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Ask HN: Down-levelled with no rationale given

(deleted)

orbz 3y ago
One thing to keep in mind is that people rarely give honest feedback in person. It’s always nice to avoid conflict. When you get anonymous feedback, such as during your review, that’s what people really think. If you’re getting wildly different experiences from in person feedback and anonymous feedback you’re likely not as easy to work with as you think you might be.
- throwawayerrday 3y ago
  Hmm. The only negative things that were communicated with me were about missing a couple steps in communicating epic progress. Given how much they stretched to find "needs improvement areas" I would think this would have come up if it was the case, because it's easy rationale to give for why I'm not advancing. So it could be the reason, but if it is, they're hiding it from me. I do wonder though. I try to push people to be better, but I always do it respectfully. I'll have to ask my manager about this directly, thanks for the comment!
mamonster 3y ago
Honestly: The problems started when you decided to move past the initial miscommunication because the money was "good enough". Kind of hard to tell what actually happened, but when you accepted that lower level (I mean I'm assuming that your contract and etc. also has this lower level in it instead of the proper one) you did a soft reset on what the hiring manager thought of you. The only correct decision was, IMO, "Hey I interviewed for X but now I am getting to be in X-2? Fix this or I'm not signing the contract". Once the manager knows that the "money is good enough" to keep you you should get ready for fuckery. Will this have an impact on your future employment chances? Absolutely, IMO you will certainly get asked as to why you took a step down in responsibility/pay. Companies see your latest job as the baseline, or at least they do in 99% of the CVs they see, and perhaps more importantly taking a step down usually devalues all your previous experiences in the hiring manager's eyes("Wait you were a principal dev at Small Company X but now are 2 levels below that at Public Corp Y? How bad were you as principal dev at X that you had to drop down 2 levels?"). All of the above is based on my experience in finance, but pretty sure it applies to tech as well.

(deleted)

orbz 3y ago

One thing to keep in mind is that people rarely give honest feedback in person. It’s always nice to avoid conflict. When you get anonymous feedback, such as during your review, that’s what people really think. If you’re getting wildly different experiences from in person feedback and anonymous feedback you’re likely not as easy to work with as you think you might be.

throwawayerrday 3y ago
Hmm. The only negative things that were communicated with me were about missing a couple steps in communicating epic progress. Given how much they stretched to find "needs improvement areas" I would think this would have come up if it was the case, because it's easy rationale to give for why I'm not advancing. So it could be the reason, but if it is, they're hiding it from me. I do wonder though. I try to push people to be better, but I always do it respectfully. I'll have to ask my manager about this directly, thanks for the comment!

mamonster 3y ago

Honestly: The problems started when you decided to move past the initial miscommunication because the money was "good enough". Kind of hard to tell what actually happened, but when you accepted that lower level (I mean I'm assuming that your contract and etc. also has this lower level in it instead of the proper one) you did a soft reset on what the hiring manager thought of you. The only correct decision was, IMO, "Hey I interviewed for X but now I am getting to be in X-2? Fix this or I'm not signing the contract". Once the manager knows that the "money is good enough" to keep you you should get ready for fuckery. Will this have an impact on your future employment chances? Absolutely, IMO you will certainly get asked as to why you took a step down in responsibility/pay. Companies see your latest job as the baseline, or at least they do in 99% of the CVs they see, and perhaps more importantly taking a step down usually devalues all your previous experiences in the hiring manager's eyes("Wait you were a principal dev at Small Company X but now are 2 levels below that at Public Corp Y? How bad were you as principal dev at X that you had to drop down 2 levels?"). All of the above is based on my experience in finance, but pretty sure it applies to tech as well.