I Am Told My Work Is 'excellent', but It Never Makes into a Final Product. How Can I Claim My Result

Do you have any evidence that your third and fourth paragraphs are true? Has your boss told you "I think you're excellent, but I never talk to anyone above me, they just have a list of who wrote which features and that's how they give the raises out?" If so, leave that company, it's insane. Your boss is repeatedly giving you assignments that will lead to never getting a raise, while telling you that you're doing fine. Your boss would also be abdicating one of the most important functions of a boss: monitoring and reviewing the all around value of every employee (including things like cultural fit, leadership, office ambience etc.

)Or, is this just how you think it works? Just a set of assumptions? Here's what I suggest you do. Ask your boss (email or in person) for a 15 minute meeting. In the meeting, say something like this:I know this isn't my review and I'm not asking for this meeting to be my review. You've told me many times that my work is excellent, and I'm always glad to hear that. But as the date for my review approaches, I can't shake off a worry that my raise will be based strongly (or even entirely) on the revenue I bring to the company, meaning features that are in the product. Since in my case that's none, I'm scared I'll get no raise, or a bad review. I want to avoid that.

Then wait. Let your boss tell you how reviews work in your company. You may hear any of:That last one is highly unlikely, but I have to consider the possibility you work in an insane company.If in fact raises are mechanically determined based on features or bug fixes in the live code, this conversation gives your boss time to adjust assignments or merge some of your code in or whatever. If, as is far more likely, things just aren't that cut and dried (after all, this is a place that paid you to write some great stuff and then left it lying around because there wasn't time to integrate it - I find it unlikely they have the tools to let someone who isn't your boss determine who wrote what and hand out raises accordingly) then you will get your reassurance.If this chat takes less than 15 minutes, you could also offer:Would you like me to investigate a strategy for getting more of my code into the product, by adding tests to other people's code for a while and paying down our technical debt? Perhaps that would help our overall quality?But in a way, that's a separate conversation, since it's not really about "hey boss, how do our reviews work anyway?" which appears to be your primary concern at the moment

I work for a software company. I have been on a project for nine months, and I have always been reassured by my first-line manager of the fact that my software increments would have been integrated into the system on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, this hasn't been the case: the company is only able to react to customer bugs and feature requests but does not really plan, nor forecast. As we are always in a "state of emergency", there is no time to integrate and regression test my increments.

I have asked whether the problem was with my work, and they were searching for excuses not to deliver it to the customer, but I was told I am an "excellent software engineer", that "my work is valuable", that I am the only one making unit tests (I do this to convince people that my software is stable and robust to corner cases) and other cheerful commendations.

But at the end of the day, middle management and HR are not aware of what I have done and until it makes into a final product, I cannot claim my results, for excellent they might be.

I have no time to lose, a family to take care of, and my salary/title will be reviewed in three months. People that have only fixed bugs and hacked up poor quality software deliverables are more likely to get a pay rise or a promotion, because their work "brought money to the company".

How can I increase my 'visibility' and cause my work to make it into the final product?