Hype Docs: Steering Your Career and Fighting Impostor Syndrome

When I was entering my third year as a working professional, I joined Block working in the Square business unit. Coming from a ~1,000 person company, I had not experienced the type of structure that comes with an organization of 5,000 - 10,000 employees. I knew I was going to learn a truck load working at Square, but I assumed those learnings would be primarily technical. Unexpectedly, I learned how to take charge of my career, successfully facilitate promotion conversations, and stave off impostor syndrome–all at the same time.

Through the practice of creating and maintaining a Hype Doc, I learned how to go on “career offense.” Although it’s a simple practice, I think it really is a career super power, a practice that every person should follow.

What is a Hype Doc? For the best explanation, read the following (excellent!) Square blog post. It is essentially a living, breathing document, maintained by you, that brags about your work wins. A powerful feature about Hype Docs is that you don’t just get to state what you’ve done: You get to prove it by placing/linking direct evidence alongside your stated wins. The best Hype Docs are “lit up” with blue hyperlinks, linking anything tangible that supports your brag claims.

In my case as a software engineer, this includes everything from links to code changes, Jira tickets, design documents, and even Slack messages from senior team members or management celebrating the smooth delivery of projects. The cool thing about a Hype Doc is that it functions as the central hub to show off how dang great you are and the things you’ve done. But I want to explain the three ways Hype Docs achieve “career offense” and fend off impostor syndrome:

1. A good Hype Doc guides you to impactful, challenging work, leading you to the next promotion.

One thing I love about Hype Docs is that it guides you to identify highly impactful work to help you get to the next level at your job. As you continue to detail your accomplishments, the natural question to ask yourself is “what evidence do I need to have in this Hype Doc to have my manager put me up for promo?” Of course that means you want your Hype Doc to be chock full of big, juicy projects that have delivered value for the company. By maintaining a Hype Doc, it prompts you to be consistently looking out for high value projects to get involved with so you can add them to your Hype Doc. Also, that means you’re working on challenging, fulfilling problems at your job, making work as engaging (and dare I say, fun?) as possible.

2. A good Hype Doc facilitates career conversations with your manager and accelerates the promo process itself.

I am a firm believer that every person should feel empowered to openly discuss promo timelines and expectations with their manager. Regardless if your relationship with your manager is like that or not, Hype Docs are an incredible medium for facilitating conversations about promos. A well built Hype Doc makes it very difficult for a manager to deny going for a promo, because all of your accomplishments, accompanied by the cold, hard evidence, are there in plain sight. Or if your manager decides not to put you up for promo, the presence of the Hype Doc means you’ll get direct feedback about your promo evidence, in terms of what areas you’ll need to beef up to have an irrefutable promo case. Also, when you do get that sweet green light to be put up for a promo, you’ve made your manager’s life exceedingly easy: They can copy all of your content from the Hype Doc into a promo packet format.

3. A good Hype Doc is always there to remind you that you’ve done hard things in the past and you will continue to achieve hard things in the future.

Impostor syndrome is a totally normal feeling to experience, and while I think a little imposter syndrome can function as positive pressure to propel someone to keep learning and progressing their skills, too much can create harmful self-doubt. But in those moments where the imposter syndrome voice gets a little too loud, you can quickly silence that voice by pulling up your Hype Doc and reliving all your past accomplishments. The Hype Doc serves as an effective method to reassure yourself that you’ve kicked ass and done hard things in the past, and you will continue to kick ass and do even harder things in the future.

Try carving out one hour every week or two, throwing on your favorite music, and jotting down all the great work you’re doing: I promise you won’t regret it.