working in private? They were still job hunting a year later.

The difference was not competence. The difference was visibility.

The formula I showed you earlier is not something I made up after I succeeded. It's the framework I used while I was still figuring things out.

Identity Growth = (Knowledge + Proof) × Visibility × Action

Let me break down what each component means, specifically for someone learning a new skill or changing careers.

Knowledge: The strategic learning you're accumulating. Courses. Documentation. Tutorials. Understanding theory.

Proof: The tangible artifacts you're building. Code repositories. Written articles. Design mockups. Deployed projects. Anything someone can see and verify.

Visibility: The strategic act of sharing your process and progress publicly. This is not vanity. This is data collection and leverage.

Action: Your execution tempo. The daily consistency that generates the raw material for everything else.

Most career changers focus obsessively on Knowledge and Action. They take courses. They practice daily. They think that if they just get good enough, someone will eventually notice.

They treat Visibility as optional. Something you do after you've "made it."

This is backwards.

Visibility is not the reward for being good. Visibility is the mechanism that makes being good matter.

Here's why.

When you build in private, you get:

When you build in public, you get:

The private builder hopes to be discovered. The public builder engineers discovery.

Here's how visibility actually works.

You're driving down a highway. You see a billboard for a restaurant. You don't immediately exit and go eat there. You might not even consciously register it.

But three months later, you're in an unfamiliar part of town, hungry, scanning for options. Your brain sees that same restaurant. And something clicks.

"I've heard of this place. I've seen it before. It must be good."

You didn't consciously remember the billboard. But the repeated exposure created a sense of familiarity. Familiarity created trust. Trust made the decision automatic.

This is not about manipulation. This is about how human brains actually work.

When someone sees you once, you're a stranger. When they see you consistently over time, documenting real work, sharing actual insights, you become familiar. When they become familiar with your work, you become the default choice when an opportunity arises.

The person who posts one project after six months of work gets zero billboard effect. They're a stranger with a portfolio.

The person who shares their learning journey consistently, even when the work is imperfect, becomes someone the market recognizes. When a hiring manager, a potential client, or a collaborator has a need, your name surfaces automatically.

Not because you were the most skilled. Because you were the most familiar.

This is why I posted daily during my bootcamp. Not every post was groundbreaking. Most were simple updates on what I learned that day. But each post was another impression. Another data point. Another reason for someone to think "I know this person. I've been watching their progress."

By the time I finished the program, I didn't need to apply for jobs. The jobs came to me. Not because my code was perfect. Because I was the familiar option.

Every time I explain the visibility principle, I hear the same objections. Let me address them directly.

Objection 1: "My work isn't good enough to share yet."

This is the most common objection and the most destructive.

You think you need to be excellent before you can be visible. You're waiting until your code is clean, your design is polished, your writing is perfect.

Meanwhile, people who are less skilled but more visible are getting opportunities you would be better suited for.

Here's the truth: Nobody expects perfection from someone who's learning. They expect progress.

When you share a messy project and caption it "Built this to learn X. It's rough but it works. Here's what I learned," you're not exposing weakness. You're demonstrating the exact trait every employer actually wants: the ability to learn in public and ship anyway.

I posted code during my bootcamp that makes me cringe now. Some of it had obvious bugs. Some of it violated best practices I hadn't learned yet.

Nobody cared. What they cared about was that I was:

If you wait until you're "good enough," you miss the entire compounding period. The billboard effect takes time to work. Start building the impressions now, while you're still learning, so that when you are genuinely skilled, the market already knows you.

Objection 2: "I don't want to look stupid if I make a mistake."

You will make mistakes. Everyone does. The question is whether you make them in private (where nobody learns from them) or in public (where you can get corrected, improve faster, and demonstrate intellectual humility).

I made technical errors in my early blog posts. People pointed them out. I thanked them, corrected the post, and wrote about what I learned from the mistake.

Those correction conversations often led to deeper relationships than the original posts did. Because people respect someone who can admit they were wrong more than someone who pretends to be perfect.

The fear of looking stupid is really a fear of being seen as an imposter. But here's the paradox: the only way to stop feeling like an imposter is to generate undeniable evidence that you're not.

Evidence gets generated through action. Action becomes undeniable when it's visible.

Objection 3: "I'm not an expert. I have nothing valuable to share."

You don't need to be an expert to be useful. You need to be one step ahead of someone else.

When I was six months into learning to code, I was not an expert. But I was six months ahead of someone on day one. That person needed to hear my perspective more than they needed to hear from a senior engineer with ten years of experience.

Why? Because I had just navigated the exact confusion they were currently experiencing. I remembered what it felt like to not understand loops or functions or async patterns. I could explain it in terms they'd actually understand.

The expert has forgotten what it's like to be a beginner. The beginner on day 180 is the perfect guide for the beginner on day 1.

You don't need to wait until you're the best. You just need to document what you're learning right now. Someone behind you needs exactly that.

Objection 4: "What if someone steals my ideas or code?"

This objection reveals a scarcity mindset that will limit you far more than any stolen idea ever could.

Ideas are not scarce. Execution is scarce. If someone takes your code and does nothing with it, they were never your competition. If someone takes your idea and executes it better than you, you just learned that you needed to focus on better execution.

But here's what actually happens when you share openly: you attract collaborators, mentors, and opportunities that would never have found you otherwise.

I've had people fork my projects, use my code, and reference my work. None of that hurt me. Most of it helped me. Because every time someone engages with my work, they remember me. Some became collaborators. Some just spread the word.

The value was never in hoarding the idea. The value was in being known as the person who had the idea and shared it generously.

If you're convinced visibility matters but don't know how to start, here's the system.

Step 1: Choose your primary platform

You don't need to be everywhere. You need to be consistently somewhere.

For developers: GitHub + Twitter/X or LinkedIn.
For designers: Dribbble + Instagram or LinkedIn.
For writers: Medium or Substack + Twitter/X.
For career changers: LinkedIn + one niche platform for your target field.

Pick one platform for daily micro-updates and one for longer-form proof. That's it.

Step 2: Document, don't create

This reframe is critical.

You're not trying to produce groundbreaking content. You're trying to document what you're already doing.

Building a project? Post progress updates.
Learning a new concept? Share the 3-sentence summary of what clicked for you.
Fixing a bug? Explain what caused it and how you solved it.
Completing a course? Post your key takeaway and the project you built with it.

If you're working 30-60 minutes per day on your new skill, spend 5 minutes documenting what you did. That's your visibility work.

Step 3: Use the "teach to learn" strategy

The best way to solidify your own learning while building visibility is to teach what you're learning.

After you learn something, write a blog post explaining it. Record a video walking through it. Create a diagram visualizing it.

This forces you to truly understand it. And it creates an artifact that helps someone else while proving your competence.

I learned more about data structures from writing blog posts explaining them than I did from the original courses. Because teaching forced me to fill the gaps in my own understanding.

Step 4: Apply the micro-payment method to visibility

Just like consistent daily action builds your proof, consistent daily visibility builds your billboard effect.

Commit to one small visibility action every single day:

Five minutes. One action. Every day.

After 90 days, you'll have 90 impressions. After six months, you'll have 180. After a year, you'll be the person people think of when they need someone in your new field.

Step 5: Build your proof portfolio in public

Every project you complete should have:

This isn't about perfection. This is about undeniable evidence that you ship real things.

When someone asks "Can you code?" you don't say "I'm learning." You send them a link to your portfolio and say "Here's what I've built. Here's what I'm working on next."

The proof is not arguable. The proof is visible.

Pick one thing you learned or built in the past week.

Spend 10 minutes writing a 3-5 sentence post about it:

Post it publicly on your chosen platform.

Then notice what happens. Not immediately. But over the next 30 days. Who engages? Who reaches out? What doors start to open simply because you were visible?

The work you're doing in private is not enough. The skill you're building in secret is not enough.

You need to multiply it by visibility.

Start today. The billboard effect compounds. But only if you actually put up the billboard.

See you next week,
Obed