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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

#181

Post by keeptrying »

This is nonsense to get you to work more for the same pay.

Its good to do this to get an idea of what it means to work on a higher level but it WILL NOT get you promoted.

Promotion is about leverage. What can you supply that no one else can and thats crucial for your bosses-boss's success?

Stop thinking execution - its exactly the opposite of that.

Can you recruit people from other organizations, can you create a new product, work with every part fo the comapny, evangelize the company externally, attract capital ...

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

#182

Post by [deleted] »

rendaw wrote: post #168
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 peop…

[deleted]

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

#183

Post by neilv »

rivetfasten wrote: post #87
mywittyname wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

One anecdata: The one time I accepted a counter-offer (but not for more money), I regretted it.

(I was at place that had an existential problem, and unhappily fighting it. Then, coincidentally, a different company, which had previously made me a tempting offer, checked back in. They made an offer to double my TC, which included a big title jump, to fit their pay grades. I wanted to be loyal to my team, so I went to the appropriate exec at my employer. I said I had an unsolicited offer that I had to decide on immediately, but I would stay if we could solve the problem. Was assured exec understood, and we could tackle the problem. I also asked for the company to do right by a couple other employees, while I had the exec's ear and the moment. Existential problem got worse, and couldn't be solved, for political reasons. Everyone was miserable, and I was out the boost to lifestyle and resume decorations.)

The more usual reasons I know not to mess with counter-offers are that: if the employer wasn't treating you fairly before, that's a problem; you might be flagged as disloyal; they might pay to keep you for temporary convenience, but get rid of you when more convenient for them.

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

#184

Post by GMoromisato »

rendaw wrote: post #168
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 peop…

This is a good question. I compressed too much: instead of "performance at your boss's level" I really meant, "helping to achieve your boss's goals".

If you're an engineering IC in a team of 5, what are your boss's goals? It's usually things like: hit your deadlines, avoid production bug catastrophes, and maybe add features that make the sales people happy.

How can your boss achieve those goals? I have a few ideas:

a) Processes: Introduce or refine processes for the team to ensure high-quality code or to gain efficiencies.

b) Mentoring: Help members of the team to function at their highest level.

c) Clearing Obstacles: Coordinate with other teams so they don't slow you down. E.g., make sure teams you depend on are on schedule, and if not, adapt and adjust.

But this is just an example. I think the easiest thing to do is ask your boss what their goals are. What does success look like to them? Once you know that, you might be able to come up with ways of helping that they might not have thought of.

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

#185

Post by GMoromisato »

begueradj wrote: post #155
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 are demonstrating performance at your boss's level, that's evidence/proof that a promotion is warranted. It can not be farther from the truth. The best way to stay in the bottom is to work hard, to focus on work so that others have time to focus on advertising themselves, take credit of your good work and backstab you for everything else, befriend and lick the shoes strategically -even develop bed skills, fo…

Cynicism is a seductive drug. It makes you feel good because you don't have to do anything--the game is rigged, so why bother trying? But like all drugs it is ultimately self-sabotaging.

Careers are like love: you have to risk heartbreak or you'll never experience joy.

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

#187

Post by rendaw »

GMoromisato wrote: post #184
rendaw wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

This is a good question. I compressed too much: instead of "performance at your boss's level" I really meant, "helping to achieve your boss's goals". If you're an engineering IC in a team of 5, what are your boss's goals? It's usually things like: hit your deadlines, avoid production bug catastrophes, and maybe add features that make the sales people happy. How can your boss achieve those goals? I have a few ideas: a…

I think those are good examples. I think part of the confusion is that most of those are typical responsibilities of e.g. senior level IC work, so "performance at your boss's level" looks more or less the same as "performance at your current IC level".

Which is good advice! Do your job well!

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

#188

Post by [deleted] »

sailfast wrote: post #46
bluGill wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often you need not only to be at the higher level, but someone to call out that if they don't promote you you might leave. I've seen a lot cases (at many companies) where one person that everyone knows is good quitting for a promotion gets a dozen others promoted in the next few months. So if you realize you are not getting a promotion your leaving may be the trigger to get your coworkers promoted.

Correct. The best way to be promoted / given more money is to be a cherished contributor and be deemed a flight risk.

[deleted]

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

#189

Post by stillworks »

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…

This makes sense and here is slightly different perspective to this.

The company I was at had this haloed culture of promotions and I saw people sat on a certain IC level for over 5 years chasing the carrot. Some of them were close to a decade at the same level.

Now, this company had several sub-orgs and it was possible to switch positions to a different team or an entirely different sub-org altogether. And guess what ? No up-leveling and no salary hikes because the overall company doesn't allow the sub-orgs to compete with each other.

Fair enough. Makes sense. If they allowed it, it would be chaotic.

But for some reason, their is a culture of making employees compete with each other ! To the point that the apparent lowest performer will be asked to leave the company ! (There are other ramifications to this "system" but this is not the discussion for those)

The lesson I learnt was to chose your battles wisely and be prepared for interviews every single day... because in a way it indeed felt like everyday I was interviewing/competing for the job I already had... why not dial it up to eleven ?

Once you feel prepared, then actually simply start interviewing. This year I am targetting at least six (once every two months) solid interviews. The more multi-stage-loops the better because that gives me the chance to politely drop out of the process at any stage. The more leetcode hards the better because leetcode hards are set in a specific way and the interviewer has to be super smart to follow up with something novel.

This way, I think (correct me if I am wrong) I am implicitly up-skilling and getting better at my job AND in a state of preparedness to walk away if I felt I needed to.

Managers be managing and all that $h1t... they have their jobs to do, I have my life to deal with as well. I will control what I can control.

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

#190

Post by TeMPOraL »

ozim wrote: post #41
cephei wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they do that, that's exactly why you don't want to promote them because it is clear they don't understand that doing x+5 work on your own is not as good as x*5 when you become multiplier by helping others.

Except the only way to do x*5 work is by your team hiring extra 5 people for you to manage... or, somewhat uniquely to our industry, through automating your own work.

Also, everyone else hears the same memes about "being a force multiplier" too. When everyone is trying to be a multiplier for the team by helping everyone else on it, the result isn't exponential productivity growth - it's drowning in exponential noise.

Like some other commenters correctly observed, the most significant factor is actually whether the company you're in is stable headcount-wise, or growing fast. In a stable company, promos are a contested resource, which makes the requirements arbitrary - you're graded on an ordinal scale, not a nominal one. In a fast-growing company, promos will happen to you, through no effort on your own - you can coast upwards on seniority alone.

In neither situation, consistently performing at the level above you is a differentiating factor.

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