The Economics of Trust

Recently, during my quarterly check-in, my manager told me something that caught me off guard.

He said that my voice carried considerable weight within MewThree, my scrum team (don’t ask me why it’s named after a Pokémon). Apparently, what I said, the opinions I held, and the direction I advocated for could meaningfully influence the trajectory of the team.

It was an interesting observation, to say the least, partly because I’d never really thought about myself in those terms, at least not consciously. I’ve always seen myself as a fastidious frontend engineer who happens to take on a little more than what the job description calls for, often punching way above his weight. And I promise this isn’t a humblebrag.

Somewhere along the way, the lines between being a developer, a product manager, and a scrum master had blurred. I found myself weighing in on product decisions, questioning processes, facilitating discussions, and advocating for what I believed would be better for the team.

But having someone else recognise the influence I’d accumulated made me stop and think: When did I become someone whose opinions carry weight? And, more importantly, how on Earth did I get here?

Accident or by design?

I’ve been working at PayNet for a little over two years now. I’ve written and shared enough posts about my journey that I feel like I’m repeating the same sentence, God knows how many times. Looking back, I don’t think I ever deliberately set out to become an influential person in the workplace. Don’t get me wrong, it does feel good to know that your presence is valued, at work or anywhere, really.

I’ve always been interested in leadership, although that interest sits somewhat awkwardly alongside my dislike of being thrown into the spotlight. I never aspired to manage people or climb the corporate hierarchy just for the sake of it. If anything, I’ve always considered myself a developer at heart, someone who finds satisfaction in building things, solving problems, and getting the details right.

Yet, over time, I became increasingly involved in things beyond the code I wrote.

I started caring about how the team operated, how decisions were made, how work was distributed, and whether we were doing things in a way that actually made sense. I became more comfortable speaking up when something didn’t sit right with me, challenging assumptions when I thought there was a better approach, and taking responsibility for problems that didn’t necessarily fall within my scope.

None of these things felt particularly significant in isolation. In truth, they felt like common sense, the bare minimum, and certainly nothing worth boasting about. They were just things I thought needed to be done.

But perhaps influence is built precisely this way. Not through a conscious attempt to gain authority, but through the accumulation of small, seemingly inconsequential moments in which you choose to care a little more, contribute a little further, and take responsibility when it would have been easier not to.

Social capital 101

I was first introduced to the term by my former colleague, Din, during an Instagram DM conversation about our career trajectories. We were discussing how job hopping comes with an often-overlooked trade-off: leaving behind the social capital you’ve spent years accumulating, only to have to build it all over again from scratch.

Social capital is an intriguing concept. We often think about career progression in terms of tangible assets: years of experience, technical competency, job titles, salary increments, and promotions. These are all relatively easy to measure. You either have the experience, possess the skills, or hold the title.

Social capital is less tangible. It is the trust, credibility, goodwill, and relationships we accumulate through our interactions with others. It is what allows us to have difficult conversations without immediately putting people on the defensive, challenge decisions without being dismissed, and propose changes that others are willing to consider. In a way, it is what earns us a seat at an already crowded table.

And unlike formal authority, social capital isn’t something you can simply assign to yourself.

We’ve all heard the saying, “Trust is earned, not given.” You can have the most senior title in the room and still struggle to convince people to follow your lead. Conversely, you can be the most junior person in a discussion and still be the person everyone looks to when a difficult decision needs to be made.

The difference, I think, lies in what people have come to associate with you.

Do they trust that you’ve thought things through?

Do they believe that you have the team’s best interests at heart?

Do they know that when you raise a concern, it comes from a place of wanting things to be better, rather than wanting to prove yourself right?

These aren’t things you establish through a single presentation, a particularly impressive deliverable, or a well-articulated opinion. They’re established over time, through repeated interactions that give people a reason to trust your judgement.

And perhaps the most telling sign that you’ve accumulated some measure of social capital is when people start listening to you not because they have to, but because they want to.

How did I get here?

When I think about the journey that brought me here, I find it difficult to pinpoint any single defining moment. There was no one grand occasion when I suddenly became the person I am within the team today.

My early days on the team were a little rough. For my first three months, I was assigned to develop HTML email templates (yep, you read that right), alongside a brief stint doing API testing as an unofficial, part-time QA for a project that was short on manpower. My product manager at the time, and to some extent the wider team, weren’t quite ready to trust me with the bigger fish just yet.

It was a frustrating first six months. If I’m being honest, I even questioned whether I was a good cultural fit for the team. But deep down, I knew I had to start somewhere. Trust wasn’t something I could demand simply by virtue of being an engineer. I had to earn it, bit by bit, and work my way towards bigger responsibilities.

Over time, people get to know how you work. They learn what matters to you, how you approach problems, and whether your words are consistent with your actions. You begin to develop a reputation, whether you actively manage it or not.

I suspect this is where much of my influence comes from. Not necessarily because I know more than everyone else or always have the best answers, but because people have had enough opportunities to observe how I think, how I work, and what I care about.

There is a certain privilege in that kind of trust. It means that when you speak, people are willing to listen, and to me, that is about as good as it gets. But it also means you have a responsibility to be thoughtful about what you say, because your words may carry more weight than you realise.

Am I influencing people, or simply doing what I think is right?

This is perhaps the part I’ve been thinking about the most, even after leaving the room when that one-on-one ended.

Influence can sound like a calculated pursuit. We associate it with office politics, persuasion tactics, networking, and the deliberate cultivation of relationships to get people on our side. And while there is certainly a place for intentional influence in professional settings, I wonder whether the most meaningful kind often happens without us consciously pursuing it.

When I advocate for a particular approach, am I trying to steer the team towards my preferred outcome?

When I challenge a decision, am I genuinely trying to improve it, or have I become too attached to my own judgement?

When people look to me for direction, am I helping them arrive at better decisions, or am I inadvertently making it harder for them to disagree with me?

These are uncomfortable questions, but I think they’re worth asking.

Having influence doesn’t automatically mean using it well. It’s entirely possible to earn people’s trust and eventually become so accustomed to being heard that you stop questioning whether you deserve to be right. The very credibility that allows you to challenge the status quo can also become a blind spot if you begin to mistake familiarity with a team for an unquestionable understanding of what’s best for it.

Perhaps this is also where one of my biggest insecurities comes into play: the fear of being a tin kosong.

For those unfamiliar with the expression, it refers to an empty can that makes a lot of noise. It’s the fear of being someone who sounds like they know what they’re talking about, whose opinions carry weight, but whose substance doesn’t quite measure up to the perception others have of them.

The more people trust your judgement, the more conscious you become of the possibility that you might disappoint them. What if the confidence people have in me is greater than what I can actually deliver? What if I’ve become so accustomed to being the person people turn to that I’ve mistaken their trust for proof that I know what I’m doing?

I don’t necessarily think these fears are entirely rational, but they’re there. And perhaps a little self-doubt isn’t such a bad thing, as long as it doesn’t stop you from showing up. It reminds me that being trusted and being infallible are two very different things.

I don’t think the answer is to become less outspoken or deliberately diminish my presence. Rather, it’s to remain conscious of the weight my voice carries, leave room for perspectives that differ from mine, and remember that the goal isn’t to have the team agree with me blindly.

The goal is to help the team arrive at the best possible outcome, even when that means being the one who has to change their mind.

Two years in

There is something quietly humbling about realising that your standing within a team has evolved beyond what your title might suggest.

Two years isn’t an especially long time in the grand scheme of a career. There is still so much I don’t know, so much more to learn, and so many areas in which I have room to grow. I don’t think tenure alone entitles anyone to influence, nor does being the person others turn to necessarily mean you’re ready for every responsibility that comes with it.

But perhaps two years is enough time to leave a meaningful mark on the people you work with. Enough time for colleagues to see you through difficult releases, disagreements, shifting priorities, and the less glamorous parts of building something that benefits the rakyat together. Enough time to establish patterns of behaviour and demonstrate, repeatedly and consistently, what sort of teammate you are.

And maybe that is a more meaningful measure of professional growth than I’ve given it credit for.

We spend so much time thinking about what comes next: the next promotion, the next salary increment, the next job title, the next milestone that tells us we’re moving forward. Yet some of the most significant changes in our careers are harder to quantify. They happen in the relationships we build, the trust we earn, and the quiet shift from being someone who contributes to the team’s work to someone who helps shape how that work gets done.

I still see myself as a developer first. I still care deeply about the craft, and I don’t necessarily see myself pursuing a conventional people-management path. But I’ve come to appreciate that leadership and influence don’t always require a change in title, nor do they have to mean moving away from the work you love.

Sometimes, they’re simply the by-product of caring enough to make things better and doing so consistently enough that other people begin to trust you with that responsibility.

I suppose the challenge now is to keep becoming someone worthy of that trust, without becoming too preoccupied with the person everyone else thinks I am.