How do I deal with a colleague who takes credit for my work?

Having your contribution taken can provoke anger and a second, quieter discomfort about asserting yourself. You may worry that correcting the account will make you appear petty. Recognition matters materially and emotionally; wanting an accurate account is not automatically vanity.

Start with particular examples rather than a judgement about the colleague's character. Make your contributions visible through ordinary updates, shared records and clear ownership of tasks. If a conversation seems appropriate, describe what happened and what you want handled differently.

Sometimes an omission is careless; sometimes it is a pattern. Their response and subsequent behaviour can help you distinguish them. You need not settle their inner motives before protecting your work.

If the pattern continues, consider discussing the evidence with someone who can address it. The aim is not to win a private trial of your worth. It is to establish working arrangements in which the record does not depend on your silence.

Work is often shared, and the wish for recognition can tempt any of us to simplify how a result happened. That is a reason for accuracy, not a reason to let one person claim everything.

Describe both your contribution and the contributions of others. A fair account will be more useful than replacing one exaggerated story with another. Agree responsibilities before the next project and use shared updates that make progress visible to the people involved.

Jing leaves motives unresolved. I think that is sensible: establishing who did what does not require discovering whether the colleague is insecure, ambitious or merely inattentive. Ask for a change that can be observed.

You may also need support where the colleague has more power or the workplace rewards this behaviour. Directness alone does not correct every imbalance. Choose an approach that takes the actual relationship into account without accepting that fairness must remain unspoken.

Your colleague appears to operate a remarkable machine. Work enters one side bearing your fingerprints and emerges from the other wearing their name. The device consumes no electricity, only the assumption that you will be too polite to mention it.

We should switch on the lights. Ordinary project updates are excellent illumination: who is doing what, what has been completed and what remains. The machine dislikes a well-labelled workspace.

I considered responding with a trumpet fanfare every time you finish a spreadsheet, but this penalises innocent colleagues and requires a competent brass section. A factual correction is cheaper: “Yes, I developed that part; we worked together on the next stage.”

Jang recommends crediting everyone fairly. Agreed. Do not steal the entire factory in revenge. Label the machines, retain the records and, if the mysterious rebranding continues, ask the person responsible for the workshop to inspect the conveyor belt.