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

• doxeddaily 10mo ago
  This is how I eventually ended up being CTO and eventually CEO. I wanted the overall business to succeed.
• cletus 10mo ago
  So there's some survivor bias here but it's generally not bad advice. You should be focusing on outcomes like improving SLAs, top line metrics and so on. You should be solving user and business problems. That's all good advice. But still this article presumes a lot. In my experience, managers will naturally partition their reports into three buckets: their stars, their problems and their worker bees. The worker bees tend to be ignored. They're doing fine. They're getting on with whatever they've been told to do or possibly what they've found to do. They're not going to create any problems. The problems are the underperformers. These are people who create problems and/or are at risk of getting a subpar performance rating. Now there are lots of reasons that someone can be a problem. I tend to believe that any problem just hasn't found the right fit yet and, until proven otherwise, problems are a failure in management. That tends to be a minority view in practice. It's more common to simply throw people in the deep end and sink or swim because that takes much less overhead. You will see this as teams who have a lot of churn but only in part of the team. In particularly toxic environments, savvy managers will game the system by having a sacrificial anode position. They hire someone to take the bad rating they have to give to protect the rest of the team. And then there are the stars. These are the people you expect to grow and be promoted. More often than not however they are chosen rather than demonstrating their potential. I've seen someone shine when their director is actively trying to sabotage them but that's rare. Your stars will get the better projects. Your problems will get the worse ones. If a given project is a success or not will largely come down to perception not reality. The point I'm getting to is that despite all the process put around this at large companies like performance ratings, feedback, calibration, promo committees, etc the majority of all this is vibes based. So back to the "take my job" advice. If someone is viewed as a star, that's great advice. For anyone else, you might get negative feedback about not doing your actual job, not being a team player and so on. I've seen it happen a million times. And here's the dirty little secret of it all: this is where the racism, sexism and ableism sneaks in. It's usually not that direct but Stanford grads (as just one example) will tend to vibe with other Stanford grads. They have common experience, probably common professors and so on. Same for MIT. Or CMU. Or UW. Or Waterloo. And so on. So all of the biases that go into the selection process for those institutions will bleed into the tech space. And this kind of environment is much worse for anyone on the spectrum because allistic people will be inclined to dislike from the start for no reason and that's going to hurt how they're viewed (ie as a star, a worker bee or a problem) and their performance ratings. Because all of this is ultimately just a popularity contest with very few exceptions. I've seen multiple people finagle their way to Senior STaff SWE on just vibes. And all of this gets worse since the tech sector has joined Corporate America in being in permanet layoff mode. The Welchian "up or out" philosophy has taken hold in Big Tech where there are quotas of 5-10% of the workforce have to get subpar ratings every year and that tends to kill their careers at that company. This turns the entire workplace even more into an exercise in social engineering.
  • jimbokun 10mo ago
    Yeah the only solution to avoid this is to find a company where building and selling a product actually matters. In large companies it’s too easy to fudge the connection between individual contributions and financial impact. If you’re not looking to become a founder, companies right around 100 employees is the sweet spot in my (very limited) experience.
• JohnMakin 10mo ago
  This is just recycled advice that's been given for 30+ years. "dress for the job you want, not the job you have" etc. The thing is this only really "works" in healthy or semi-healthy environments. You could just as easily have an infantile, poorly qualified, easily threatened middle manager above you that will perceive this kind of behavior as an attack and take the legs out from under you in ways that you have very little control over (has happened to me)
  • jimbokun 10mo ago
    Then the only way to progress your career is to leave the company.
    • JohnMakin 10mo ago
      In many cases, yes, sometimes it involves a parallel move to a different part of the company, or the manager moving on - problem is when you're in that situation it may not be obvious for literally years until it becomes very obvious in an instant, and by that point, your options may be more limited.
• waisbrot 10mo ago
  IME, taking on extra responsibility doesn't get you promoted. However, you can take it on and then find a new job with a better salary where the responsibility you added is part of the expectation. The blog is not terrible advice, but "getting promoted" just seems like a waste of time and effort nowadays. To get promoted at Google from L5 (Sr SWE) to L6 (Staff SWE) you need to do the work of a GOOD L6 for 1y+ and have made some very solid internal networking connections and have multiple managers on your side and have an opening for such a role. To get hired away from Google to an L6-equivalent role at Meta (or whereever) you need to get halfway through one L6 project and do a few hours of interviewing. There's no comparison in the level of effort. (And I'm not picking on Google here. I think it's the same or worse nearly everywhere.)
  • patrickmay 10mo ago
    It's a real problem. I saw people boomerang back to Google after 18 months at one or even two levels higher, much faster than they could have been promoted internally.
    • lesuorac 10mo ago
      The changes to compensation also make it worse. The 85%ile of L used to be above that of the lowest 15%ile of L+1 so in the year that you demonstrate L+1 you'll get compensated as L+1. Now, the 85%ile of L is less than that of the lowest 15%ile of L+1 so until you actually get promoted there's no real compensation difference. Which makes leaving for L+1 so much more attractive (and also going above-and-beyond less attractive).
      • euifii 10mo ago
        [dead]
    • jimbokun 10mo ago
      This seems to be a near universal phenomenon and I wonder if there is any behavioral research explaining it.
  • 10mo ago
• amflare 10mo ago
  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".
  • weinzierl 10mo ago
    This, but it's not only about the additional work but often about additional responsibility. Taking responsibility for decisions that actually fall within your manager's area of responsibility often puts them in a very comfortable position. At least if they trust you and don't question your loyalty, which is exactly what you also try to reassure them if you want a promotion. However the net effect is that it's a reliable way to get stuck on that rung of the career ladder indefinitely.
    • hcfman 10mo ago
      Really strange. I don't see the extra responsibility by those high up in the chain. I just don't see those guys being held accountable. Instead, I see a lot of talk down to the bottom of the chain about "Taking ownership".
  • cephei 10mo ago
    In my experience, I've seen engineers try to take on more work to get promoted, but the key issue is that they were doing more work at their own level instead of focusing on work that would be their responsibility if they promoted. If an IC takes on more and more IC work instead of management responsibilities, it's harder to promote them.
    • hibikir 10mo ago
      That's also pointing to a big risk for certain jumps, as everything done in the list for, say, a cross team position means less work on your team. So a manager that isn't all that friendly can use an attempt at promotion as a great excuse for a PIP: I've seen that done around me at least a couple of times.
• chaoz_ 10mo ago
  I think that works well for smaller orgs, but in larger organizations (especially where department headcount growth is not expected) it might be more complicated and more meta/political. I wish that were not the case, but in reality, trying to "do the job" of your manager can backfire.
  • jimbokun 10mo ago
    Those are also companies where both your career and salary will stagnate.
• TZubiri 10mo ago
  If your boss tells you explicitly that this is ok, then go ahead. And also if they don't tell you this, it might be ok too. But there's scenarios were you are being paid to do a very specific job, and trying to get promoted is a form of escapism for many and it can be an organizational problem. In argentina we have a saying "Too much chief for too few indians"(as in indigenous people), everyone wants to be the boss, no one wants to do the dishes. I've been a victim of this, and it especially was a problem when my actual role responsibilities suffered, but even if I managed to fulfill my responsibilities perfectly, it caused friction and a command chain confusion. (especially when other people tried to compete for a promotion as well)
  • paodealho 10mo ago
    Interesting... brazilian portuguese has this exact same saying, though it's rarely used. "Muito cacique pra pouco índio".
• ggoo 10mo ago
  While this may work, it just seems like incredibly unhealthy advice to give or to take. People should be able to focus on their work without being expected to take up random side quests, and if there is a career path, make the requirements clear.
  • shermantanktop 10mo ago
    Let's assume those requirements aren't made clear. People will still get promoted, based on side quests and initiative. And those people will have demonstrated a lot of important qualities that all the others (who were blocked on lack of requirements) never showed. So what's the problem again?
  • stronglikedan 10mo ago
    > make the requirements clear idealistic, but more often than not, unrealistic, unfortunately
    • hamdingers 10mo ago
      If your company does not make career growth requirements clear and actionable, your best vector for career growth is changing companies.
    • ggoo 10mo ago
      most everything is unrealistic if we just assume it to be so and give up on seeing the world in any different way.
  • cainxinth 10mo ago
    I agree. This outlook also implies a greater degree of meritocracy than usually exists in a competitive corporate environment. Doing a good job and taking initiative sometimes leads to promotions, but it sometimes just leads to more work. Meanwhile, many ladder climbers are busy optimizing for their own success, not the corp's.
    • jimbokun 10mo ago
• zmmmmm 10mo ago
  For me the "responsibility first" part is the most important. I care more that you are willing to take responsibility at a higher level than your absolute performance at what you do. Because if you take responsibility you might make mistakes but you will fix them. But if you make mistakes and don't fix them, then giving you more autonomy is a liability. Fixing mistakes often involves demonstrating many aspects of operating at a higher level as well - you take the lead on communicating with other teams about the mistake, addressing the impact, apologising for any harm caused. For me, taking responsibility is one of those necessary (but not sufficient) things I have to see before I will consider a promotion (at least, a genuine one where someone actually operates at a higher level with more autonomy).
• WaitWaitWha 10mo ago
  My experience at several large companies I worked for, the promotion comes because the activities are already at the new, higher level. i.e., working at SVP/level 7 when officially at VP/level 6 for a period when the promotion is offered. Good or bad, this is how the industry I work in promotes. I think the best approach is to take on extra, above position responsibilities, accountabilities after discussion with superior, after agreeing in writing that this is part of a path to promotion.
  • bluGill 10mo ago
    Often you need not only to be at the higher level, but someone to call out that if they don't promote you you might leave. I've seen a lot cases (at many companies) where one person that everyone knows is good quitting for a promotion gets a dozen others promoted in the next few months. So if you realize you are not getting a promotion your leaving may be the trigger to get your coworkers promoted.
    • sailfast 10mo ago
      Correct. The best way to be promoted / given more money is to be a cherished contributor and be deemed a flight risk.
      • deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
    • WaitWaitWha 10mo ago
      True, that can happen, but that feels toxic. A threat by the employee will always breed some negative feelings towards the employee, even if it is subconscious. I am just writing about relatively sane, stable organization where the employer-employee relationship is stable and acceptable.
      • bluGill 10mo ago
        I think you (and the other) misunderstood. You are not threatening to leave here! Either you actually leave (their first notice is your two weeks), or someone else does and the company realizes if they don't promote good people fast those others will take the same hint and leave. I agree that threatening to leave is a bad thing. Either get out or be content where you are: middle grounds do nobody any good.
• dirtbag__dad 10mo ago
  This advice has worked very well for me. But but but, in some scenarios it has been at the expense of my well being. It’s not good to take on more work and not let go of some of the things you’re currently doing. Moreover, finding “permission” from your boss to let those things go can be challenging. I’ve found this works best when you and your boss agree on the problem you’re stepping into (not necessarily your solution). It may be that you need to stick your neck out and suffer for awhile for them to see your perspective. When you’re on the same page about what you’re solving, a good manager will clear room for you.
• mikelitoris 10mo ago
  Yeah this would get an immediate “stay in your lane” warning where I work
  • jimbokun 10mo ago
    Which means there is very little chance of you getting promoted in your company, and probably a low ceiling on your compensation I would guess.
    • mikelitoris 10mo ago
      Yup
    • deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
• munchbunny 10mo ago
  My personal experience with this from the manager's perspective: I aim to promote someone as soon as they are ready, but no sooner. If I promote someone who will not succeed against the expectations of the higher leveled title, I'm just setting them up to get fired or "managed out" when they were otherwise perfectly competent in the level they're at. That's ignoring the natural fuzziness and storytelling element of defining and measuring competence, of course, but that's the general idea of where I put the threshold. "Readiness" means that I believe that after their promotion they will be able to execute at the higher level at least most of the time. That doesn't necessarily mean they need to be already doing the higher leveled job, but in practice they do need to show that they can sustain some approximation of it.
  • away0g 10mo ago
    Being promoted into obsolescence or into under performing is a death sentence. Some people are perfectly suited for their work and would find their bosses work to be numbing, too complex or too simple for them. Not getting a promotion is not a bad thing (do not mistake raises for a promotion). If the company cannot or will not allocate more to your position then that is a problem as a business, not something you can control. The best case scenario is to find another company who can pay your worth for the skill set presented.
  • dangus 10mo ago
    I think the only possible flaw with this idea is you might not know. I find that my organizational and leadership skills demonstrated in my role suffer when I am working on individual contributor work that requires deep focus and perhaps even isolation. At the same time, I’ve handled other roles at other companies that required more leadership and team mentorship, where you’d look at my actions and feel more like I was management material. But in my current role with my current responsibilities it’s hard for myself let alone someone else to imagine that I would make an effective leader, since my job basically dictates that I don’t do that on a daily basis. The day to day needs and responsibilities of the business often get in the way of the person actually demonstrating that they will excel when they do something else. I don’t have any kind of direct solution for this specific dilemma. I think in my situation my manager should make more opportunities available but hasn’t been doing so due to the daily routine of putting out fires.
• thisislife2 10mo ago
  Good advise. And old one too. In India it's summed up as - "Your job is to make your boss' job easier".
• wrsh07 10mo ago
  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 team better -- there's plenty of it to go around. But people aren't always rewarded for doing it. If you take the op advice literally, you might find that you're not promoted AND management thinks you're bad at your job So the rules of promotions: 1. First, do the things that are expected of you. 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. Staff engineers are good at doing auxillary work and explaining why it's valuable. If you aren't, then focus on the things that are obviously valuable 2. If you're doing everything your team needs from you, now is a great time to do the additional work. Figure out where test coverage is anemic, profile that really slow query, write up your list of pain points and throw together a list of some initial ideas for solutions (codex & Claude can be great helps here, but don't be like OP. If you use AI to write something, let everyone know: "codex and I think these solutions might work, but I haven't spent much time on it") 3. Talk to your manager regularly (monthly) about what things you need to do to try going up for promo at the next cycle. Again, if you do this without doing (1), you're not getting promoted. That's why it's down here at (3) ^ https://www.noidea.dog/glue https://www.noidea.dog/glue
  • bluGill 10mo ago
    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 your BS out and fire you). Company politics is what helps you know what they really want which sometimes differs from your assignment. Most often that is your rules. Companies generally assign people to work they need done, so if you are not doing that work they are highly likely to notice that lack long before anything else you could do (no matter how much more they really need it). In rare cases though you will see something more important that is needed and by doing that you will gain far more good attention and get the promotion. This is very hard to pull off though - you must be right, they need to know you did it, and they need to realize this is important before they realize you are not doing your "real job".
• triyambakam 10mo ago
  Smells like LLM written. Maybe useful advice though. Who actually writes the hyphen in compound modifiers (or even knows what that is)? E.g. "team-level" instead of "team level". > I couldn't have been happier. And phrases like this.
  • niam 10mo ago
    Honestly that just seems like normal English. To refer to something as "team-level" seems so absurdly unspectacular, relative to the other kinds of signals that exist for sussing out AI writing, that I'm surprised it was worthy of mentioning at all.
    • triyambakam 10mo ago
      It's proper grammar but I have only ever seen journalists use it. It is a strong signal in my experience
  • kayo_20211030 10mo ago
    Uh. I'd use a hyphen there. I'm not an LLM. At least, I don't think I am. But, who knows?
  • jimbokun 10mo ago
    Maybe so but in that case hats off to the LLM for writing a pretty good article.
  • furyofantares 10mo ago
    Definitely, although maybe it's ok here. I'm not sure. The opening paragraph doesn't feel like it. The rest could be condensed to 1 or 2 paragraphs and it would better communicate the idea. It's not too bad because it's not too long, but I think it's worse than if the human had just written a second part to the post about the length of the first part. Notice there's all these needless sections that have the LLM-form. > What "Taking the Position" Actually Looks Like > Why Sustained Performance Is What Counts > The Responsibility-First Mindset And each has this opening paragraph setup then a one sentence paragraph contradicting or reinforcing it, which is simultaneously punchy and pure fluff. > I couldn't have been happier. > And I mean sustained. > But that's backward. I can't really tell how much the author cares about any given bit of text beyond the starting paragraph because it's all expressed with too many words that don't say anything, but just evoke the marketing/linkedin-speak, giving everything too much weight.
• tonymet 10mo ago
  I’ve participated and appealed to promotions committees at a few big tech companies and the principle for achieving the promotion is sustained performance for a half or 2 at the next level, judged by a number of dimensions. A couple drivers are revenue impact, business direction, or how well you are enabling others to succeed. If the staff is large enough, calibrations are done to find template team members at the higher level, to make it very clear that the candidates performance is meeting that higher bar. I think most ICs think “I’ve been working hard, I deserve a promotion”. A better barometer is whether your peers assume you are already at that higher level without knowing your rank.
  • bluGill 10mo ago
    The problem is when you reach SR the next step is often so far removed that you can't have that impact without not doing your real job. A jr to mid-level engineer: just be better at what you do. However Sr to the next level is a whole different way of working and you can't do those things and also write the code that a sr is expected to write.
    • jimbokun 10mo ago
      Hmm maybe this is a good use case for LLMs to focus more on those higher level objectives. Until the productivity boost of using LLMs well is just assumed for all ICs.
    • tonymet 10mo ago
      that's what the money's for
• euifii 10mo ago
  [dead]
• GMoromisato 10mo ago
  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 demonstrating performance at your boss's level, that's evidence/proof that a promotion is warranted. Your boss's goals get implemented (by you), freeing them to work on their boss's goals (and maybe get their own promotion). 3. The more time you spend with your boss, the better you will understand their goals, and symmetrically, the better they will understand your strengths. That means leaving a job after a year or two is not always optimal. It also means following a good boss to another company is often a good move. 4. There will be cases where the goals of your boss (and their boss) diverge from your own goals. They often want to cut costs, but you want a salary increase. There are never easy answers to this dilemma, but seeing their perspective is useful so you can find a win-win scenario. E.g., if you come up with a way to save money in other ways, such as automating an external cost, then your increased salary will be worth it. 5. In some cases, of course, there is no way to reconcile your boss's goals with your own. Realizing that is useful so you can find a different company/boss that is more aligned.
  • raverbashing 10mo ago
    1 is correct. You can't expect the person to get better when promoted, rather you move them to the job they are already (almost) doing
    • pants2 10mo ago
      Ideally with increased autonomy and decision-making ability that makes them more effective.
  • gloryjulio 10mo ago
    > 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. 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. So technically, it is using your past experience to prove that you are operating at the next level
• another_twist 10mo ago
  Standard promo advice tbh. Do the job and then ask for it. Except there's a brief moment when you are adding value not in proportion to your compensation which will be infuriating. Sometimes its also possible you end up stagnant where you keep performing at a higher level and never get the job. My advice is to always check your market value by talking to recruiters and/or HMs outside of your company. That way once you have the relevant bullets on your resume, either you get the promotion or you just leave. Hedge your bets.
  • jimbokun 10mo ago
    Worst case is those responsibilities you took on can be added to your resume to find a higher level job at a different company.
• sailfast 10mo ago
  This works well if your company culture doesn’t abhor an IC or manager trying to push for improvements in places that are not their responsibility. Unfortunately there are a lot of places that do dislike this - and it may result in you getting fired instead of promoted :)
  • jimbokun 10mo ago
    Sounds like a company set up for failure.
    • fer 10mo ago
      In some cases, yeah, but in others it just sounds like a company with a lot of regulatory constraints and a strong "need to know" culture. Internal moat building often reflects in their business model as well. Not that I'd like to work in that environment, but I've seen it work and work well.
• aynyc 10mo ago
  This belongs to the "shit that never happened" list.
• matwood 10mo ago
  The best promotion advice I ever received is that you can’t be promoted, if you can’t be replaced.
• boogieknite 10mo ago
  some personal advice i recently learned is to show youre boss's boss if you really want to be promoted ive been "trying to take my boss's position" for a few years and he really appreciates it. but during my last review my boss's boss pointed said he wasnt aware of any of this. i was leaving him off all my cc lists because i figured he didnt want the cluttered inbos. he said the opposite, he thought i wasnt following up and doing my job all my effort was actually having a negative effect in the perspective of the decision maker. hopefully i knock his socks off this year since apparently the bars been lowered to the floor
• siliconc0w 10mo ago
  Make clear what your goals are to your manager, brainstorm with your manager what kind of specific work would lead them to recommend you for promotion. Then propose that specific work, get them to agree, deliver the work, and hold them to their agreement. Ideally talk to other stakeholders/skip-levels since promotions are usually by committee and you want as many allies as you can in the room. You also want to figure out if it even makes sense to go for a promotion, if the organization isn't growing - it's going to be a lot harder/impossible to make it. It also may not be financially worth it if you care about work-life-balance. It might be worth it to get paid 50-70% as much but not have to spend your day in back to back meetings. It may even pencil the same if you consider hourly rates and taxes.
• bitwarrior 10mo ago
  This is somewhat the oldest advice in the book: "Dress for the job you want, not the job you have."
  • arm32 10mo ago
    In that case, woodworking/homelessness is the job I want.
• crazygringo 10mo ago
  While this is true... it's also letting yourself be massively taken advantage of, and underpaid. Yes, the best way to get promoted is to do work above your level. The problem is, you're not getting paid what you deserve for that. If you're always doing this, you're always being underpaid by a full level. Which is why much better advice is to try to get promoted by switching companies and jumping a level in the process. Managers certainly want to take advantage of you by getting you to overperform without being overpaid. But employees should do everything they can not to fall for it. Which usually requires getting companies to compete over you.
  • jimbokun 10mo ago
    Do the work one level up for a while and add it to your resume when searching for that higher level job at another company. Or maybe your current company will surprise you with a promotion in the meantime.
    • crazygringo 10mo ago
      Or don't? Because the other company may hire you at the higher level anyways, that's the point. Because you're getting multiple companies to compete for the experience you already have. It's your task to demonstrate in interviews that you have the skills for that higher level. Which is a huge shortcut. And "maybe your current company will surprise you" just sounds like being taken advantage of to me. Because the reality is they probably won't. Not at anywhere near the same speed, usually.
      • jimbokun 10mo ago
        Companies usually want to see evidence you’ve done the kind of work required in the job you’re applying for.
        • crazygringo 10mo ago
          They want to see evidence you can do the job. Very often that's mainly tested in extensive interviews around your knowledge and skills. They don't have any kind of objective access to your current job anyways, and know very well that fancy-sounding achievements are often unreliable. Interviews give you the opportunity to demonstrate you have the skills without having to spend a year or two doing them in unpaid extra work.
• Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
  If a person is profitable to have around, than the conversation is simple: 1. Company has money people may want 2. People have unique skills a company needs to profit 3. Everything else is 100% unrelated BS On average, every software developer brings in >$1.3m USD/year in additional revenue. If you are being exploited, than just find a better gig someplace better... as it is usually easier than advancing out of a critical role. Salaries with legal encumbrances are usually just a terrible deal in the long-term. =3
• AndrewAnchor 10mo ago
  I am a longtime lurker. I signed up to say this: Never work extra without being paid extra. You can easily work your butt off and never get anything. Sure, the boss and the company would like you to work extra, but when did the company ever pay you extra up front for work you—perhaps—would deliver at a later time? You are a business. It’s not sound business to lower your own hourly rate. Sure, if everything looks 100 percent aligned, buy the pretty girl a drink, but most of the time things are not aligned. Don’t be the prostitute who expects to get paid later.
  • away0g 10mo ago
    Also, if everyone followed this (OPs) advice that would be a problem. This is more suited to someone already being groomed or an employee who is being mismanaged. My employees do not have time to do unassigned work. If they find the time to present a project fully fleshed out the first thing i ask is where did you do this. At work? Problem, my KPIs are not accurate or youre a superstar who is going to walk unless i find room in the budget (unlikely) or start looking for your replacement because there wont be a reward for turning in unassigned work. Did you work on this at home? Problem as well, you are not paid to work at home. We do not want you to work outside of your hours of operation. Why did you do this?
• jkingsbery 10mo ago
  With other engineers I mentor, I often give similar advice: break the promotion into two steps. The one everyone talks about is when the email goes out. The one that probably matters more is when your manager says: "I'm going to start treating you like <target promotion role>." A lot less attention goes into that step, particularly at bigger companies that have more formal promotion processes.
  • qmr 10mo ago
    What engineering discipline?
• _ea1k 10mo ago
  These posts fascinate me, as I must admit that I never really realized there were so many people focused almost exclusively on promotion. Is it really that common, or do these posts just bring out those types of comments? TBH, in this field, it seems like other problems are often more pressing: - I've been a developer in XX language for NN years. How do I get my next job when the company is now hiring YY developers instead? - There are lots of Level II jobs for YY, but I'm at level IV. Will eligibility rules even allow this transition? - There are some Level V positions for YY, but my level IV in XX doesn't really qualify me in a way that would pass a tech screen. The concerns in these types of posts are just so... different.
  • makeitdouble 10mo ago
    If the CTO is setting their position as the goal, we're talking about the managerial ladder. ICs and specialists (I see product managers and directors as specialists as well) should have other options, but if all you're managing is people, getting more people under you is usually the only path forward.
• cloudengineer94 10mo ago
  Absolutely, but also you need to make sure you take on the strategical work of your manager and not the typical day 2 day stuff at operational/expected level, you need to do stuff above your waist line. I liked the article and it’s right, but at the end of the day you also need to make sure your manager puts you up for promotion and that he is allowed by their management as well.
• jatins 10mo ago
  It's hard for me to take advice like this seriously when, in my experience, things like budget and manager's social influence is more deciding in whether you get promoted or not than whatever work you did.
• faidit 10mo ago
  This is only good advice if your company has high profit margins or funding and an expectation of growth, or your manager is extremely kind and trusting, or there are signs your manager is about to be fired/reorged and consultants or higher ups are asking if you want to replace them. More established industries or stagnating companies with low profit margin and no VC backing do not have a lot of room at the top, there are "negative selection" processes for management, and trying to do your boss's job is likely to be seen as insubordination. In those organizations the managers keep their job not by excelling at it (typically they would have leveled out due to the Peter principle) but by actively culling threats, and have all kinds of dirty tricks they can use to get rid of you if you show too much initiative.
• wotsdat 10mo ago
  [dead]
• par 10mo ago
  Sorry but what year and working environment is this post from? Things have radically changed in the last 5 years.
  • shivasurya 10mo ago
    ^this 100%
• ryeguy_24 10mo ago
  My advice is a little different. It’s make the life of your boss insanely easy. Similar in nature to post but slightly different optimization function. Don’t over communicate, communicate just the right amount. Anticipate questions. Don’t create any friction for them and be really helpful. Some of my people will anticipate things and be proactive. I love that and I constantly push to get them promoted.
  • croissant17 10mo ago
    Ive adopted this mindset recently and it really does work. That being said i feel it turns me into a bit of a “yes man”. I wish there was more room for more of my authentic personality
• didntknowyou 10mo ago
  this is recommending an employee work outside their scope in the hopes of getting promoted. it really depends on the company culture and if internal promotions are common otherwise it's just you doing your manager's work, and i don't see why anyone should be taking on more responsbilities without getting paid for it.
• ram_rar 10mo ago
  This advice only works at the team level. Beyond that, it’s borderline fantasy. At senior and leadership levels, promotions aren’t rewards for effort, they’re forward looking bets made by people above you, and those people have incentives, blind spots, and egos. Reporting to an insecure director or a clueless manager will quickly disabuse you of the “just do great work” myth. Also, if the company isn’t growing, none of this matters. You can operate like a CTO all you want and all that happens is more work gets dumped on you for the same pay. Take on stretch work if you’re hungry for it and it’s explicitly acknowledged as next-level responsibility. Otherwise, you’re just volunteering to be exploited.
• ImPleadThe5th 10mo ago
  Good advice. Doesn't work in bad culture. I once was told "we cannot promote you because the work you've done checks the boxes for 2 rolls above you and does not check the boxes for your next roll"
  • fusslo 10mo ago
    also an insecure/jealous manager will see you as a threat and do everything to make you ineffective, miserable, and quit
• Quarrelsome 10mo ago
  > Here's the thing most people miss: promotions don't fall off the tree and land in your lap. That's not what I learned from work. I saw people with skill way beyond their position hang around companies getting jack shit before they eventually got bored and left, and then other people getting thrust into seniority for arbitrary reasons: > Oh, you got hired just three weeks ago? Well the rest of the team has just quit, so I guess you're in charge now. > Corporate are trying to fix the gender imbalance in the c-suite, you're a woman, you want to be an executive? Both of those people _were_ very good at what they did, but so were the other people who didn't get those arbitrary events.
• strathmeyer 10mo ago
  [dead]
• gaoguixi 10mo ago
  It's like this: if you want to become a certain kind of person, start now. If you want to be a writer, start writing now. This doesn't just apply to career advancement; it almost applies to everything.
• alfiedotwtf 10mo ago
  Maybe it’s just me, but is there anyone else who does NOT want to be promoted and is just happy to craft code day and night?
• shivasurya 10mo ago
  Works for great company with amazing culture. But what about insecure managers, jealousy managers, and managers who reward folks who are loyal to them or based on same region/country?
• Brajeshwar 10mo ago
  This is one of the best pieces of career advice one can give, and I’ve had my fair share of experience that this works very well. Most people wait to be promoted to the title/designation to do the work of that role. However, if you want to avoid friction when asked, “Why should I promote you to this role?”, you should already be doing the job and proving you can do it. I once saw a QA tester tinkering with the front-end code, fixing the bugs himself, then went to the engineer and pointed out where to fix. When asked if he wanted to become a front-end engineer, I realized he was waiting for an opportunity to be promoted. So, I repeated my usual advice: if you want to be promoted, be already doing that role. He started learning, and work on front-end work besides his QA work. When he asked to be promoted, it was just a title change and a pay raise. He went on to lead the Product Design Team at a major oil company (at a branch in Bangalore, India). A Good photographer, and always has an eye for design. Similar story of an engineer waiting to be promoted to a Lead Architect. Advised him to start doing it way before talking about his promotion. I don't remember his promotion in the team I was working but heard back that he was easily gotten to that position and a big salary jump at a new company (a new city). I once saw him working in the plane we were flying together, while I was sleeping. I think he deployed when we landed. In touch with both, and lot others. None that I had advised on doing the role above them have regretted.
  • qmr 10mo ago
    "front-end engineer" Stop saying engineer when you mean programmer.
• class3shock 10mo ago
  "Here's the thing most people miss: promotions don't fall off the tree and land in your lap. You've got to show that you're capable of handling the responsibility for a sustained period of time." Some classic management gaslighting. You have to work for a few years at the level of the higher position to get it. I will trust your work at this level, profit off of it, hold you responsible for it but not pay you appropriately for it. It's always the compensation piece that takes time.
  • jaylaal 10mo ago
    "Seriously, ref, I'm good enough to win. No need to play the game, you can just hand me the gold medal now!"
    • wiseowise 10mo ago
      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.
      • jaylaal 10mo ago
        How's the boss going to know you can do secretarial stuff if he hired you as a plumber?
        • wiseowise 10mo ago
          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.
    • class3shock 10mo ago
      Not really related to what I said but I'll bite. Let me try phrasing it in a different way, if someone asked you to, in addition to doing your own job, do someone elses, but instead of paying you for that additional work said you'd get great "exposure" and a future reward, would you jump at that chance? I know many people that have because they care, they are hungry, they want to advance, they can do higher level things and want to prove themselves, etc. and the vast majority of them have gotten nothing for their trouble but extra work. We live in a world where working hard is always encouraged and its virtues extolled but rarely rewarded.
• sandeepkd 10mo ago
  On a tangential note, I have a concern with all such advices from a technology standpoint. These are all ways to understand the rules and constraints for upward mobility and make them work for you. More and more people are bubbling up in technology roles and roles impacting the long term outcome for technology by using the ~smart/outcome driven/cheat sheet. Building thoughtful systems require long term vision and commitments, not sure if any of this fits in that picture though. Lately everything is just A MVP.
• defranme 10mo ago
  > "You want to get promoted? Try to take my position." When I was a junior, mid, and starting senior level developer, I was so focused on getting ahead, and I would’ve listened intently to this. The reality is though that most managers and principal or higher devs are great with you taking on responsibility if you’re ready for it, and making mistakes and learning is often fine, but when you stop respecting those with more experience and start working around them, they’re not going to be happy. My advice: take on responsibilities and do the work, but always respect others. You will never regret giving someone enough respect. If you have a heart or a brain, you will almost certainly regret not treating someone with respect; it will haunt you, even if you one day apologize to them.
• geordiew 10mo ago
  I fear Maduro suggested this to Trump.
• megamix 10mo ago
  Why do you work you’re not paid to do? The exact job of a manager is to handle the staff development. If you’re not doing that then what are you getting paid for?
• lshivamber 10mo ago
  Try to get your boss promoted!
• tommica 10mo ago
  Really good advice, and honestly wish I had known this at the start of my career. It makes a lot of sense, exactly because proactiveness is the secret sauce to a lot of successes in life.
• jimmydddd 10mo ago
  Just do your job. Don't stress out trying to do your boss's job. Your department is likely to be off shored or made redundant in a merger anyway.
• _ZeD_ 10mo ago
  But but I don't want a promotion. I don't want a new role. I want more money to keep doing what I already do.
• yieldcrv 10mo ago
  > What he meant was simpler and more powerful: start doing the job before you have the title. Take on more responsibility before you're officially given it. protip: this won't get you promoted, won't get you any accolades within the company, and will more like get you on a Performance Improvement Plan if you want to get promoted, get a offer at another company and take that offer if you want a fat bonus, if your company has a formal bonus structure, do other's people's work for them while potentially neglecting your own
• keeptrying 10mo ago
  This is nonsense to get you to work more for the same pay. Its good to do this to get an idea of what it means to work on a higher level but it WILL NOT get you promoted. Promotion is about leverage. What can you supply that no one else can and thats crucial for your bosses-boss's success? Stop thinking execution - its exactly the opposite of that. Can you recruit people from other organizations, can you create a new product, work with every part fo the comapny, evangelize the company externally, attract capital ...
• Uptrenda 10mo ago
  This is peak office cuckoldry. Please mr sir, may I have more work and responsibility for the same pay! Please sir, I am hungry for more work and stress! This site is so detached from reality sometimes its hard to even say anything.
• grardb 10mo ago
  I don't agree with this advice at all. Do the work you're paid to do - no more, and no less. In my experience, working extra doesn't actually get you more respect from an employer. Often times, it's the opposite. Back when I was working as salaried employee, I never asked for a promotion or a raise. Not once. But I got them! Meanwhile, I watched coworkers spend years fighting for promotions, taking on so much more work than I would ever agree to, and were repeatedly denied. Eventually, they would give up and get a job elsewhere. Some did manage to get promoted, but it was grueling. These coworkers weren't less skilled than I was. I would say many of them were actually more capable, despite my position being ranked higher. A lot of comments here are talking about "healthy" work cultures and whatnot. I worked for medium-sized tech companies that you've heard of with great engineering cultures and a healthy approach to work-life balance. I don't believe that "healthy" results in getting recognized for going above and beyond. Others are mentioning office politics. I did not befriend coworkers, did not make enemies, etc. I simply did my work. I'm sure many of you have had the experience that if you make a mistake—not necessarily at work, but just in general—and then apologize profusely, you will be treated worse than if you were more casual or didn't even apologize at all. I find that making yourself "smaller" will often result in people taking advantage of you. Similarly, it seems to me that working super hard will simply raise people's baseline expectations of you, and they will exploit that. This isn't necessarily a conscious thing on behalf of your boss(es), but it's absolutely something that happens. Given all of that, my advice is to simply do your job. Over time, you will gain more experience, and that experience will potentially turn into promotions naturally. If not, then get a new job. Note however, that I'm not a proponent of frequent job hopping (I never spent less than three years at a company). If you're not self-employed, then your work is making someone else rich. No need to make them even richer if you're not getting compensated for it.
• Barathkanna 10mo ago
  This matches my experience. I’ve hired more than 30 people, and only a handful really stayed and made an impact. The difference was never title or position, it was who actually took responsibility when things were unclear or hard. Roles can be assigned, but ownership can’t.
• Traster 10mo ago
  This stuff is so difficult because it's all situational. In my first job I got hired into a small team, within a year or so my boss quit. I essentially stepped into that job. But in order to be the manager of that team you needed ot be a certain level of seniority, so I was doing the job, but I couldn't have the title or the money. I talked to my manager and made clear that I wanted the job and asked how I get there. The answer was that I needed to be a grade 7 and I was only a (new) grade 5, and since there are only a handful of promotions they can give each year, all things being equal I would get promoted to the seniority level needed to be doing that job in about 6-10 years. I was essentially doing what this article was advising, but because of the corporate structure I was in, I was just volunteering to be taken advantage of. The correct strategy actually was just to leave. I wasn't going to be successful in that structure, it wasn't a meritocracy and the business results over time went how you would expect. In the end I leverage a job offer to put myself on track to get into that role within 2 years, but in reality that was 2 years wasted, I should've left immediately.
• ManlyBread 10mo ago
  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.
  • tessierashpool9 10mo ago
    after uBlocking the feed on LinkedIn the Kool Aid slop is now here as well ...
  • ryanjshaw 10mo ago
    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.
    • stuaxo 10mo ago
      Reads like of those things people post on LinkedIn.
    • f1shy 10mo ago
      Same. If anything it only welded me in my position, because I was just very valuable doing what I was doing. Absolutely crap advice, IMHO.
    • halls-940 10mo ago
      I was reprimanded at three different software companies for doing exactly this, and not "staying in my lane" or "trying to do the senior person's job". So it only applies if you're already ahead of schedule on all your assigned work (difficult if they keep increasing your backlog), and the manager likes you but sees you as non-threatening, and people aren't territorial about RFCs.
      • baggachipz 10mo ago
        The number of times I've been praised for going "above and beyond" has been absolutely dwarfed by "stay in your lane". Turns out, a lot of people don't appreciate you trying to prove you could do their job.
• deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
• wiseowise 10mo ago
  > Do it for six months, not six days. Six months of unpaid stress for doing your managers job for a glimpse (not given!) promotion. You're a great manager, worked with a guy like you – never again. If you read this and you're at the start of your journey, then heed my warning: nothing good comes out of this ever.
• mcv 10mo ago
  I don't want to take my boss's place, though. I don't want to manage people, I want to address problems on a broader scope than I'm currently in a position to do.
• marcinzm 10mo ago
  I think the important distinction is "doing the responsibilities of the level above yours" and "doing them well." These are actually very non trivial since many people don't actually know the former (what does your boss actually?), and then have no baseline so overestimate their actual competence if they do know. Simply doing more work of the same kind as before will not get you promoted.
• sqircles 10mo ago
  There are a lot of factors that go into achieving success in the workplace. There are usually competing ideas of what success is to you, versus what it is to the one rating you or paying you. You have to, at some level, appear to be good at something they think is good to have around. Sometimes that aligns with what you think is good, sometimes it doesn’t. Of course the advice in OP is going to be relative, but it’s not a bad rule of thumb to have a good sense of what your immediate does, how they think, what metrics they value, etc. If not for your own advancement- keeping immediate leadership off tilt can greatly increase QOL, or vice-versa. I personally would love to have leadership above me that I think "damn, I'd like to be a little more like that guy" but in almost 20 years of being in the workforce, including military and the likes, that kind of leadership has been hard to come by.
• dec0dedab0de 10mo ago
  My best advice is to be likeable and just barely incompetent. You will get more money and less work.
• HumblyTossed 10mo ago
  If you want to get promoted, you need a succession plan. You need to train up the person who will be the new you. If you're important enough to be promoted, you're too important to replace, so you'll be stuck where you are until you have a successor in place. By doing this you automatically demonstrate leadership.
• cffntd 10mo ago
  What horrible advice. Stop telling people to work harder without compensation. This isn't simply a matter of choice, it hurts the collective workforce. This isn't a charity, this is our livelihoods!
• runjake 10mo ago
  This was always my secret to getting a job I’m not qualified for on paper. At one point early in my career the old engineer left. I quickly stepped in “just until they hired somebody qualified”. Back then, a 4 year CS degree was required to get the job. For reasons I can’t recall, we couldn’t hire someone for 6 months. My boss and I had a meeting with HR where he pleaded my case to get me hired. The HR director was actually yelling that I wasn’t qualified. My boss calmly replied “He’s been doing it for the past 6 months. He’s actually been making improvements. Remember that process of yours that suddenly got a lot better? He did that.” I ended up getting hired right there. There was further drama about me being at my pay scale without a degree but my boss shielded me from much of it. For that 6 months and for another 12 months after, I probably spent 18 hours a day working or learning to get up to speed. I was single and motivated so it worked out. Loved that boss. That was many decades ago so I keep an eye out for that spark among my colleagues. I occasionally see it but for the most part, they are much more ambitious than I was and that warms my heart. (Two of them started companies you’ve heard of and cashed out)
• iainctduncan 10mo ago
  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.)
  • snowwrestler 10mo ago
    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.
• flint 10mo ago
  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.
  • snowwrestler 10mo ago
    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.
• dwoldrich 10mo ago
  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.
• ianberdin 10mo ago
  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
• angarg12 10mo ago
  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!).
• thenoblesunfish 10mo ago
  Good advice, in general. But there is a risk here, which is that you're encouraging people to do something which isn't their job. Are you sure you don't want this person working on the things they are supposed to be working on? Further, even if it all goes well, you're encouraging someone to do a more stressful job and not (yet) compensating them. Given the fact that you can't practically promote everyone you want, this risks your senior-with-junior-title feeling taken advantage of and prone to look for their title elsewhere.
• NAK21 10mo ago
  This is also documented in an old 1-page military paper called the "Doctrine of Completed Staff Work"
• jakupovic 10mo ago
  Promotions are given to people who know other people and will not upset the order.