Hi there,
I am starting to think about this criteria related to my work history and the type of proof I will assemble as a Software Engineer going for the Exceptional Talent category:
“they have made significant technical, commercial or entrepreneurial contributions to the field as a founder, senior executive, board member or employee of a product-led digital technology company”
I spoke with a lawyer who really honed in that I will need to show examples of everything I claim, not just people saying I did it, and that this is often examples of code or architecture and its impact. He mentioned sometimes people struggle with their applications due to NDAs and not being allowed to share what they did at their companies.
For open source work I’ll be fine, but how do you assemble proof of your significant contributions if your company’s code is proprietary?
I can screenshot my GitHub contributions overview for my company, and have someone in the company describe describe my impact and what I’ve accomplished. I can gather numbers on customer impact, product impact, money the product earned, that kind of thing, etc.
However, it seems unlikely that my company would let me show any actual code. Perhaps architecture diagrams, but it would need to be semi-vague I assume.
For those who chose the aforementioned criteria for their applications, who are software engineers, how did you prove it without disobeying your work contract in terms of sharing company’s intellectual property?
Best,
Nicole
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Umm - the application reviewers are also lawyers- so they might not understand your code. Also, they are not going to evaluate how good/bad your code was.
They are looking for impact / quantifiable metrics. How did your code contribute? What impact? What innovation ? What do you have to evidence your statements / claims ?
For example, I contributed to an open-source library which had massive number of stars/contributors and etc. i added screenshots of that library being significant and then adding proof/ short explainer of my contribution.
Just to add, having stakeholders confirm this would not be enough. You need to provide evidence. Dashboard of some tool ? Media ? Or anything that evidences without words.
Words are good but do not carry as much weight as evidence.
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That makes sense, thanks for responding!
When you say “screenshots of that library being significant” for your own evidence, do you mean the stars for the project? What did you show to confirm its significance?
Stars, contributors, and related figures that GitHub provides
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Then i also added my pull requests acceptance screenshots etc - it had comments / discussion and acceptance
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Hey Nicole, NDAs shouldn’t be a problem as long as you’re able to portray your evidences well. Focus on verifiable metrics like performance improvements, customer growth percentages, or revenue figures directly tied to your contributions. Architecture diagrams can still be effective when sanitized to remove sensitive details. Eg, you can recreate some of them in Excalidraw, but get an reference letter from a manager talking about the same.
Get detailed recommendation letters from senior colleagues or clients who can quantify your technical impact on business outcomes. These should include specific examples like “Nicole’s optimization reduced server costs by 30%” or “Their API design increased partner integrations by 15%”. Third-party validations carry more weight than self-reported achievements.
Leverage non-code evidences like system design documents, API specifications, or deployment pipelines you authored. Many applicants successfully use redacted performance reviews, promotion letters, or client testimonials that reference technical achievements. For product-led companies, focus on your role in shipping features that drove measurable user adoption or retention.
Combine this with salary evidence showing compensation alignment with high-impact roles. The key is creating a clear line between your work, its commercial implementation, and third-party verification of results - all without disclosing any IP.
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Thanks so much for the response, that makes sense!
Apologies, had some time to think about this and thought of more questions after talking to my manager.
I’m on a backend API/architecture team for a new product at my company, and one thing I struggle with is my work isn’t as measurable in terms of customers and $$$ as we’re a couple layers removed. Our API is the core of the product, we have many teams in the company using the API to make the more visible parts of the product.
I guess what I struggle with is that I did the POC of the API, and since scaled it and owned parts of it. My work has allowed the product to exist, scale, and expand its feature set, but it’s not something on the frontend where I can say, “We got this many more signups after implementation” or “this many more purchases”.
From your experience is it only customer-focused statistics they want? Or can I use scaling statistics and what they enabled? You mentioned “Their API design increased partner integrations by 15%”. I can do something similar to that, and can also back up the features we have due to architecture I created.
I’m just struggling to wrap my mind around it as everything I read seems to be more about showing how much money your work earned or how many customers gained. On a backend API team that’s a bit tricky as we’re a bit removed. I can probably show how much money the product as a whole has earned, possibly, if my company lets me, but that would be the work of a few teams (even if our API is the core of it).
I think the more indirections there are, the more difficult it’s to use it as an evidence. You can use this as one of your “weaker” evidences. Otherwise, it might be better to look for something else. Feel free to DM as well.
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