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Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got

andrew.grahamyooll.com

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Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got

#61

Post by cainxinth »

ggoo wrote: post #15

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.

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.

Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got

#62

Post by triyambakam »

niam wrote: post #35
triyambakam wrote: post #27

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.

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.

It's proper grammar but I have only ever seen journalists use it. It is a strong signal in my experience

Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got

#63

Post by crazygringo »

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.

Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got

#64

Post by jimbokun »

wrsh07 wrote: post #26

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…

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.

Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got

#65

Post by mywittyname »

michaelt wrote: post #31
amflare wrote: post #5

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".

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…

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.

Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got

#66

Post by Joel_Mckay »

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

Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got

#67

Post by AndrewAnchor »

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.

Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got

#68

Post by jimbokun »

bluGill wrote: post #34
wrsh07 wrote: post #26

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…

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 you…

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.

Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got

#69

Post by jimbokun »

crazygringo wrote: post #63

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 proc…

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.

Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got

#70

Post by gowld »

cephei wrote: post #10
amflare wrote: post #5

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".

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.

"promotion" is just a word. Either management can pay for performance, or employ can perform for pay, and cut back on work hours.
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