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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

#141

Post by ram_rar »

This advice only works at the team level. Beyond that, it’s borderline fantasy. At senior and leadership levels, promotions aren’t rewards for effort, they’re forward looking bets made by people above you, and those people have incentives, blind spots, and egos. Reporting to an insecure director or a clueless manager will quickly disabuse you of the “just do great work” myth.

Also, if the company isn’t growing, none of this matters. You can operate like a CTO all you want and all that happens is more work gets dumped on you for the same pay. Take on stretch work if you’re hungry for it and it’s explicitly acknowledged as next-level responsibility. Otherwise, you’re just volunteering to be exploited.

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

#142

Post by Magmalgebra »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #138
Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I presume that making yourself valuable pays dividends, including promotions! This has not been my experience at all. I've had multiple positions where I took on multiple challenges and responsibilities outside my role, reshaped the team and took the lead on getting things shipped, made sure my manager was more successful, and spent a lot of energy making all this happens... for nothing. > and divorced from how I’v…

> that got along well with leadership in a fast growing company

I may be reading too much into your post but I'll say that this sentiment is a common pattern I see in many competent senior folks who think they deserve promotions into roles above senior. Getting along with leadership is a huge asset for for this type of leadership role. It means that you stay aligned and push in the same direction together.

If you're not going to get along well with your leadership you need to be much much better than everyone around you - which is a significantly higher bar to clear. And getting along well is a skill. It's usually not the skill people want to learn but it's hugely valuable to be able to be chummy with a difficult exec.

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

#143

Post by Magmalgebra »

crazygringo wrote: post #112
Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Somehow the idea of going to work and not trying your best 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. leadi…

> 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 takes him 30-40 hours a week. If he worked another 5 years in the same role it'd probably drop to 20 and be chill.

Jim wants to get promoted. If he waited the 5 years he could do it working 40 hours a week. But he wants it now, and since he's not as good as he will be he needs to work 60. What does Jim do? He works the 60.

There's nothing wrong with this choice, I made it, I'm happy with my choice. I might make it again in the future, or not.

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

#144

Post by joshuamorton »

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…

> If you're always doing this, you're always being underpaid by a full level.

This doesn't actually follow, for a variety of reasons, including that jobs have compensation ranges and in a lot of cases the bottom of one is pretty close to, or even below, the top of the previous one.

One of the big reasons that changing companies was good from a compensation perspective was 4 year initial offers. Upleveled job-switches do happen, but from what I've seen they don't usually happen much faster than internal promotions, and often they happen slower!

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

#146

Post by fusslo »

ImPleadThe5th wrote: post #145

Good advice. Doesn't work in bad culture. I once was told "we cannot promote you because the work you've done checks the boxes for 2 rolls above you and does not check the boxes for your next roll"

also an insecure/jealous manager will see you as a threat and do everything to make you ineffective, miserable, and quit

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

#147

Post by Quarrelsome »

> Here's the thing most people miss: promotions don't fall off the tree and land in your lap.

That's not what I learned from work. I saw people with skill way beyond their position hang around companies getting jack shit before they eventually got bored and left, and then other people getting thrust into seniority for arbitrary reasons:

> Oh, you got hired just three weeks ago? Well the rest of the team has just quit, so I guess you're in charge now.

> Corporate are trying to fix the gender imbalance in the c-suite, you're a woman, you want to be an executive?

Both of those people _were_ very good at what they did, but so were the other people who didn't get those arbitrary events.

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

#150

Post by alfiedotwtf »

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…

> 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

lol

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