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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

#161

Post by spiderice »

crazygringo wrote: post #75
jimbokun wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

You seem way too concerned with "nickle-and-diming" your employer. Which is just as sad as an employer who nickle-and-dimes their employees.

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

#162

Post by sandeepkd »

On a tangential note, I have a concern with all such advices from a technology standpoint. These are all ways to understand the rules and constraints for upward mobility and make them work for you. More and more people are bubbling up in technology roles and roles impacting the long term outcome for technology by using the ~smart/outcome driven/cheat sheet. Building thoughtful systems require long term vision and commitments, not sure if any of this fits in that picture though. Lately everything is just A MVP.

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

#163

Post by pc86 »

tmoertel wrote: post #160
Magmalgebra wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Aside from AWS, who's famously bad at this, my experience is that this is usually because people want a faster career push. Imagine Jim, 8 years into his career. Jim is pretty good and his work take…

> There's nothing wrong with this choice [to work extra hours to get promoted]. But if there are limited slots for promotion, and that's generally always the case, the resulting competition among deserving engineers makes the extra hours more or less mandatory. Say that Amy is a better engineer than Jim and gets a third more done per hour. If Jim puts in 60 hours instead of the expected 40, then Amy isn't going to be…

That doesn't make the promotion more about grinding because the company doesn't care about how much work you get done in a set unit of time compared to other employees in the same set unit of time. The company cares about how much you get done, period.

If the only differentiating factor between Amy and Jim is quantity of work done (this is never the case in real life), most companies will prefer a Jim that works 60 hours to an Amy that works 40 if Jim is producing 5% more.

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

#164

Post by kamaal »

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".

>>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.

Wait a minute. Why are you accepting more work, responsibility without increase in compensation? Promotion de facto means getting paid more.

Otherwise its just some one updating a row in the employee database with fancy text. How does it matter what designation you are called with?

I had a similar situation few years before COVID where a company offered a fancy designation albeit for 50% lesser the pay. All said and done, when I did all the calculations, even with me rapidly changing companies with newly acquired designation, and building from there. It would take more than a decade to merely arrive to the salary I was then. And that would still mean more than a decade of wasted raises, bonuses and RSU vesting at the then current job. By the time that fork got profitable, I'd be due for retirement.

Promotion == Pay/Compensation Raise.

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

#165

Post by crazygringo »

spiderice wrote: post #161
crazygringo wrote: post #75

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…

You seem way too concerned with "nickle-and-diming" your employer. Which is just as sad as an employer who nickle-and-dimes their employees.

When I say to not let yourself get taken advantage of by your employer, by working an extra 10-20 hrs/wk for free... you read that as "nickel-and-diming your employer"? And you think it's sad?

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

#166

Post by defranme »

> "You want to get promoted? Try to take my position."

When I was a junior, mid, and starting senior level developer, I was so focused on getting ahead, and I would’ve listened intently to this.

The reality is though that most managers and principal or higher devs are great with you taking on responsibility if you’re ready for it, and making mistakes and learning is often fine, but when you stop respecting those with more experience and start working around them, they’re not going to be happy.

My advice: take on responsibilities and do the work, but always respect others. You will never regret giving someone enough respect. If you have a heart or a brain, you will almost certainly regret not treating someone with respect; it will haunt you, even if you one day apologize to them.

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

#168

Post by rendaw »

GMoromisato wrote: post #33

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…

I really don't get this

> if you are demonstrating performance at your boss's level, that's evidence/proof that a promotion is warranted

If you're an engineering IC, and your boss is a manager with 4 other ICs, your boss's goals are twofold: get at least 5 ICs worth of results from the team, and managing people.

So to do what you and TFA suggest literally you can either:

- Do 5 ICs worth of work

- Start managing people at the same level on your team, on your own initiative

I've seen coworkers try to manage their peers, aiming for a promotion. To say the least it harms team unity.

I only managed to do the 2nd once when I was thrown into a project with an absentee manager and doubly-booked half-committed members who were actually happy for someone to organize the work. Those sorts of situations are rare. Or maybe that's the unstated qualification.

And: Do 5x the amount of work, well...

Maybe I'm not thinking outside the box enough here, but I need some examples of how this is generally achievable. Maybe this was specifically _not_ about the IC-manager divide, and more like managers and manager-managers?

What I'd more generally expect is for a manager to explicitly put you in charge of a small, short term project with one or two other people and see how it goes: can everyone contribute, did you achieve results, were you transparent, how did you interact with the other members, etc.

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

#169

Post by kamaal »

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…

>>Which is why much better advice is to try to get promoted by switching companies and jumping a level in the process.

This is why most companies don't offer a promotion as a part of hiring process, and are mostly hiring at currently levels, but at a pay raise.

In some cases where a promotion is available, they often pay below your current compensation, which defeats the whole point of the process.

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