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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

#271

Post by snowwrestler »

flint wrote: post #265

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 ve…

A person who can train up their staff can do so again and again. A junior staff who’s been trained up may or may not be able to help others grow.

Leveling up your staff is an incredibly valuable skill in a business, way more valuable than whatever hard facts or skills you teach them.

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

#272

Post by wiseowise »

jaylaal wrote: post #254
wiseowise wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except work is nothing like professional sport. Your example is detached from reality. It's more like being hired as a plumber and start doing secretary work for your boss for free. There's a price tag on your services, why would give it out for free for some nebulous chance of getting a promo? Peak stupidity.

How's the boss going to know you can do secretarial stuff if he hired you as a plumber?

You go to the boss and you say you want to become a secretary. You and your boss outline a path with clear road and compensation for the effort.

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

#273

Post by dwoldrich »

The best promotion advice I have is to pick a great manager who is genuinely motivated to help you advance in your career. You won't get promoted easily by a manager who's checked out or likes counting beans.

Managers like that are few and far between. If you find one, make it clear to them you want to follow them because they'll get snatched from you in no time and be themselves promoted far far away.

How to find said manager? Ask around, do a little org chart recon in Outlook and do some networking. Where is the drama kept to a minimum in the org? What teams seem to be succeeding both internally and across to other teams. Are there teams where the techies are outspoken (positively) within the org and making a name for themselves in the org? Get to know the managers for those teams.

You may have heard people quit when their manager is a tyrant, this is very true! But there is a middling type of manager, not a horrible person, but also one that isn't helping you along either. Maybe plot and scheme on how to gracefully move to other teams you could better contribute to.

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

#274

Post by ianberdin »

I saw such a team of 3 people, who earns $500,000 in month.

Advice: solve business bottlenecks.

Their approach: - research the biggest problem in a company with as less communication as possible - prepare a full, easy plan well designed. They used slides and a designer. - split the plan on parts and first part is already with a nice designed demo. Make sure a founder/boss’s work is only pay and say yes. Zero headache. - make a meeting and pitch it, so a founder/boss can’t say no

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

#275

Post by angarg12 »

This sounds like surface level wisdom if you are in your earlier career. I see several problems with this advice, but here is the most obvious one: this only works if you want to become a manager.

It used to be the case that the only way for engineers to advance their career. But we've long moved since and now you can have a long career and get very high in a company without management responsibilities. The examples given in the blog post are exactly what I would expect ICs to do, not managers.

Do you want advice to get promoted? if your company has a formal career ladder, look into the process and optimize for it. Despite people grievances, this is still the fastest and easiest method to get a promotion (shocker!).

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

#276

Post by rapidaneurism »

Xfx7028 wrote: post #197
jkubicek wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 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. My current…

I'm in this exact situation described in the two comments above. I explained to my manager that the project I have been working on has developed a lot since the last two years and if he would hire a replacement he would be looking at a senior person, not a junior. He agrees but he gets rejected when he made the case to his boss. My performance reviews have been above expectations. His boss claimed that it would not b…

Interview for another job.

Changing jobs every 2 years is the best way to increase your career long earnings.

People who do not move, signal that their market value is lower than the current compensation.

For extra money move right after a pay rise (so that you can negotiate higher salary)

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

#277

Post by GMoromisato »

asQuirreL wrote: post #199
GMoromisato wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This sounds like advice for how to be promoted to a specific level -- the first point where awareness of things beyond yourself is required (somewhere around the Senior or Staff level for ICs, depending on your company). Generally everyone in a team should be working towards some shared goal, there's no level at which you can be a chaos agent and not serve some higher purpose. The difference at this level transition…

Yes--excellent points.

I think at the higher levels (L8+) the job switches to creating a culture that can accomplish goals.

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

#278

Post by GMoromisato »

f1shy wrote: post #221
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…

> Start managing people at the same level on your team, on your own initiative Anecdotically, a coworken in my group started, on his own initiative, to “play manager” in out team, because he wanted to “help us all”. Of course he just wanted to ascend the ladder. That backfired instantly and spectacularly. I would never act with any authority if it was not very clearly delegated by my team, or my superior; and even th…

Agreed--that's a recipe for failure.

If you can't gain/keep the respect of your peers, you will not get promoted either (at least not at any company I would work for).

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

#279

Post by Phelinofist »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #263
Phelinofist wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The pay bump was nice, but I totally get where you're coming from. I'm actually thinking about moving back to IC

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

#280

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

Phelinofist wrote: post #279
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The pay bump was nice, but I totally get where you're coming from. I'm actually thinking about moving back to IC

My biggest issue with line level managers is that they don’t control budgets or have any real authority - raises, promotions, etc.

I love managing initiatives - just not people. But anytime I have been bought into a company where I was responsible for major company wide strategy, I made sure I reported directly to someone with authority - a director or a CTO. It was mostly small companies.

Even now where as a staff level employee where I do report to a line level manager (who is at the same salary band as I am) who I like and respect very much, I am making sure I have visibility and the ear of my skip manager and my CTO about things I care about - without stepping on my managers toes.

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