Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got
andrew.grahamyooll.com
Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got
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Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got
#2This is how I eventually ended up being CTO and eventually CEO. I wanted the overall business to succeed.
Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got
#3This 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)
Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got
#4IME, 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.)
Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got
#5Taking 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".
Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got
#6IME, 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 hav…
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.
Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got
#7I 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.
Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got
#8Taking 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".
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.
Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got
#9IME, 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 hav…
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.
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).
Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got
#10Taking 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".
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.