111–120 of 286 posts
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 de…
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…
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 v…
You make a great point -- let me further explain so I'm not misunderstood.
If the person is putting in the same 40 hrs/wk (or whatever is standard) but just "doing their best", then there's no problem.
But in my experience, your manager is expecting you to do all of your assigned role (e.g. write code), but then also do a bunch of stuff on top -- e.g. leading and taking ownership of new initiatives that is extra work. Usually something like 10-20 hours' worth per week. And so now people are working evenings and weekends to get that promotion, spending less time with their family. And a lot of them still don't get the promotion. For years, or even ever. This is all free labor for the company. They get away paying for a team of 4 instead of a team of 5.
That's what I'm pushing back on. In practice, it's rarely doing your existing work but better -- it's doing a bunch of extra work that takes more time. Because nobody ever says "hey show that you can take on these new responsibilities, and so do less of your original responsibilities".
Contrast this to actually being promoted, where some of your previous responsibilities are now actually delegated to others, because your job is now focused more on higher-level design and/or management.
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.
It's not too bad because it's not too long, but I think it's worse than if the human had just written a second part to the post about the length of the first part.
Notice there's all these needless sections that have the LLM-form.
> What "Taking the Position" Actually Looks Like
> Why Sustained Performance Is What Counts
> The Responsibility-First Mindset
And each has this opening paragraph setup then a one sentence paragraph contradicting or reinforcing it, which is simultaneously punchy and pure fluff.
> I couldn't have been happier.
> And I mean sustained.
> But that's backward.
I can't really tell how much the author cares about any given bit of text beyond the starting paragraph because it's all expressed with too many words that don't say anything, but just evoke the marketing/linkedin-speak, giving everything too much weight.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
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…
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 d…
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 w…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 ar…
> 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…
This works if performing at the top of your current level equates to performing at the bottom of the next level. That said, there's a problem where sometimes a "promotion" is really a new role, meaning to perform at the next level, you have to kind of not perform well at the current level.
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.
Definitely, although maybe it's ok here. I'm not sure. The opening paragraph doesn't feel like it. The rest could be condensed to 1 or 2 paragraphs and it would better communicate the idea. It's not too bad because it's not too long, but I think it's worse than if the human had just written a second part to the post about the length of the first part. Notice there's all these needless sections that have the LLM-form.…
Continually sad to see each day that the vast majority of users cannot classify
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 rea…
Companies usually want to see evidence you’ve done the kind of work required in the job you’re applying for.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 ar…
> 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…
> 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.
My current company used to work this way, but they moved to a "needs-based" promo process. You can be promoted to L5 if your manager can justify the need for an L5.
Which ends up making promotions significantly harder to come by. It's near impossible to justify the need for an L5 role when you already have L4s doing the work. No matter how far outside their level competencies a person works, that work becomes L4 work... because an L4 is successfully performing it.
It's a deeply silly and frustrating system.