I’m curious how other people in the industry deal with this.
I work in UI Programming, and a lot of my work is less about making something look impressive and more about making sure it actually functions well. The structure, the flow, the logic, how things connect, how the team can build on it later, etc.
The frustrating part is that when this kind of work is done well, it often just looks “obvious.” The player knows what to do, the feature makes sense, and the team doesn’t have to think about all the problems that were avoided.
Meanwhile, more visually obvious work rfom the UI Designers gets a much stronger reaction because people can immediately see the improvement. I get that. Visual design and polish is important and hard too. I’m not trying to dismiss that at all.
What’s been getting to me is the difference in how it’s acknowledged. My work often gets a quick muted response like “nice” or “looks good” from my manager (yes, I already try to make my work visible), while more visual work gets the big excited "holy shit!" reactions. Usually I’d chalk that up to him being kind of narrow-minded about what good UI work looks like.
The part that makes it sting is that he does know the functional work that goes into this stuff. So when the response is still muted, it starts to feel less like he doesn’t understand the work and more like he just doesn’t value it the same way.
That’s the part I’m struggling with. It’s more than wanting praise. I know it’s a job, and I know I need to find motivation outside of other people’s reactions. But I also think people want to feel like their work matters to the team. When the harder parts of your work are treated like basic competence, while other work gets treated like a big achievement, it can wear you down.
So I’m wondering:
How do you deal with this mentally/professionally when your work matters, but a lot of its value is invisible unless something goes wrong?
And is this worth bringing up with a manager/lead, or is it usually better to accept that some work just won’t get the same reaction and find your motivation elsewhere?