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I got down leveled when I moved to big tech. Spent two years completely remaking the product I was tasked to work on, while the two other engineers on my team,

I got down leveled when I moved to big tech. Spent two years completely remaking the product I was tasked to work on, while the two other engineers on my team, both a level above me, cheered me on and didn’t do much. I turned our product from a total waste about to be cancelled into a promising tech with some momentum, but I spent all my time coding instead of writing about coding, and I likely won’t get promoted again this cycle. It’s been very strange to see the fruits of my labor benefit the org while feeling totally unrecognized outside of my team. Now dealing with massive burn out for the first time in my career. Not sure what to do. I make sure to put out fires and do the bare minimum to keep up the product momentum, but I have no love for the org and just don’t think I’m cut out for the politics games.

ffggvv 5y ago
the trick is to disconnect, not try too hard, not take it personally, and learn to play the political games
- trash3 5y ago
  Oooor put in the minimum effort to tread water and collect that paycheck
throwaway6734 5y ago
Transition from doing high quality work to just enough to recover from burnout and after a bit of time look for different employment. I've been in a similar situation in the past and finding a different job solved the problem
yardie 5y ago
Honestly, you should leave. Everything is hot for developers right now. If they aren't recognizing your efforts, they will after you're gone.
everdrive 5y ago
>It’s been very strange to see the fruits of my labor benefit the org while feeling totally unrecognized outside of my team. This is the norm in my company, and I suspect many others.
azdle 5y ago
Are you me? I spent the last 3 years completely redeveloping the foundation of our platform which will save the company millions of dollars a year. I didn't do it alone or anything. But I started the project, was the only one to work on it full time throughout the whole project, defined the underlying architecture, and implemented most of the lowest layers. I poured all my energy into the project. We launched beginning of this month, I was so prod of what it represented technically. A week later I was told my performance was "acceptable", I got less than my target bonus, and got a 3% raise. I tried to quit, but relented when I was convinced not to and am now putting my unlimited vacation to work. I'm 3 days into a month I'm taking off.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  > I was convinced not to and am now putting my unlimited vacation to work. I'm 3 days into a month I'm taking off. So just quit after the vacation.
- e1g 5y ago
  It's a signal from the market ("employer") that what you currently offer is not what they currently value. If you desire greater rewards/ recognition, you need to discover what they value and decide if you want to offer that. Developers expect that work such as "refactoring", "platform architecture", "R&D", "investing into the future" has some intrinsic value to the business. At the company level, work such as "knowledge sharing", "upskilling the team", "fixing bugs for revenue-generating products", "reassuring management" can be more impactful given their current values and roadmap. You must choose whether to spend your energy working on your priorities or their priorities. Generally, you make more money if you help other people solve their problems rather than your problems. Or find new partnerships where the two sets overlap, but the highest-earning consultants can fall in love with solving the problems they do have, not the problems they wish they had.
  - whoknowswhat11 5y ago
    If you have a champion in mgmt things like "refactoring" or "platform architecture" can pay off. Please refactor this app off our oracle DB so we can say $10M - you will be fine and they may start slotting you into key business areas. If you are toiling doing platform, refactoring on a product without a ton of love - then yeah - that may be pretty low visibility for most folks.
nine_zeros 5y ago
Leave. Burnout happens when outcome != expectations. Did you skill up? Switch jobs asap. Get yourself a 20% raise.
- dnautics 5y ago
  hell, take a pay cut and get a job that is much more likely to validate your efforts.
- eru 5y ago
  You can probably do better than 20%. Unless you have to stay in the same small metro area or so.
MattGaiser 5y ago
One of the things I have noticed in both my full time jobs at this point is that my direct managers have had no idea what I do day to day. There are entire weeks where I could have achieved absolutely nothing and I am not sure if it would have been noticed. And that is probably not conducive to promotion as nobody who has power has any idea what I do.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > One of the things I have noticed in both my full time jobs at this point is that my direct managers have had no idea what I do day to day. FYI: This isn’t normal. It’s not even particularly common in the industry as a whole. It is, however, a hallmark of dysfunctional companies that are headed in the wrong direction. If you find yourself consistently stuck under clueless managers or working in companies that reward all the wrong things, it might be worth reevaluating your choice of companies and shaking up your career a bit. It’s not good to be stuck in dysfunctional companies for years. This is how people become disgruntled and cynical.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    I am "reevaluating" my choice of companies for other reasons [0], but it is interesting to learn that this abnormal. That is an organizational thing, as my manager is part of the "leadership" team, so he often has wall to wall meetings. I will be sure to inquire about this in interviews then. Thank you. I very much had the impression that management was often distant. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28353182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28353182
- ThrowawayR2 5y ago
  The unpleasant reality is that getting promotions requires a bit self-promotion. While good managers (which you apparently don't have) will clue you in on what's necessary and help out with it, the bulk of the burden is always on the employee to be able to explain their value to the company and to make sure their achievements are known and recognized. (Taken to extremes, this can be as sociopathic as it may sound. So don't and avoid those who do.)
gringoDan 5y ago
My conclusion after working in tech for a few years: If you don't want to play the politics game, just interview with new companies and get a new role and a significant pay bump every 1-2 years. Sad that the incentives are set up this way.
- eru 5y ago
  It's not that sad, at least the churn makes knowledge and best practices bubble through the industry.
  - gringoDan 5y ago
    True! I meant sad in the sense that if folks were properly incentivized to stay at an organization longer-term (10-20% pay bumps per year), I think we'd see more big innovations in technology – think NASA, Bell Labs, etc. – as opposed to incremental improvements.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Domain knowledge never gets there though. People never really understand their products or the customers. which is bad for products.
WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
Sorry to hear this. Feeling validated and appreciated for your work is often overlooked in all career types in multiple jobs. Try to find peace with the small wins you’ve done for yourself. It sounds super impressive and something you definitely should be proud of.
endtime 5y ago
> I turned our product from a total waste about to be cancelled into a promising tech with some momentum, but I spent all my time coding instead of writing about coding, and I likely won’t get promoted again this cycle. As a FAANG SWE, what I am reading is "I spent two years cranking out code without doing any design work. My manager and TL never suggested I write a design doc, or didn't give me opportunities to do so." At least at my employer - where, yes, you typically need to do design work to get promoted - that shouldn't happen. It's a failure of management if it did.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  Designing != documenting design. To get promoted in FAANG (and many large tech companies), yes, you need to document it. Interestingly, whether it works or not is completely unrelated to whether it's documented or not. In fact, the types of useful documentation (descriptions of how decisions were reached, known tradeoffs, API contracts, etc) often are completely different than the types of documentation management asks for (box diagrams that no one but management looks at). And the timeline for generating it is often different as well (management oftentimes asks for documentation before implementation, where such documentation runs the risk of being an incorrect blueprint; what is useful is documenting along the way). Valuing documentation can be done well, but pretty much every place I've seen it as an organizational requirement it has been a checkbox (and definitely running afoul of the agile manifesto, which makes it doubly frustrating, when an org also says "we're agile because we do scrum" or whatever).
  - allturtles 5y ago
    > Interestingly, whether it works or not is completely unrelated to whether it's documented or not. I disagree. Writing up your design gives others the opportunity to provide feedback and improve the design (and possibly catch major flaws) before you build it. If you never write up your design there's a higher chance that you have built something that doesn't correctly fulfill the product requirements / won't scale / will fail under some race condition you didn't anticipate / is not compatible with the plans an adjacent team has to touch the same area in the next 6 months / etc.
zoomablemind 5y ago
>...I spent all my time coding instead of writing about coding, and I likely won’t get promoted again this cycle. Would your perception about the org, team and self really change if you would get promoted? If that's the case, then you could try to promote yourself. Especially, now that you've got a concrete result. It's just to show openly to the org and team that the promotion is what you want. Package it with some outlook about how your contribution in the new role would boost the team and how timely you feel this is in your professional growth.
stadium 5y ago
That's hard, I've been there too. I went into role where nothing was documented, and I built up a knowledge base to get all of the tribal knowledge out of people's heads. There were all sorts of manual scripts running "hot" on production to fix issues, very few of them documented. It made my ramp up time much harder than it should have been. And my efforts made it way easier (and safer) for the team and everyone who was hired after me. That year I got a lower performance rating. The silver lining was that I gained skills that helped me land my next gig, along with a nice bump in pay. I responded to a cold call email from a recruiter and from that began a more fulfilling career trajectory where I was appreciated more.
DamnYuppie 5y ago
As a somewhat seasoned developer and former executive I can, sadly, state that raises and rewards are rarely tied to your output or how much it brings to the company. If your manager and executive leadership team are not actively marketing/hyping what your team is doing there is little to no hope of getting what you deserve. I get that this sounds "unfair" but there are some reasonable reasons for this. A company is huge there are many teams working on multiple projects, some of which have more executive hype visibility than others, where executives lust/focus money follows. If your project isn't one of those the best you can hope for is compensation the following year once the benefits are noticed, if they are noticed. Also note in any organization there is a never ending line of people who feel their contributions deserve more remuneration than others, so you have to make yourself standout from this bunch. That being said the best way to get large raises in your company is to network and market yourself and your accomplishments LOUDLY and OFTEN. If this makes you uncomfortable then the absolute best way to get a raise overall is to leave for a new company; don't worry in two years you will be welcomed back at your current company if you want to return. I am at the stage in my career now where I just want a solid funnel of work to rip through on technology that I enjoy working on and a competitive salary. I have a full life outside of work that brings me fulfillment and joy so I no longer need accolades and attention from work, honestly the less they notice me the happier I am! My job is for money and to keep my mind sharp, if I am unhappy I leave if I am happy I stay. I spent years climbing the ladder, learning to network and market myself and my team, sadly I learned that it was all a waste of time for me and I have more overall life enjoyment being a well thought of and compensated developer!
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  How does one effectively do this self promotion?
  - DamnYuppie 5y ago
    Have a list of the projects you worked on with measurable benefits to the company. Start by talking to your manager and then work your way up your reporting structure talking to the directors/cto/ceo's. If they don't know you you need to walk in an introduce yourself, don't drop all your accomplishments on them at once but something I have used many times in the past is just "Hi I am X I work/ed/ing in/on Y, loved helping get project Y over the line and am excited to see its impact on Z. What are your hopes/thoughts on where it will lead us"? Offer to take them out to lunch and get to know them better, you don't even have to talk about work with them, developing connections is personal not business!! Outside of that when talking to stakeholders the key is to be invested in the business outcomes of what you are building and talk to leadership on their terms. They give zero sh*t's about your technology or methodologies, they care about impact on revenue and cost.
kodah 5y ago
Working in big tech has been incredibly disappointing. I'm a mix of a Software Engineer and a Systems Engineer, so finding jobs (and not getting downleveled) is fairly easy. That said, after nearly a decade in tech, and staying at one firm for over three years I have never been promoted without leaving a company. It's not like I don't have major accomplishments either; but politics is a blood sport and either you or your manager must play it. My two cents, it's not worth trying to get promoted. Enjoy what you do and once your RSUs have matured, start your exit by interviewing elsewhere.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Some big companies are starting to figure out they need a plan to get people promoted before they leave. If so read that closely: it is your roadmap. Often what the map says isn't be a great coder, so put your time into the things on the map.
  - kodah 5y ago
    People have long said being a great programmer isn't important in business, but it really is. I don't want to work somewhere where being a great programmer is less important than being a politician. Being a politician in my view is a lot different than having soft skills. Unfortunately, most companies advertise they want great programmers and reward them, but that's mostly a lie.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      Being great at programming is important only if/when they realize it is important. Politics is always important, but if you are not great at something else you may be found out.
- pm90 5y ago
  > My two cents, it's not worth trying to get promoted. Enjoy what you do and once your RSUs have matured, start your exit by interviewing elsewhere. This is the best advice I've seen so far. I have refrained from playing the political game, have mostly stuck to helping people whenever they needed technical help (as it turns out, technical skills are critical when fixing things : p ) and that has lead to me being naturally included in interesting projects. If I start feeling like I'm not being asked to work on interesting things anymore, its a good sign to start looking elsewhere. I guess I am somewhat fortunate/privileged that there are so many opportunities in tech that I don't have to play politics. Its pretty great though; its not like I can't recognize when others are playing political games, but I chose not to get involved in that world.
nostrademons 5y ago
Note that at Big Tech companies, almost all code is written by L3/L4 (the untitled "Software Engineers") and the few L5s ("Senior") that enjoy coding. L6-L8 ("Staff" through "Principal") are the political levels, where EQ is more important than IQ, your job is as much wrangling/convincing/selling/negotiating with other people as writing code. Most L6-L8 engineers are managers, but even those who are ICs spend the majority of their time politicking. Being under the protection of a good L6+ is essential to actually getting anything done, launching, and getting promoted at a big company. Without it, you'll find that you won't get any cooperation from other teams, your projects will get canceled, and nothing you do will ever launch. Staff+ engineers burn out at significantly higher rates than lower levels. I know a lot of Senior engineers that are quite content to just sit there and never get promoted, because the quality of life at that level is IMHO significantly better than at higher levels. Was talking with another recently-promoted Staff engineer (I'm Staff myself), and we were lamenting that Big Tech doesn't really do demotions, because the job expectations at higher levels get progressively higher, you have progressively lower control over outcomes, and the consequences for screwing up are significantly worse.
- aix1 5y ago
  There do exist those rare creatures who manage to get promoted to, and beyond, L6 as ICs. I've been trying figure out how they do it, but can't say I've been making much progress. (I'm Staff myself, but would not have got here without management responsibilities.)
  - nostrademons 5y ago
    I'm an L6 IC. Basically I had a track record of delivering projects that other engineers said couldn't be done yet were a high priority to upper management. That's actually on the (Google at least) ladder: "At this level...most Google-caliber generalist SWEs could not own and solve the problem this person is owning and solving." Note that even though I'm a coding-heavy L6 (meaning I spend ~50% of my time coding vs. the 0% that most L6s do), the majority of my time is still spent interfacing, negotiating, and communicating with other teams. The ability to silo in a particular problem domain and just become a local technical expert ends at L5.
hinkley 5y ago
I’m in a similar spot, except I’m also the guy people come to for weird problems they don’t understand. The work I did day one is arguably one level above mine, and my first boss was on track to promote me but the little fucker quit a month before the annual review cycle and the next guy promoted way fewer people than he should have. Now it’s been going on for so long that I’m not entirely sure how I will react if/when I do get promoted. I think we’ve gotten beyond, “about time” into some swear words. For starters they’d have to backdate the raise. I am about to start actively looking.
- bluGill 5y ago
  You often do need to leave to get a promotion. If you are not willing to leave they assume you are satisfied where you are, which is more money they don't have to pay you.
anonuser123456 5y ago
Don't get bitter or passive aggressive; that will only hurt your career and mental health long term. Find a new team internally, sell them on what you did and move on. Or move to a new company. If the product was failing when you arrived, you're already in a poorly managed group anyway. No point in sticking around.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mrbonner 5y ago
I’m sorry to hear this. Please take care of your health, mentally and physically. Management usually promotes folks showing “visions” rather than those who keep their head down and make sure the plumbing works smoothly. It’s a sad state.
yibg 5y ago
I don't know anything about what you did or what your level is, but a few things to consider: - While what you did sounds like good work and beneficial to the company / team, was it something that exceeded expectations or just a good job but expected? - How many other engineers can do what you did? i.e. was what you did special / unique in some way? - Did what you accomplished demonstrate abilities at the next level? A very good L5 that exceeds expectations may or may not be at the L6 level. Especially at the more senior levels, a promotion isn't typically just about doing your current job well. The next level some times involves a slightly different skillset. Again I know know anything about what you did or if you "deserve" a promotion, but some things to consider.
bb88 5y ago
If you're not cut out for politics, you have two possible moves: Stay or quit. Don't threaten to quit -- but actually quit. Give them the least amount of warning possible to find a replacement before you walk out the door. Frankly if they're not investing in you doing your job, then you shouldn't feel invested in staying. That said, people have debts, and can't leave a job for whatever reason, so both moves are completely respectable decisions.
hackingforfun 5y ago
Have you looked around at other places while still working on this project? It sounds like they don't value you enough. That said, take care of yourself, burn out can be serious.
gravypod 5y ago
Save up money and work at a risky pre-Series A startup. They'd kill to have an ex-FAANG employee who can design things from the ground up, lease a project to completion, and enjoy the systems they are building. Recently left a small startup for Google and was recently talking with someone who thought I was going for promotion. I asked if I should, they then looked at my profile and said "You've only been here X long so they won't give it to you even if you deserve it." Completely different world. Completely different mentality.
Impossible 5y ago
I ran into the same situation at FAANG. I was explicitly told I had failed to lead a project because of my level by my direct manager. I was not named as a tech lead (which was not necessarily level dependent) of my area and had multiple coworkers ask me why. The final product was shockingly close to my original documentation and implementation. Part of the reason for this was the core implementation was all done by me, but I actually set good enough direction that after I left the company, a year later the final product was closer to what I designed than when I left. This product is still being maintained and the core functionality is the same and has been expanded upon (that is no full rewrite). The implementation isn't ideal imo and could be improved in a variety of ways, but it works well enough for the users 2 years later. This entire ordeal burnt me out hard enough that I took 5 months off and I'm still recovering, and I've basically given up on leveling up in a traditional tech company in anyway. People might tell me I didn't play the game right, and I didn't, but it did really drill that politics and appearance is more important than impact. Especially anything that can be made to look like indirect influence can be used to take credit. I made the mistake of trusting managers and senior engineers with my ideas and they didn't return the favor.
hrpnk 5y ago
Building or adjusting stuff on your own is unlikely to lead to a promotion. Guiding a group while being the main and most important contributor increases your chances. Working with other teams on a critical cross-team use case, increases chances even further. The main differentiating factor here is scope and impact of work the related amount of dependencies. For your work to be easily recognized by others, one usually requires their peers' or manager's support. This means, asking for advice from more senior peers within and outside of your team and talking in 1on1s about the solutions you developed, problems you resolved, and discussing the business impact that the changes will bring product-wise. If no one knows about the product/platform being broken or suffering from performance problems in the first place, then it will be hard for them to value that the product is now working as expected. Eligibility for promotion highly depends on the product that you are building. If you impact a product responsible for a sizeable portion of the revenue, visibility and impact is orders of magnitude easier to get. Further, the business impact, as defined by KPIs for the product, may need a few months to materialize and show a trend. Unless provided with sufficient observability and historical data, you may not even be able to show that the product is more reliable or stable due to changes in its architecture or performance improvements. Pouring more marketing money may lead to the same effects business wise on the top line (revenue). Lastly, and most importantly, promotions depend on your manager. If managers are not incentivised for the development and growth of engineers they manage, but more as a function of the scope or size of the team they lead, the latter may be the easier path as team growth may occur naturally with less effort and friction on their end.

ffggvv 5y ago

the trick is to disconnect, not try too hard, not take it personally, and learn to play the political games

trash3 5y ago
Oooor put in the minimum effort to tread water and collect that paycheck

throwaway6734 5y ago

Transition from doing high quality work to just enough to recover from burnout and after a bit of time look for different employment. I've been in a similar situation in the past and finding a different job solved the problem

yardie 5y ago

Honestly, you should leave. Everything is hot for developers right now. If they aren't recognizing your efforts, they will after you're gone.

everdrive 5y ago

>It’s been very strange to see the fruits of my labor benefit the org while feeling totally unrecognized outside of my team. This is the norm in my company, and I suspect many others.

azdle 5y ago

Are you me? I spent the last 3 years completely redeveloping the foundation of our platform which will save the company millions of dollars a year. I didn't do it alone or anything. But I started the project, was the only one to work on it full time throughout the whole project, defined the underlying architecture, and implemented most of the lowest layers. I poured all my energy into the project. We launched beginning of this month, I was so prod of what it represented technically. A week later I was told my performance was "acceptable", I got less than my target bonus, and got a 3% raise. I tried to quit, but relented when I was convinced not to and am now putting my unlimited vacation to work. I'm 3 days into a month I'm taking off.

MattGaiser 5y ago
> I was convinced not to and am now putting my unlimited vacation to work. I'm 3 days into a month I'm taking off. So just quit after the vacation.
e1g 5y ago
It's a signal from the market ("employer") that what you currently offer is not what they currently value. If you desire greater rewards/ recognition, you need to discover what they value and decide if you want to offer that. Developers expect that work such as "refactoring", "platform architecture", "R&D", "investing into the future" has some intrinsic value to the business. At the company level, work such as "knowledge sharing", "upskilling the team", "fixing bugs for revenue-generating products", "reassuring management" can be more impactful given their current values and roadmap. You must choose whether to spend your energy working on your priorities or their priorities. Generally, you make more money if you help other people solve their problems rather than your problems. Or find new partnerships where the two sets overlap, but the highest-earning consultants can fall in love with solving the problems they do have, not the problems they wish they had.
- whoknowswhat11 5y ago
  If you have a champion in mgmt things like "refactoring" or "platform architecture" can pay off. Please refactor this app off our oracle DB so we can say $10M - you will be fine and they may start slotting you into key business areas. If you are toiling doing platform, refactoring on a product without a ton of love - then yeah - that may be pretty low visibility for most folks.

nine_zeros 5y ago

Leave. Burnout happens when outcome != expectations. Did you skill up? Switch jobs asap. Get yourself a 20% raise.

dnautics 5y ago
hell, take a pay cut and get a job that is much more likely to validate your efforts.
eru 5y ago
You can probably do better than 20%. Unless you have to stay in the same small metro area or so.

MattGaiser 5y ago

One of the things I have noticed in both my full time jobs at this point is that my direct managers have had no idea what I do day to day. There are entire weeks where I could have achieved absolutely nothing and I am not sure if it would have been noticed. And that is probably not conducive to promotion as nobody who has power has any idea what I do.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> One of the things I have noticed in both my full time jobs at this point is that my direct managers have had no idea what I do day to day. FYI: This isn’t normal. It’s not even particularly common in the industry as a whole. It is, however, a hallmark of dysfunctional companies that are headed in the wrong direction. If you find yourself consistently stuck under clueless managers or working in companies that reward all the wrong things, it might be worth reevaluating your choice of companies and shaking up your career a bit. It’s not good to be stuck in dysfunctional companies for years. This is how people become disgruntled and cynical.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I am "reevaluating" my choice of companies for other reasons [0], but it is interesting to learn that this abnormal. That is an organizational thing, as my manager is part of the "leadership" team, so he often has wall to wall meetings. I will be sure to inquire about this in interviews then. Thank you. I very much had the impression that management was often distant. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28353182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28353182
ThrowawayR2 5y ago
The unpleasant reality is that getting promotions requires a bit self-promotion. While good managers (which you apparently don't have) will clue you in on what's necessary and help out with it, the bulk of the burden is always on the employee to be able to explain their value to the company and to make sure their achievements are known and recognized. (Taken to extremes, this can be as sociopathic as it may sound. So don't and avoid those who do.)

gringoDan 5y ago

My conclusion after working in tech for a few years: If you don't want to play the politics game, just interview with new companies and get a new role and a significant pay bump every 1-2 years. Sad that the incentives are set up this way.

eru 5y ago
It's not that sad, at least the churn makes knowledge and best practices bubble through the industry.
- gringoDan 5y ago
  True! I meant sad in the sense that if folks were properly incentivized to stay at an organization longer-term (10-20% pay bumps per year), I think we'd see more big innovations in technology – think NASA, Bell Labs, etc. – as opposed to incremental improvements.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Domain knowledge never gets there though. People never really understand their products or the customers. which is bad for products.

WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago

Sorry to hear this. Feeling validated and appreciated for your work is often overlooked in all career types in multiple jobs. Try to find peace with the small wins you’ve done for yourself. It sounds super impressive and something you definitely should be proud of.

endtime 5y ago

> I turned our product from a total waste about to be cancelled into a promising tech with some momentum, but I spent all my time coding instead of writing about coding, and I likely won’t get promoted again this cycle. As a FAANG SWE, what I am reading is "I spent two years cranking out code without doing any design work. My manager and TL never suggested I write a design doc, or didn't give me opportunities to do so." At least at my employer - where, yes, you typically need to do design work to get promoted - that shouldn't happen. It's a failure of management if it did.

lostcolony 5y ago
Designing != documenting design. To get promoted in FAANG (and many large tech companies), yes, you need to document it. Interestingly, whether it works or not is completely unrelated to whether it's documented or not. In fact, the types of useful documentation (descriptions of how decisions were reached, known tradeoffs, API contracts, etc) often are completely different than the types of documentation management asks for (box diagrams that no one but management looks at). And the timeline for generating it is often different as well (management oftentimes asks for documentation before implementation, where such documentation runs the risk of being an incorrect blueprint; what is useful is documenting along the way). Valuing documentation can be done well, but pretty much every place I've seen it as an organizational requirement it has been a checkbox (and definitely running afoul of the agile manifesto, which makes it doubly frustrating, when an org also says "we're agile because we do scrum" or whatever).
- allturtles 5y ago
  > Interestingly, whether it works or not is completely unrelated to whether it's documented or not. I disagree. Writing up your design gives others the opportunity to provide feedback and improve the design (and possibly catch major flaws) before you build it. If you never write up your design there's a higher chance that you have built something that doesn't correctly fulfill the product requirements / won't scale / will fail under some race condition you didn't anticipate / is not compatible with the plans an adjacent team has to touch the same area in the next 6 months / etc.

zoomablemind 5y ago

>...I spent all my time coding instead of writing about coding, and I likely won’t get promoted again this cycle. Would your perception about the org, team and self really change if you would get promoted? If that's the case, then you could try to promote yourself. Especially, now that you've got a concrete result. It's just to show openly to the org and team that the promotion is what you want. Package it with some outlook about how your contribution in the new role would boost the team and how timely you feel this is in your professional growth.

stadium 5y ago

That's hard, I've been there too. I went into role where nothing was documented, and I built up a knowledge base to get all of the tribal knowledge out of people's heads. There were all sorts of manual scripts running "hot" on production to fix issues, very few of them documented. It made my ramp up time much harder than it should have been. And my efforts made it way easier (and safer) for the team and everyone who was hired after me. That year I got a lower performance rating. The silver lining was that I gained skills that helped me land my next gig, along with a nice bump in pay. I responded to a cold call email from a recruiter and from that began a more fulfilling career trajectory where I was appreciated more.

DamnYuppie 5y ago

As a somewhat seasoned developer and former executive I can, sadly, state that raises and rewards are rarely tied to your output or how much it brings to the company. If your manager and executive leadership team are not actively marketing/hyping what your team is doing there is little to no hope of getting what you deserve. I get that this sounds "unfair" but there are some reasonable reasons for this. A company is huge there are many teams working on multiple projects, some of which have more executive hype visibility than others, where executives lust/focus money follows. If your project isn't one of those the best you can hope for is compensation the following year once the benefits are noticed, if they are noticed. Also note in any organization there is a never ending line of people who feel their contributions deserve more remuneration than others, so you have to make yourself standout from this bunch. That being said the best way to get large raises in your company is to network and market yourself and your accomplishments LOUDLY and OFTEN. If this makes you uncomfortable then the absolute best way to get a raise overall is to leave for a new company; don't worry in two years you will be welcomed back at your current company if you want to return. I am at the stage in my career now where I just want a solid funnel of work to rip through on technology that I enjoy working on and a competitive salary. I have a full life outside of work that brings me fulfillment and joy so I no longer need accolades and attention from work, honestly the less they notice me the happier I am! My job is for money and to keep my mind sharp, if I am unhappy I leave if I am happy I stay. I spent years climbing the ladder, learning to network and market myself and my team, sadly I learned that it was all a waste of time for me and I have more overall life enjoyment being a well thought of and compensated developer!

MattGaiser 5y ago
How does one effectively do this self promotion?
- DamnYuppie 5y ago
  Have a list of the projects you worked on with measurable benefits to the company. Start by talking to your manager and then work your way up your reporting structure talking to the directors/cto/ceo's. If they don't know you you need to walk in an introduce yourself, don't drop all your accomplishments on them at once but something I have used many times in the past is just "Hi I am X I work/ed/ing in/on Y, loved helping get project Y over the line and am excited to see its impact on Z. What are your hopes/thoughts on where it will lead us"? Offer to take them out to lunch and get to know them better, you don't even have to talk about work with them, developing connections is personal not business!! Outside of that when talking to stakeholders the key is to be invested in the business outcomes of what you are building and talk to leadership on their terms. They give zero sh*t's about your technology or methodologies, they care about impact on revenue and cost.

kodah 5y ago

Working in big tech has been incredibly disappointing. I'm a mix of a Software Engineer and a Systems Engineer, so finding jobs (and not getting downleveled) is fairly easy. That said, after nearly a decade in tech, and staying at one firm for over three years I have never been promoted without leaving a company. It's not like I don't have major accomplishments either; but politics is a blood sport and either you or your manager must play it. My two cents, it's not worth trying to get promoted. Enjoy what you do and once your RSUs have matured, start your exit by interviewing elsewhere.

bluGill 5y ago
Some big companies are starting to figure out they need a plan to get people promoted before they leave. If so read that closely: it is your roadmap. Often what the map says isn't be a great coder, so put your time into the things on the map.
- kodah 5y ago
  People have long said being a great programmer isn't important in business, but it really is. I don't want to work somewhere where being a great programmer is less important than being a politician. Being a politician in my view is a lot different than having soft skills. Unfortunately, most companies advertise they want great programmers and reward them, but that's mostly a lie.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Being great at programming is important only if/when they realize it is important. Politics is always important, but if you are not great at something else you may be found out.
pm90 5y ago
> My two cents, it's not worth trying to get promoted. Enjoy what you do and once your RSUs have matured, start your exit by interviewing elsewhere. This is the best advice I've seen so far. I have refrained from playing the political game, have mostly stuck to helping people whenever they needed technical help (as it turns out, technical skills are critical when fixing things : p ) and that has lead to me being naturally included in interesting projects. If I start feeling like I'm not being asked to work on interesting things anymore, its a good sign to start looking elsewhere. I guess I am somewhat fortunate/privileged that there are so many opportunities in tech that I don't have to play politics. Its pretty great though; its not like I can't recognize when others are playing political games, but I chose not to get involved in that world.

nostrademons 5y ago

Note that at Big Tech companies, almost all code is written by L3/L4 (the untitled "Software Engineers") and the few L5s ("Senior") that enjoy coding. L6-L8 ("Staff" through "Principal") are the political levels, where EQ is more important than IQ, your job is as much wrangling/convincing/selling/negotiating with other people as writing code. Most L6-L8 engineers are managers, but even those who are ICs spend the majority of their time politicking. Being under the protection of a good L6+ is essential to actually getting anything done, launching, and getting promoted at a big company. Without it, you'll find that you won't get any cooperation from other teams, your projects will get canceled, and nothing you do will ever launch. Staff+ engineers burn out at significantly higher rates than lower levels. I know a lot of Senior engineers that are quite content to just sit there and never get promoted, because the quality of life at that level is IMHO significantly better than at higher levels. Was talking with another recently-promoted Staff engineer (I'm Staff myself), and we were lamenting that Big Tech doesn't really do demotions, because the job expectations at higher levels get progressively higher, you have progressively lower control over outcomes, and the consequences for screwing up are significantly worse.

aix1 5y ago
There do exist those rare creatures who manage to get promoted to, and beyond, L6 as ICs. I've been trying figure out how they do it, but can't say I've been making much progress. (I'm Staff myself, but would not have got here without management responsibilities.)
- nostrademons 5y ago
  I'm an L6 IC. Basically I had a track record of delivering projects that other engineers said couldn't be done yet were a high priority to upper management. That's actually on the (Google at least) ladder: "At this level...most Google-caliber generalist SWEs could not own and solve the problem this person is owning and solving." Note that even though I'm a coding-heavy L6 (meaning I spend ~50% of my time coding vs. the 0% that most L6s do), the majority of my time is still spent interfacing, negotiating, and communicating with other teams. The ability to silo in a particular problem domain and just become a local technical expert ends at L5.

hinkley 5y ago

I’m in a similar spot, except I’m also the guy people come to for weird problems they don’t understand. The work I did day one is arguably one level above mine, and my first boss was on track to promote me but the little fucker quit a month before the annual review cycle and the next guy promoted way fewer people than he should have. Now it’s been going on for so long that I’m not entirely sure how I will react if/when I do get promoted. I think we’ve gotten beyond, “about time” into some swear words. For starters they’d have to backdate the raise. I am about to start actively looking.

bluGill 5y ago
You often do need to leave to get a promotion. If you are not willing to leave they assume you are satisfied where you are, which is more money they don't have to pay you.

anonuser123456 5y ago

Don't get bitter or passive aggressive; that will only hurt your career and mental health long term. Find a new team internally, sell them on what you did and move on. Or move to a new company. If the product was failing when you arrived, you're already in a poorly managed group anyway. No point in sticking around.

deleted 5y ago

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mrbonner 5y ago

I’m sorry to hear this. Please take care of your health, mentally and physically. Management usually promotes folks showing “visions” rather than those who keep their head down and make sure the plumbing works smoothly. It’s a sad state.

yibg 5y ago

I don't know anything about what you did or what your level is, but a few things to consider: - While what you did sounds like good work and beneficial to the company / team, was it something that exceeded expectations or just a good job but expected? - How many other engineers can do what you did? i.e. was what you did special / unique in some way? - Did what you accomplished demonstrate abilities at the next level? A very good L5 that exceeds expectations may or may not be at the L6 level. Especially at the more senior levels, a promotion isn't typically just about doing your current job well. The next level some times involves a slightly different skillset. Again I know know anything about what you did or if you "deserve" a promotion, but some things to consider.

bb88 5y ago

If you're not cut out for politics, you have two possible moves: Stay or quit. Don't threaten to quit -- but actually quit. Give them the least amount of warning possible to find a replacement before you walk out the door. Frankly if they're not investing in you doing your job, then you shouldn't feel invested in staying. That said, people have debts, and can't leave a job for whatever reason, so both moves are completely respectable decisions.

hackingforfun 5y ago

Have you looked around at other places while still working on this project? It sounds like they don't value you enough. That said, take care of yourself, burn out can be serious.

gravypod 5y ago

Save up money and work at a risky pre-Series A startup. They'd kill to have an ex-FAANG employee who can design things from the ground up, lease a project to completion, and enjoy the systems they are building. Recently left a small startup for Google and was recently talking with someone who thought I was going for promotion. I asked if I should, they then looked at my profile and said "You've only been here X long so they won't give it to you even if you deserve it." Completely different world. Completely different mentality.

Impossible 5y ago

I ran into the same situation at FAANG. I was explicitly told I had failed to lead a project because of my level by my direct manager. I was not named as a tech lead (which was not necessarily level dependent) of my area and had multiple coworkers ask me why. The final product was shockingly close to my original documentation and implementation. Part of the reason for this was the core implementation was all done by me, but I actually set good enough direction that after I left the company, a year later the final product was closer to what I designed than when I left. This product is still being maintained and the core functionality is the same and has been expanded upon (that is no full rewrite). The implementation isn't ideal imo and could be improved in a variety of ways, but it works well enough for the users 2 years later. This entire ordeal burnt me out hard enough that I took 5 months off and I'm still recovering, and I've basically given up on leveling up in a traditional tech company in anyway. People might tell me I didn't play the game right, and I didn't, but it did really drill that politics and appearance is more important than impact. Especially anything that can be made to look like indirect influence can be used to take credit. I made the mistake of trusting managers and senior engineers with my ideas and they didn't return the favor.

hrpnk 5y ago

Building or adjusting stuff on your own is unlikely to lead to a promotion. Guiding a group while being the main and most important contributor increases your chances. Working with other teams on a critical cross-team use case, increases chances even further. The main differentiating factor here is scope and impact of work the related amount of dependencies. For your work to be easily recognized by others, one usually requires their peers' or manager's support. This means, asking for advice from more senior peers within and outside of your team and talking in 1on1s about the solutions you developed, problems you resolved, and discussing the business impact that the changes will bring product-wise. If no one knows about the product/platform being broken or suffering from performance problems in the first place, then it will be hard for them to value that the product is now working as expected. Eligibility for promotion highly depends on the product that you are building. If you impact a product responsible for a sizeable portion of the revenue, visibility and impact is orders of magnitude easier to get. Further, the business impact, as defined by KPIs for the product, may need a few months to materialize and show a trend. Unless provided with sufficient observability and historical data, you may not even be able to show that the product is more reliable or stable due to changes in its architecture or performance improvements. Pouring more marketing money may lead to the same effects business wise on the top line (revenue). Lastly, and most importantly, promotions depend on your manager. If managers are not incentivised for the development and growth of engineers they manage, but more as a function of the scope or size of the team they lead, the latter may be the easier path as team growth may occur naturally with less effort and friction on their end.