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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

#261

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

Shalomboy wrote: post #246
ManlyBread wrote: post #202

Ah, the classic "work even harder and do things you're not paid for with zero guarantee that someone will appreciate what you're doing while the company reaps the benefits". What a novel thought, I am so glad I clicked the article, especially since the author isn't even speaking from experience so he has nothing to back up his blogpost with.

Not to diminish your skepticism, but your reply comes off jaded in a way that might be hurting you. The author's suggestion for employees seeking promotion is to operate on a higher level than they're asked to and keep operating in that fashion for a sustained window of time. Show growth, in other words.

It’s a lot easier just to do enough to talk the talk and get another job…

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

#262

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

mattbee wrote: post #233
mlrtime wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen, you don't have to do this and are free to disagree. However, this method has worked and will continue to work. Lots of people are fine just doing their shift and leaving, that's ok. Some people are not satisfied with that and want more, and there are strategies to do more work and get paid to do so.

And the advice is not (necessarily) "work extra, unpaid hours".

Exactly, working harder doesn’t mean putting in extra hours. It means taking on projects with larger scope, impact and ambiguity during your normal working hours

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

#263

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

Phelinofist wrote: post #256
ryanjshaw wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Felt like AI slop. I used to do what it recommends, and it got me nowhere other than more stress and higher expectations from senior management.

It actually worked for me, got my last promotion that way (IC -> EM)

I don’t consider a line level manager a promotion. I consider that the fifth level of hell.

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

#264

Post by iainctduncan »

Oh man, this is bad advice. So, maybe one manager said it... but having been a CTO/dev manager, I will say that having to deal with people trying to do a job that isn't their job is a royal pain in the ass. I have had to deal with this several times, both as someone on the sidelines and as the manager responsible.

When I was a CTO it ultimately required the talk: "It's MY job to manage dev resources and figure out what levers we push where with our limited money. When you try to do a different job then you got hired for, you screw that all up and set me and the company up for failure. If you don't want to do your job, you need to look for another one"

It definitely didn't make me want to promote those people.

A much better approach is to talk to your manager and skip manager about what great career development looks like to them. And if there is no path and that's what you're after, leave. (Lots of good jobs out there that just don't have this path for perfectly good business reasons, or the funnell is too full.)

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

#265

Post by flint »

My early boss had a different approach. If you want a promotion, you need to have people in place who can do your job. That was touchy. If I had people capable of doing my job, what would happen when we do layoffs (which happened regularly)? But it was also through a period of strong growth, so the boss needed proven people in place to take on new opportunities. Working for a firm during its strong growth phase is very different from trying to climb a 10,000-deep corporate ladder.

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

#266

Post by snowwrestler »

iainctduncan wrote: post #264

Oh man, this is bad advice. So, maybe one manager said it... but having been a CTO/dev manager, I will say that having to deal with people trying to do a job that isn't their job is a royal pain in the ass. I have had to deal with this several times, both as someone on the sidelines and as the manager responsible. When I was a CTO it ultimately required the talk: "It's MY job to manage dev resources and figure out wh…

Consider the possibility that their initiative was not the problem, the problem was that they were not aligned with you.

They were doing things you didn’t want, which made your job harder. But if they were doing things you did want, they would have made your life easier. Because then you would not have to do them.

Alignment with a superior is one part of every job, in fact the higher you go the more important it is. To be clear, alignment means they know what you want done without asking every time. It means they understand your mindset, strategy, and goals. I think it’s coachable to some degree, but some people just don’t seem to get it.

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

#267

Post by snowwrestler »

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".

It’s absolutely true that you need to be willing to move on if your current employer doesn’t reward you for what you do.

That doesn’t negate the value of working above your title. Even if you need to leave, doing better work makes your resume and interviews stronger.

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

#268

Post by wrsh07 »

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…

On re reading both of our replies I don't think we disagree:

> First, _. If you don't do these things (or you do them in a way that management doesn't expect or can't measure) you will have to do additional work to make sure they get measured

And you say:

> Always do the thing that your company will find most valuable for you to do

Yes, sure! But if it's not what's expected, then you probably have additional work that is called "communicating impact". And unfortunately, if you want to get promoted, you are going to have to spend some time communicating impact (unless the impact is self-evident, in which case you have already successfully communicated the impact)

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

#269

Post by SunshineTheCat »

ManlyBread wrote: post #202

Ah, the classic "work even harder and do things you're not paid for with zero guarantee that someone will appreciate what you're doing while the company reaps the benefits". What a novel thought, I am so glad I clicked the article, especially since the author isn't even speaking from experience so he has nothing to back up his blogpost with.

This just comes across as extraordinarily whiny.

The core of what the author is saying is true, I've experienced it myself (not a promotion, but a raise).

Taking on more than your responsibility is one way to do it, another (with some overlap) is to become indispensable.

In some cases, this means doing more work than your job entails, but not always. It can be something as simple as automating a task that someone else was doing by hand.

When you start stacking up little things that make you more valuable to the company, it's in its own best interest to find ways to keep you (via promotions, raises, benefits, etc).

There isn't a guarantee of anything here, but it definitely sets you up for success.

A thousand times more than sitting around whining that something isn't your job or that the company is being mean.

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

#270

Post by LiquidSky »

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…

This is premised on promotions and other work rewards having any kind of rational basis or connection to the work.

It could simply be that spending time with your boss makes them know and like you more, and people tend to reward people they know and like, making up some post hoc rationalization about performance or whatever to justify it.

No one wants to think of themselves like this, though, so they would never admit, even to themselves, that this is what's going on, but I suspect for most people it's the actual reality.

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