[HN Gopher] Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I...
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Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got
Author : yuppiepuppie
Score : 180 points
Date : 2026-01-02 15:56 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (andrew.grahamyooll.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (andrew.grahamyooll.com)
| doxeddaily wrote:
| This is how I eventually ended up being CTO and eventually CEO. I
| wanted the overall business to succeed.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| This is just recycled advice that's been given for 30+ years.
| "dress for the job you want, not the job you have" etc. The thing
| is this only really "works" in healthy or semi-healthy
| environments. You could just as easily have an infantile, poorly
| qualified, easily threatened middle manager above you that will
| perceive this kind of behavior as an attack and take the legs out
| from under you in ways that you have very little control over
| (has happened to me)
| jimbokun wrote:
| Then the only way to progress your career is to leave the
| company.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| In many cases, yes, sometimes it involves a parallel move to
| a different part of the company, or the manager moving on -
| problem is when you're in that situation it may not be
| obvious for literally years until it becomes very obvious in
| an instant, and by that point, your options may be more
| limited.
| waisbrot wrote:
| IME, taking on extra responsibility doesn't get you promoted.
| However, you can take it on and then find a new job with a better
| salary where the responsibility you added is part of the
| expectation.
|
| The blog is not terrible advice, but "getting promoted" just
| seems like a waste of time and effort nowadays. To get promoted
| at Google from L5 (Sr SWE) to L6 (Staff SWE) you need to do the
| work of a GOOD L6 for 1y+ and have made some very solid internal
| networking connections and have multiple managers on your side
| and have an opening for such a role.
|
| To get hired away from Google to an L6-equivalent role at Meta
| (or whereever) you need to get halfway through one L6 project and
| do a few hours of interviewing. There's no comparison in the
| level of effort. (And I'm not picking on Google here. I think
| it's the same or worse nearly everywhere.)
| patrickmay wrote:
| It's a real problem. I saw people boomerang back to Google
| after 18 months at one or even two levels higher, much faster
| than they could have been promoted internally.
| lesuorac wrote:
| The changes to compensation also make it worse.
|
| The 85%ile of L used to be above that of the lowest 15%ile of
| L+1 so in the year that you demonstrate L+1 you'll get
| compensated as L+1.
|
| Now, the 85%ile of L is less than that of the lowest 15%ile
| of L+1 so until you actually get promoted there's no real
| compensation difference. Which makes leaving for L+1 so much
| more attractive (and also going above-and-beyond less
| attractive).
| jimbokun wrote:
| This seems to be a near universal phenomenon and I wonder if
| there is any behavioral research explaining it.
| TZubiri wrote:
| I'm not sure if I'm off base here, but at this point google is
| a 20yo company with a massive existing revenue, I don't think
| the company is growing itself as much as it is maintaining its
| revenue and moat, in a similar fashion, you will be a promotion
| not for doing stuff, but just by dedicating years of your life
| in exchange for stability.
| filoleg wrote:
| > To get promoted at Google from L5 (Sr SWE) to L6 (Staff SWE)
| you need to do the work of a GOOD L6 for 1y+ and have made some
| very solid internal networking connections and have multiple
| managers on your side and have an opening for such a role.
|
| 100% agreed. Just as importantly, you also need to be aware of
| what type of an environment you are in and plan accordingly.
|
| Sometimes, you are just in an environment where it is somewhere
| between extremely improbable and nearly impossible to get
| promoted. At that point, you would be better served to put more
| effort into changing that environment, instead of chasing the
| grind. I learned that one the hard way a few years ago, at,
| ironically, Google.
|
| I was on track to a promo, got a documented track record, got
| the backing of multiple managers + my team lead, etc. But guess
| what? Another reorg happened shortly before the cutoff for the
| review cycle, i got a new manager who literally just met me for
| the first time, and my chances tanked to essentially zero
| (which is understandable, because I don't see how a manager who
| just discovered my existence a week prior would be able to
| effectively back my promo package). Since then, I had an
| average of 3-5 major reorgs and 1-2 manager changes per year.
| As I came to eventually realize, this type of a dysfunctional
| environment wasn't conductive to a good career velocity.
|
| Needless to say, my decision to just put my head in the sand
| and grind harder to compensate for this kind of organizational
| instability was stupid. It would've definitely been a better
| bet (in terms of time/effort, career trajectory, and
| compensation) to put even just a portion of that effort into
| changing my environment, as opposed to trying to compensate for
| organizational dysfunction with raw work effort.
|
| TLDR: if you care about having a good promotion velocity, focus
| on the biggest blocker in your specific situation. Whether it
| is the lack of track record demonstrating sustained effort at
| the L+1 level, or your environment being dysfunctional in ways
| that make promotions improbable, etc. Just gotta keep the eyes
| on the prize, and pick the solutions that are the most
| appropriate for your individual situation (instead of blindly
| just doing "XYZ because I read that it was a great career
| advice" in a single-minded manner).
| amflare wrote:
| Taking on extra responsibility is all well and good until someone
| figures out that they can just get you to do more work for the
| same amount of money. At that point your only option is to move
| on, because if you stop performing at the "expected" level due to
| lack of reciprocation, suddenly you have "performance issues".
| weinzierl wrote:
| This, but it's not only about the additional work but often
| about additional responsibility.
|
| Taking responsibility for decisions that actually fall within
| your manager's area of responsibility often puts them in a very
| comfortable position. At least if they trust you and don't
| question your loyalty, which is exactly what you also try to
| reassure them if you want a promotion.
|
| However the net effect is that it's a reliable way to get stuck
| on that rung of the career ladder indefinitely.
| cephei wrote:
| In my experience, I've seen engineers try to take on more work
| to get promoted, but the key issue is that they were doing more
| work at their own level instead of focusing on work that would
| be their responsibility if they promoted. If an IC takes on
| more and more IC work instead of management responsibilities,
| it's harder to promote them.
| hibikir wrote:
| That's also pointing to a big risk for certain jumps, as
| everything done in the list for, say, a cross team position
| means less work on your team. So a manager that isn't all
| that friendly can use an attempt at promotion as a great
| excuse for a PIP: I've seen that done around me at least a
| couple of times.
| theptip wrote:
| Great point. And I think this is why I love the framing in
| the OP.
|
| "Do more" is a failure mode and path to burnout. "Do what I'm
| doing and you're not doing" is a cue that an ambitious
| engineer can reflect on constantly.
| ozim wrote:
| If they do that, that's exactly why you don't want to promote
| them because it is clear they don't understand that doing x+5
| work on your own is not as good as x*5 when you become
| multiplier by helping others.
| beoberha wrote:
| Yep, as a manager, I am explaining this conundrum often. You
| can be a rockstar SDE 2 or senior, but not be ready for a
| promotion because you aren't leading enough.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > If an IC takes on more and more IC work instead of
| management responsibilities, it's harder to promote them.
|
| This is one reason it's critically important for a company to
| have paths for ICs to take on larger responsibilities _that
| aren 't necessarily management responsibilities_. Not
| everyone wants to be a manager, and not everyone is good at
| being a manager. Some people want to become increasingly
| senior engineers. (They'll still, ultimately, be responsible
| for things that involve other people, but that doesn't mean
| they want to be a people-manager.)
| gowld wrote:
| "promotion" is just a word. Either management can pay for
| performance, or employ can perform for pay, and cut back on
| work hours.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| "No bastard ever got promoted by doing a lot of work for the
| company. He got promoted by getting someone else to do a lot
| of work for the company."
|
| - General George S. Patton, probably
| pizzathyme wrote:
| Ideally this friction should be viewed as a normal part of
| career growth. You will have expanded your expertise and are
| now capable of harder problems and roles, with more
| compensation in return.
|
| The typical moves are: [1] Negotiate for more title,
| compensation at your current role (good outcome) [2] Leave for
| a better role (a good outcome) [3] Stay, no change, doing more
| work for the same money (not recommended)
| michaelt wrote:
| The _second_ secret to getting promoted is working at a company
| that 's growing.
|
| If you're at a 50 employee company that grows to 250 employees
| there will be _many_ empty team leader positions. And what you
| lack in hands-on management experience you make up for in
| knowledge of the business, its products /processes, and being a
| reliable known quantity. That extra responsibility will turn
| into more money _fast_.
|
| On the other hand, if the company's headcount is largely stable
| and the employee turnover low? Well, there might not be an
| empty position until someone a level above you resigns, retires
| or gets fired. And when that happens - you're probably not the
| only ambitious person at your level. In this case, the payoff
| from extra effort is much less certain.
| mywittyname wrote:
| If you're at a larger company, then you'll probably have to
| line up another to get promoted. Having one foot out the door
| is often the ammo that managers need to get HR and leadership
| to approve a promotion.
|
| Of course, we've been told to never accept a counter offer at
| your job.
| rivetfasten wrote:
| > Of course, we've been told to never accept a counter
| offer at your job.
|
| Do you have a example article? I haven't encountered the
| advice, but I'm curious if the reasoning matches my guess.
| wombat-man wrote:
| This was talked about in The Hard Thing about Hard Things
| by Ben Horowitz, iirc, but from the other side. It
| advises to not offer a raise to keep an employee planning
| to leave. This is because the implication is that you
| were underpaying them before or that you're willing to
| overpay them now for threatening to quit. This encourages
| employees to follow suit instead of working towards
| promo. So pay what you're willing to and don't play that
| kind of game.
|
| The book/article goes in more depth. I thought it was
| still online for free but I can't seem to find it.
| reg_dunlop wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Where's the guarantee for recognition of future growth....if
| they don't recognize past growth?
|
| The biggest gripe I have about articles such as this is that it
| assumes a static perspective of "now, into the future" and it
| doesn't account for "all the time before now".
|
| If I'm having a conversation akin to the one that opens the
| blog post, then presumably I've been at the company for a
| while. Conversations like that don't just happen between CTO
| and engineer unless there's some time vested in the company for
| both.
|
| A CTO saying "take my job" as a non-sequitur is sus, IMHO. Now
| if it's said in the context of "here's a raise, and if you want
| another one....try to take my job", well now there's some
| decent context for the ask and a reason to believe that future
| growth will be compensated.
|
| The best prediction of future performance is past behavior.
| That goes for mgmt as well as pee-on.
| chaoz_ wrote:
| I think that works well for smaller orgs, but in larger
| organizations (especially where department headcount growth is
| not expected) it might be more complicated and more
| meta/political. I wish that were not the case, but in reality,
| trying to "do the job" of your manager can backfire.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Those are also companies where both your career and salary will
| stagnate.
| TZubiri wrote:
| If your boss tells you explicitly that this is ok, then go ahead.
| And also if they don't tell you this, it might be ok too. But
| there's scenarios were you are being paid to do a very specific
| job, and trying to get promoted is a form of escapism for many
| and it can be an organizational problem.
|
| In argentina we have a saying "Too much chief for too few
| indians"(as in indigenous people), everyone wants to be the boss,
| no one wants to do the dishes.
|
| I've been a victim of this, and it especially was a problem when
| my actual role responsibilities suffered, but even if I managed
| to fulfill my responsibilities perfectly, it caused friction and
| a command chain confusion. (especially when other people tried to
| compete for a promotion as well)
| paodealho wrote:
| Interesting... brazilian portuguese has this exact same saying,
| though it's rarely used. "Muito cacique pra pouco indio".
| ggoo wrote:
| While this may work, it just seems like incredibly unhealthy
| advice to give or to take. People should be able to focus on
| their work without being expected to take up random side quests,
| and if there is a career path, make the requirements clear.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Let's assume those requirements aren't made clear. People will
| still get promoted, based on side quests and initiative. And
| those people will have demonstrated a lot of important
| qualities that all the others (who were blocked on lack of
| requirements) never showed.
|
| So what's the problem again?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > make the requirements clear
|
| idealistic, but more often than not, unrealistic, unfortunately
| hamdingers wrote:
| If your company does not make career growth requirements
| clear and actionable, your best vector for career growth is
| changing companies.
| cainxinth wrote:
| I agree. This outlook also implies a greater degree of
| meritocracy than usually exists in a competitive corporate
| environment. Doing a good job and taking initiative sometimes
| leads to promotions, but it sometimes just leads to more work.
| Meanwhile, many ladder climbers are busy optimizing for their
| own success, not the corp's.
| jimbokun wrote:
| You want to leave any company where doing a good job doesn't
| lead to raises and promotions, as soon as possible.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Doing work without contributing to identifying what is the most
| important work to do can be soul killing.
|
| Some people just want to be given exact instructions on what to
| do. Others find that role very frustrating.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| For me the "responsibility first" part is the most important. I
| care more that you are willing to take responsibility at a higher
| level than your absolute performance at what you do. Because if
| you take responsibility you might make mistakes but you will fix
| them. But if you make mistakes and don't fix them, then giving
| you more autonomy is a liability. Fixing mistakes often involves
| demonstrating many aspects of operating at a higher level as well
| - you take the lead on communicating with other teams about the
| mistake, addressing the impact, apologising for any harm caused.
|
| For me, taking responsibility is one of those necessary (but not
| sufficient) things I have to see before I will consider a
| promotion (at least, a genuine one where someone actually
| operates at a higher level with more autonomy).
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| My experience at several large companies I worked for, the
| promotion comes _because_ the activities are already at the new,
| higher level. i.e., working at SVP /level 7 when officially at
| VP/level 6 for a period when the promotion is offered.
|
| Good or bad, this is how the industry I work in promotes.
|
| I think the best approach is to take on extra, above position
| responsibilities, accountabilities _after_ discussion with
| superior, _after_ agreeing in writing that this is part of a path
| to promotion.
| bluGill wrote:
| Often you need not only to be at the higher level, but someone
| to call out that if they don't promote you you might leave.
| I've seen a lot cases (at many companies) where one person that
| everyone knows is good quitting for a promotion gets a dozen
| others promoted in the next few months. So if you realize you
| are not getting a promotion your leaving may be the trigger to
| get your coworkers promoted.
| sailfast wrote:
| Correct. The best way to be promoted / given more money is to
| be a cherished contributor and be deemed a flight risk.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| True, that can happen, but that feels toxic. A threat by the
| employee will always breed some negative feelings towards the
| employee, even if it is subconscious.
|
| I am just writing about relatively sane, stable organization
| where the employer-employee relationship is stable and
| acceptable.
| bluGill wrote:
| I think you (and the other) misunderstood. You are not
| threatening to leave here! Either you actually leave (their
| first notice is your two weeks), or someone else does and
| the company realizes if they don't promote good people fast
| those others will take the same hint and leave.
|
| I agree that threatening to leave is a bad thing. Either
| get out or be content where you are: middle grounds do
| nobody any good.
| jimbokun wrote:
| But indicating you are hoping to be promoted is expected
| and encouraged at any functional and growing organization.
| dirtbag__dad wrote:
| This advice has worked very well for me.
|
| But but but, in some scenarios it has been at the expense of my
| well being. It's not good to take on more work and not let go of
| some of the things you're currently doing. Moreover, finding
| "permission" from your boss to let those things go can be
| challenging.
|
| I've found this works best when you and your boss agree on the
| problem you're stepping into (not necessarily your solution). It
| may be that you need to stick your neck out and suffer for awhile
| for them to see your perspective.
|
| When you're on the same page about what you're solving, a good
| manager will clear room for you.
| mikelitoris wrote:
| Yeah this would get an immediate "stay in your lane" warning
| where I work
| jimbokun wrote:
| Which means there is very little chance of you getting promoted
| in your company, and probably a low ceiling on your
| compensation I would guess.
| mikelitoris wrote:
| Yup
| munchbunny wrote:
| My personal experience with this from the manager's perspective:
| I aim to promote someone as soon as they are ready, but no
| sooner. If I promote someone who will not succeed against the
| expectations of the higher leveled title, I'm just setting them
| up to get fired or "managed out" when they were otherwise
| perfectly competent in the level they're at. That's ignoring the
| natural fuzziness and storytelling element of defining and
| measuring competence, of course, but that's the general idea of
| where I put the threshold.
|
| "Readiness" means that I believe that after their promotion they
| will be able to execute at the higher level at least most of the
| time. That doesn't necessarily mean they need to be already doing
| the higher leveled job, but in practice they do need to show that
| they can sustain some approximation of it.
| away0g wrote:
| Being promoted into obsolescence or into under performing is a
| death sentence. Some people are perfectly suited for their work
| and would find their bosses work to be numbing, too complex or
| too simple for them. Not getting a promotion is not a bad thing
| (do not mistake raises for a promotion). If the company cannot
| or will not allocate more to your position then that is a
| problem as a business, not something you can control. The best
| case scenario is to find another company who can pay your worth
| for the skill set presented.
| dangus wrote:
| I think the only possible flaw with this idea is you might not
| know.
|
| I find that my organizational and leadership skills
| demonstrated in my role suffer when I am working on individual
| contributor work that requires deep focus and perhaps even
| isolation.
|
| At the same time, I've handled other roles at other companies
| that required more leadership and team mentorship, where you'd
| look at my actions and feel more like I was management
| material. But in my current role with my current
| responsibilities it's hard for myself let alone someone else to
| imagine that I would make an effective leader, since my job
| basically dictates that I don't do that on a daily basis.
|
| The day to day needs and responsibilities of the business often
| get in the way of the person actually demonstrating that they
| will excel when they do something else.
|
| I don't have any kind of direct solution for this specific
| dilemma. I think in my situation my manager should make more
| opportunities available but hasn't been doing so due to the
| daily routine of putting out fires.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| Good advise. And old one too. In India it's summed up as - _"
| Your job is to make your boss' job easier"_.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| This post has some big gaps. Who is this for? When is it
| relevant?
|
| The opposite advice is essentially addressed in Being Glue by
| Tanya Reilly^. If you do a job that your management chain is not
| measuring, you won't be rewarded for it.
|
| Excerpting:
|
| > But sometimes a team ends up someone who isn't senior, but who
| happens to be good at this stuff. Someone who acts senior before
| they're senior. This kind of work makes the team better --
| there's plenty of it to go around. But people aren't always
| rewarded for doing it.
|
| If you take the op advice literally, you might find that you're
| not promoted AND management thinks you're bad at your job
|
| So the rules of promotions:
|
| 1. First, do the things that are expected of you. If you don't do
| these things (or you do them in a way that management doesn't
| expect or can't measure) you will have to do additional work to
| make sure they get measured. Staff engineers are good at doing
| auxillary work and explaining why it's valuable. If you aren't,
| then focus on the things that are obviously valuable
|
| 2. If you're doing everything your team needs from you, now is a
| great time to do the additional work. Figure out where test
| coverage is anemic, profile that really slow query, write up your
| list of pain points and throw together a list of some initial
| ideas for solutions (codex & Claude can be great helps here, but
| don't be like OP. If you use AI to write something, let everyone
| know: "codex and I think these solutions might work, but I
| haven't spent much time on it")
|
| 3. Talk to your manager regularly (monthly) about what things you
| need to do to try going up for promo at the next cycle. Again, if
| you do this without doing (1), you're not getting promoted.
| That's why it's down here at (3)
|
| ^ https://www.noidea.dog/glue
| bluGill wrote:
| I disagree with your rules. Not that they are bad - often they
| are the correct things to do, but they are not the rule.
|
| The rule is "Always do the thing that your company will find
| most valuable for you to do".
|
| Company politics is always the most important thing - but
| company politics shouldn't take very much time. (if it does
| either the productivity costs will kill the company soon or
| someone high up will figure your BS out and fire you). Company
| politics is what helps you know what they really want which
| sometimes differs from your assignment.
|
| Most often that is your rules. Companies generally assign
| people to work they need done, so if you are not doing that
| work they are highly likely to notice that lack long before
| anything else you could do (no matter how much more they really
| need it).
|
| In rare cases though you will see something more important that
| is needed and by doing that you will gain far more good
| attention and get the promotion. This is very hard to pull off
| though - you must be right, they need to know you did it, and
| they need to realize this is important before they realize you
| are not doing your "real job".
| GMoromisato wrote:
| I totally agree with you.
|
| The trick is that:
|
| 1. Sometimes we don't know what is most valuable (from the
| company's perspective).
|
| 2. It is easy to convince ourselves that whatever we want to
| do is really the most valuable thing (e.g., "Refactoring this
| massive subsystem will help the company in the long-term" or
| "Introducing this new technology (that I really like) will
| make it easier to recruit talent.")
| jimbokun wrote:
| That's addressed in the article by the person who identified
| a need and came up with both a proposal and estimate to
| address it.
|
| Now if that person just implemented completely with no
| feedback that would be very dangerous as it might not work,
| take longer, or management didn't actually care about it very
| much. Getting to the point of proposal + estimate then sign
| off is the sweet spot.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| I would encourage everyone to identify when these rules don't
| apply!
|
| However, I think these rules are generally safer than the
| claim that you should do something other than what you've
| said you would do (or, perhaps, other than what your manager
| has said you will do)
|
| And if you are doing something much more important, there's a
| new rule which was probably worth emphasizing more:
| communicate aggressively. Over communicate. If you're doing A
| but your manager thinks you are doing B, communicate quickly
| and often about why you are doing A, what the impact is, and
| when you will get back to B (or whether B should be
| deprioritized)
| normie3000 wrote:
| > "codex and I think these solutions might work, but I haven't
| spent much time on it"
|
| This sounds bad to me. Why throw AI output at your colleagues
| if you haven't verified it?
| wrsh07 wrote:
| There are two things here:
|
| 1. Sharing ai generated content is fine if you tell everyone
| what it is (I recommend also sharing prompts).
|
| 2. Ymmv, but my manager would want to know "roughly how much
| work would this be?" I don't think it's worth it for you to
| spend very much time answering that question _unless you're
| actually going to do the work_. This means I'm saying 2
| things: first: if it's free for you, you should convey how
| difficult your proposal is. Very rough buckets are ok if
| they're pretty close. Second: an easy way for it to be free
| for you is to prompt codex, and I expect you will do a better
| job prompting the answer than your manager will
| jimbokun wrote:
| Everything you describe is still very much IC work. Nothing
| that will signal you are ready for management responsibilities.
|
| For those kinds of roles you want to demonstrate you can
| communicate with and organize a group of people to accomplish
| an important task.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| Sure, at this point, substitute in whatever responsibilities
| are given to the role you're seeking:
|
| > If you're doing everything your team needs from you, now is
| a great time to do the additional work
|
| Fwiw, most tech companies do not consider eng management to
| be a promotion. The path to becoming a manager is thus
| "figure out that you want to be a manager, discuss how such a
| transition would look with your manager, etc"
|
| That said, if you're not already earning the trust of your
| team (you do the things you say you'll do, etc) you will not
| have an opportunity to manage
| triyambakam wrote:
| Smells like LLM written. Maybe useful advice though. Who actually
| writes the hyphen in compound modifiers (or even knows what that
| is)? E.g. "team-level" instead of "team level".
|
| > I couldn't have been happier.
|
| And phrases like this.
| niam wrote:
| Honestly that just seems like normal English.
|
| To refer to something as "team-level" seems so absurdly
| unspectacular, relative to the other kinds of signals that
| exist for sussing out AI writing, that I'm surprised it was
| worthy of mentioning at all.
| triyambakam wrote:
| It's proper grammar but I have only ever seen journalists use
| it. It is a strong signal in my experience
| jimbokun wrote:
| Maybe so but in that case hats off to the LLM for writing a
| pretty good article.
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| Uh. I'd use a hyphen there. I'm not an LLM. At least, I don't
| think I am. But, who knows?
| tonymet wrote:
| I've participated and appealed to promotions committees at a few
| big tech companies and the principle for achieving the promotion
| is sustained performance for a half or 2 at the next level,
| judged by a number of dimensions. A couple drivers are revenue
| impact, business direction, or how well you are enabling others
| to succeed.
|
| If the staff is large enough, calibrations are done to find
| template team members at the higher level, to make it very clear
| that the candidates performance is meeting that higher bar.
|
| I think most ICs think "I've been working hard, I deserve a
| promotion". A better barometer is whether your peers assume you
| are already at that higher level without knowing your rank.
| bluGill wrote:
| The problem is when you reach SR the next step is often so far
| removed that you can't have that impact without not doing your
| real job. A jr to mid-level engineer: just be better at what
| you do. However Sr to the next level is a whole different way
| of working and you can't do those things and also write the
| code that a sr is expected to write.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Hmm maybe this is a good use case for LLMs to focus more on
| those higher level objectives.
|
| Until the productivity boost of using LLMs well is just
| assumed for all ICs.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| In my view, the meta-advice is to understand the goals and
| constraints of your boss (and their boss), and work towards those
| goals (while adhering to the constraints).
|
| With that perspective, we can derive some rules of thumb:
|
| 1. Promotions are not a reward for past performance. Instead,
| they are a bet that you will contribute more towards those goals
| with a promotion than without one.
|
| 2. As the OP says, if you are demonstrating performance at your
| boss's level, that's evidence/proof that a promotion is
| warranted. Your boss's goals get implemented (by you), freeing
| them to work on _their_ boss 's goals (and maybe get their own
| promotion).
|
| 3. The more time you spend with your boss, the better you will
| understand their goals, and symmetrically, the better they will
| understand your strengths. That means leaving a job after a year
| or two is not always optimal. It also means following a good boss
| to another company is often a good move.
|
| 4. There will be cases where the goals of your boss (and their
| boss) diverge from your own goals. They often want to cut costs,
| but you want a salary increase. There are never easy answers to
| this dilemma, but seeing their perspective is useful so you can
| find a win-win scenario. E.g., if you come up with a way to save
| money in other ways, such as automating an external cost, then
| your increased salary will be worth it.
|
| 5. In some cases, of course, there is no way to reconcile your
| boss's goals with your own. Realizing that is useful so you can
| find a different company/boss that is more aligned.
| raverbashing wrote:
| 1 is correct. You can't expect the person to get better when
| promoted, rather you move them to the job they are already
| (almost) doing
| pants2 wrote:
| Ideally with increased autonomy and decision-making ability
| that makes them more effective.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| > 1. Promotions are not a reward for past performance. Instead,
| they are a bet that you will contribute more towards those
| goals with a promotion than without one.
|
| Actually, you operate on the next level for certain amount of
| the time. You work with your manager to file for your promotion
| case. That's how the typical big corps work with promotions.
|
| So technically, it is using your past experience to prove that
| you are operating at the next level
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Actually, you operate on the next level for certain amount
| of the time. You work with your manager to file for your
| promotion case. That's how the typical big corps work with
| promotions.
|
| This has always struck me as a pretty juicy deal going for
| the corporation. They get N years of "next level" work out of
| you while still being able to pay those N years in "previous
| level" salary. Good deal for them.
|
| How ridiculous the opposite sounds: You pay me at the next
| level for 3 years, and only then I'll know you're serious and
| will start working at that level. You'd get laughed out of
| the room. But the company has this exact deal in reverse.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > 1. Promotions are not a reward for past performance. Instead,
| they are a bet that you will contribute more towards those
| goals with a promotion than without one.
|
| It's both.
|
| You reasonably can't keep someone in the same position for 5
| years when their market value has long gone past that point and
| they're expecting more. Even if you're not sure they won't be
| Peter principled out in the better paying position.
|
| > demonstrating performance at your boss's level
|
| To note, it often results in advices close to "do X job for a
| while and we'll let you have it", which looks like a no risk
| move for the company but is not without downsides. I've seen
| people being half managers for a full year before becoming one,
| and boy does it kill morale.
|
| It signals to employees they'll be literally working about
| their pay grade "for free" for an undefined amount of time, and
| it's an even worse proposition when they're effectively doing
| two jobs at the same time (they're still expected to excel in
| their current position while proving they can do the other
| position as well)
|
| It's a more delicate balance than it might look at first.
| another_twist wrote:
| Standard promo advice tbh. Do the job and then ask for it. Except
| there's a brief moment when you are adding value not in
| proportion to your compensation which will be infuriating.
| Sometimes its also possible you end up stagnant where you keep
| performing at a higher level and never get the job. My advice is
| to always check your market value by talking to recruiters and/or
| HMs outside of your company. That way once you have the relevant
| bullets on your resume, either you get the promotion or you just
| leave. Hedge your bets.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Worst case is those responsibilities you took on can be added
| to your resume to find a higher level job at a different
| company.
| sailfast wrote:
| This works well if your company culture doesn't abhor an IC or
| manager trying to push for improvements in places that are not
| their responsibility.
|
| Unfortunately there are a lot of places that do dislike this -
| and it may result in you getting fired instead of promoted :)
| jimbokun wrote:
| Sounds like a company set up for failure.
| aynyc wrote:
| This belongs to the "shit that never happened" list.
| matwood wrote:
| The best promotion advice I ever received is that you can't be
| promoted, if you can't be replaced.
| boogieknite wrote:
| some personal advice i recently learned is to show youre boss's
| boss if you really want to be promoted
|
| ive been "trying to take my boss's position" for a few years and
| he really appreciates it. but during my last review my boss's
| boss pointed said he wasnt aware of any of this. i was leaving
| him off all my cc lists because i figured he didnt want the
| cluttered inbos. he said the opposite, he thought i wasnt
| following up and doing my job
|
| all my effort was actually having a negative effect in the
| perspective of the decision maker. hopefully i knock his socks
| off this year since apparently the bars been lowered to the floor
| cletus wrote:
| So there's some survivor bias here but it's generally not bad
| advice. You should be focusing on outcomes like improving SLAs,
| top line metrics and so on. You should be solving user and
| business problems. That's all good advice. But still this article
| presumes a lot.
|
| In my experience, managers will naturally partition their reports
| into three buckets: their stars, their problems and their worker
| bees. The worker bees tend to be ignored. They're doing fine.
| They're getting on with whatever they've been told to do or
| possibly what they've found to do. They're not going to create
| any problems. The problems are the underperformers. These are
| people who create problems and/or are at risk of getting a subpar
| performance rating.
|
| Now there are lots of reasons that someone can be a problem. I
| tend to believe that any problem just hasn't found the right fit
| yet and, until proven otherwise, problems are a failure in
| management. That tends to be a minority view in practice. It's
| more common to simply throw people in the deep end and sink or
| swim because that takes much less overhead. You will see this as
| teams who have a lot of churn but only in part of the team. In
| particularly toxic environments, savvy managers will game the
| system by having a sacrificial anode position. They hire someone
| to take the bad rating they have to give to protect the rest of
| the team.
|
| And then there are the stars. These are the people you expect to
| grow and be promoted. More often than not however they are chosen
| rather than demonstrating their potential. I've seen someone
| shine when their director is actively trying to sabotage them but
| that's rare.
|
| Your stars will get the better projects. Your problems will get
| the worse ones. If a given project is a success or not will
| largely come down to perception not reality.
|
| The point I'm getting to is that despite all the process put
| around this at large companies like performance ratings,
| feedback, calibration, promo committees, etc the majority of all
| this is vibes based.
|
| So back to the "take my job" advice. If someone is viewed as a
| star, that's great advice. For anyone else, you might get
| negative feedback about not doing your actual job, not being a
| team player and so on. I've seen it happen a million times.
|
| And here's the dirty little secret of it all: this is where the
| racism, sexism and ableism sneaks in. It's usually not that
| direct but Stanford grads (as just one example) will tend to vibe
| with other Stanford grads. They have common experience, probably
| common professors and so on. Same for MIT. Or CMU. Or UW. Or
| Waterloo. And so on.
|
| So all of the biases that go into the selection process for those
| institutions will bleed into the tech space.
|
| And this kind of environment is much worse for anyone on the
| spectrum because allistic people will be inclined to dislike from
| the start for no reason and that's going to hurt how they're
| viewed (ie as a star, a worker bee or a problem) and their
| performance ratings.
|
| Because all of this is ultimately just a popularity contest with
| very few exceptions. I've seen multiple people finagle their way
| to Senior STaff SWE on just vibes.
|
| And all of this gets worse since the tech sector has joined
| Corporate America in being in permanet layoff mode. The Welchian
| "up or out" philosophy has taken hold in Big Tech where there are
| quotas of 5-10% of the workforce have to get subpar ratings every
| year and that tends to kill their careers at that company. This
| turns the entire workplace even more into an exercise in social
| engineering.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Yeah the only solution to avoid this is to find a company where
| building and selling a product actually matters. In large
| companies it's too easy to fudge the connection between
| individual contributions and financial impact.
|
| If you're not looking to become a founder, companies right
| around 100 employees is the sweet spot in my (very limited)
| experience.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| Make clear what your goals are to your manager, brainstorm with
| your manager what kind of specific work would lead them to
| recommend you for promotion. Then propose that specific work, get
| them to agree, deliver the work, and hold them to their
| agreement. Ideally talk to other stakeholders/skip-levels since
| promotions are usually by committee and you want as many allies
| as you can in the room.
|
| You also want to figure out if it even makes sense to go for a
| promotion, if the organization isn't growing - it's going to be a
| lot harder/impossible to make it.
|
| It also may not be financially worth it if you care about work-
| life-balance. It might be worth it to get paid 50-70% as much but
| not have to spend your day in back to back meetings. It may even
| pencil the same if you consider hourly rates and taxes.
| bitwarrior wrote:
| This is somewhat the oldest advice in the book: "Dress for the
| job you want, not the job you have."
| arm32 wrote:
| In that case, woodworking/homelessness is the job I want.
| crazygringo wrote:
| While this is true... it's also letting yourself be massively
| taken advantage of, and underpaid.
|
| Yes, the best way to get promoted is to do work above your level.
| The problem is, _you 're not getting paid what you deserve for
| that_. If you're always doing this, you're always being
| _underpaid by a full level_.
|
| Which is why much better advice is to try to get promoted by
| switching companies and jumping a level in the process.
|
| _Managers_ certainly want to take advantage of you by getting
| you to overperform without being overpaid. But _employees_ should
| do everything they can not to fall for it. Which usually requires
| getting companies to compete _over you_.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Do the work one level up for a while and add it to your resume
| when searching for that higher level job at another company. Or
| maybe your current company will surprise you with a promotion
| in the meantime.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Or don't? Because the other company may hire you at the
| higher level _anyways_ , that's the point. Because you're
| getting multiple companies to compete for the experience you
| already have. It's your task to demonstrate _in interviews_
| that you have the skills for that higher level. Which is a
| huge shortcut.
|
| And "maybe your current company will surprise you" just
| sounds like being taken advantage of to me. Because the
| reality is they probably _won 't_. Not at anywhere near the
| same speed, usually.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Companies usually want to see evidence you've done the kind
| of work required in the job you're applying for.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Many people forget that the only leverage they actually have is
| the threat to leave, and that it must always be a credible
| threat. Promotions are real, but they're given when they can
| underpay a current employee rather than hiring from outside.
|
| Don't complain or ask for more unless you're willing and able
| to leave, and ALWAYS be seriously looking for your next role.
| Dave_Rosenthal wrote:
| As a boss-man myself, I've seen this "don't let them take
| advantage of you" sentiment expressed in many discussions about
| comp and promotions, but I can't really say I understand it. Am
| I just out of touch?
|
| As I read it, the article is simply trying to help people
| understand what kind of work is valuable to a company and
| therefore what they should focus on to make themselves
| valuable. I presume that making yourself valuable pays
| dividends, including promotions! Somehow the idea of going to
| work and not trying your best because "you're not getting paid
| ... for that" just feels so cynical and divorced from how I've
| seen successful people grow and make big bucks in tech.
|
| (And this is all a bit separate, of course, than the debate
| about whether staying at a company or job hopping is better for
| career trajectory.)
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| If a person is profitable to have around, than the conversation
| is simple:
|
| 1. Company has money people may want
|
| 2. People have unique skills a company needs to profit
|
| 3. Everything else is 100% unrelated BS
|
| On average, every software developer brings in >$1.3m USD/year in
| additional revenue. If you are being exploited, than just find a
| better gig someplace better... as it is usually easier than
| advancing out of a critical role.
|
| Salaries with legal encumbrances are usually just a terrible deal
| in the long-term. =3
| AndrewAnchor wrote:
| I am a longtime lurker. I signed up to say this: Never work extra
| without being paid extra. You can easily work your butt off and
| never get anything.
|
| Sure, the boss and the company would like you to work extra, but
| when did the company ever pay you extra up front for work you--
| perhaps--would deliver at a later time?
|
| You are a business. It's not sound business to lower your own
| hourly rate.
|
| Sure, if everything looks 100 percent aligned, buy the pretty
| girl a drink, but most of the time things are not aligned.
|
| Don't be the prostitute who expects to get paid later.
| away0g wrote:
| Also, if everyone followed this (OPs) advice that would be a
| problem. This is more suited to someone already being groomed
| or an employee who is being mismanaged. My employees do not
| have time to do unassigned work. If they find the time to
| present a project fully fleshed out the first thing i ask is
| where did you do this. At work? Problem, my KPIs are not
| accurate or youre a superstar who is going to walk unless i
| find room in the budget (unlikely) or start looking for your
| replacement because there wont be a reward for turning in
| unassigned work. Did you work on this at home? Problem as well,
| you are not paid to work at home. We do not want you to work
| outside of your hours of operation. Why did you do this?
| jkingsbery wrote:
| With other engineers I mentor, I often give similar advice: break
| the promotion into two steps. The one everyone talks about is
| when the email goes out. The one that probably matters more is
| when your manager says: "I'm going to start treating you like
| <target promotion role>." A lot less attention goes into that
| step, particularly at bigger companies that have more formal
| promotion processes.
| jsight wrote:
| These posts fascinate me, as I must admit that I never really
| realized there were so many people focused almost exclusively on
| promotion.
|
| Is it really that common, or do these posts just bring out those
| types of comments?
|
| TBH, in this field, it seems like other problems are often more
| pressing: - I've been a developer in XX
| language for NN years. How do I get my next job when the company
| is now hiring YY developers instead? - There are lots of
| Level II jobs for YY, but I'm at level IV. Will eligibility rules
| even allow this transition? - There are some Level V
| positions for YY, but my level IV in XX doesn't really qualify me
| in a way that would pass a tech screen.
|
| The concerns in these types of posts are just so... different.
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