> Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted. That was exactly his point though. He hoped that he would get promoted by doing an

> Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted. That was exactly his point though. He hoped that he would get promoted by doing an awesome job, by going beyond what was merely expected as "done". I know where he's coming from. I've had one job in my career that was exactly like that (and I miss it dearly). I never really worked on promotions while on that job. I was very passionate about the stuff we were doing and made sure we were always building the right product for our customers, made sure our code was excellent, made sure we fixed bugs quickly, etc. And I didn't do those things by going around politicking. I just came in every day, sat at my desk, wrote code, had technical discussions with other folks, did code reviews, etc. I got two promotions while on that job. They always came as a surprise and came with a brief talk with management about how much they appreciated my contributions and my technical skills. These days I just dread all the career stuff. Thankfully I'm in a position at my current company where I can just "park" for the rest of my time there if I want to. The last thing I want to do when going to work is politicking and forking alliances and whatnot. I want my technical work to speak for itself. If that's not enough, I don't care. I make more than enough to make a good living.