Try to Take My Position: the Best Promotion Advice I Ever Got

100% agreed. Just as importantly, you also need to be aware of what type of an environment you are in and plan accordingly.

Sometimes, you are just in an environment where it is somewhere between extremely improbable and nearly impossible to get promoted. At that point, you would be better served to put more effort into changing that environment, instead of chasing the grind. I learned that one the hard way a few years ago, at, ironically, Google.

I was on track to a promo, got a documented track record, got the backing of multiple managers + my team lead, etc. But guess what? Another reorg happened shortly before the cutoff for the review cycle, i got a new manager who literally just met me for the first time, and my chances tanked to essentially zero (which is understandable, because I don’t see how a manager who just discovered my existence a week prior would be able to effectively back my promo package). Since then, I had an average of 3-5 major reorgs and 1-2 manager changes per year. As I came to eventually realize, this type of a dysfunctional environment wasn’t conductive to a good career velocity.

Needless to say, my decision to just put my head in the sand and grind harder to compensate for this kind of organizational instability was stupid. It would’ve definitely been a better bet (in terms of time/effort, career trajectory, and compensation) to put even just a portion of that effort into changing my environment, as opposed to trying to compensate for organizational dysfunction with raw work effort.

TLDR: if you care about having a good promotion velocity, focus on the biggest blocker in your specific situation. Whether it is the lack of track record demonstrating sustained effort at the L+1 level, or your environment being dysfunctional in ways that make promotions improbable, etc. Just gotta keep the eyes on the prize, and pick the solutions that are the most appropriate for your individual situation (instead of blindly just doing "XYZ because I read that it was a great career advice" in a single-minded manner).

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.

If you're at a 50 employee company that grows to 250 employees there will be many empty team leader positions. And what you lack in hands-on management experience you make up for in knowledge of the business, its products/processes, and being a reliable known quantity. That extra responsibility will turn into more money fast.

On the other hand, if the company's headcount is largely stable and the employee turnover low? Well, there might not be an empty position until someone a level above you resigns, retires or gets fired. And when that happens - you're probably not the only ambitious person at your level. In this case, the payoff from extra effort is much less certain.

Where's the guarantee for recognition of future growth....if they don't recognize past growth?

The biggest gripe I have about articles such as this is that it assumes a static perspective of "now, into the future" and it doesn't account for "all the time before now".

If I'm having a conversation akin to the one that opens the blog post, then presumably I've been at the company for a while. Conversations like that don't just happen between CTO and engineer unless there's some time vested in the company for both.

A CTO saying "take my job" as a non-sequitur is sus, IMHO. Now if it's said in the context of "here's a raise, and if you want another one....try to take my job", well now there's some decent context for the ask and a reason to believe that future growth will be compensated.

The best prediction of future performance is past behavior. That goes for mgmt as well as pee-on.

The typical moves are: [1] Negotiate for more title, compensation at your current role (good outcome) [2] Leave for a better role (a good outcome) [3] Stay, no change, doing more work for the same money (not recommended)

That doesn’t negate the value of working above your title. Even if you need to leave, doing better work makes your resume and interviews stronger.

That said my point of view as a manager was to try to hire people who could take my job someday. Those were the people that would make me look good by having a great team. I don’t need to steal their thunder because the higher you go in a healthy organization the more it’s about having people that can execute your strategy then about your individual contributions.

The best analogy for this I see is in the NFL when new, young head coaches seem to be afraid to hire experienced coordinators who have been fired as head coaches because they’re afraid of hiring their replacement if they fail. The thing is those ex head coaches were undoubtedly successful in their previous coordinator roles which is why they got a head coach gig to begin with and are likely the best option for making the new head coach successful.

Long story short it’s up to you to determine which type of leader you’re working for and and take ownership of moving on when in a toxic situation as opposed to a healthy one.

Wait a minute. Why are you accepting more work, responsibility without increase in compensation? Promotion de facto means getting paid more.

Otherwise its just some one updating a row in the employee database with fancy text. How does it matter what designation you are called with?

I had a similar situation few years before COVID where a company offered a fancy designation albeit for 50% lesser the pay. All said and done, when I did all the calculations, even with me rapidly changing companies with newly acquired designation, and building from there. It would take more than a decade to merely arrive to the salary I was then. And that would still mean more than a decade of wasted raises, bonuses and RSU vesting at the then current job. By the time that fork got profitable, I'd be due for retirement.

Promotion == Pay/Compensation Raise.

idealistic, but more often than not, unrealistic, unfortunately

So what's the problem again?

Some people just want to be given exact instructions on what to do. Others find that role very frustrating.

Your manager is gonna be the one asking their own manager to pay you more, and will be the one doing reviews.

Also: stepping on other people's toes can crush team morale, which can sure delay promotions. Saw it happening. Keeping the manager in the loop is a good way to avoid it.

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.

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".

This sounds bad to me. Why throw AI output at your colleagues if you haven't verified it?

For those kinds of roles you want to demonstrate you can communicate with and organize a group of people to accomplish an important task.

The linked article here aligns very well with some of my thoughts. Esp in the example described I would say that, if you find yourself filling too many or too big gaps, maybe think why these gaps exist there in the first place. You may just so happen to fill a void that nobody actually cares much about getting it filled (or is able to get it filled), even if it is work that needs to be done to get projects running, even if people recognize that, even if it actually brings results. Sometimes some may not really understand what brings the results, even if everybody likes results in the end.

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.

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.

Then 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.

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

> 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.

It's both.

You reasonably can't keep someone in the same position for 5 years when their market value has long gone past that point and they're expecting more. Even if you're not sure they won't be Peter principled out in the better paying position.

The better way if to have an internal pay scale that allows for more specialization without more responsibility, but that's IMHO rare and requires managers that can handle that.

> demonstrating performance at your boss's level

To note, it often results in advices close to "do X job for a while and we'll let you have it", which looks like a no risk move for the company but is not without downsides. I've seen people being half managers for a full year before becoming one, and boy does it kill morale.

It signals to employees they'll be literally working about their pay grade "for free" for an undefined amount of time, and it's an even worse proposition when they're effectively doing two jobs at the same time (they're still expected to excel in their current position while proving they can do the other position as well)

It's a more delicate balance than it might look at first.

It can not be farther from the truth.

The best way to stay in the bottom is to work hard, to focus on work so that others have time to focus on advertising themselves, take credit of your good work and backstab you for everything else, befriend and lick the shoes strategically -even develop bed skills, for some- while you isolate yourself by sweating and believing everyone will understand or care how you optimized that for loop.

> if you are demonstrating performance at your boss's level, that's evidence/proof that a promotion is warranted

If you're an engineering IC, and your boss is a manager with 4 other ICs, your boss's goals are twofold: get at least 5 ICs worth of results from the team, and managing people.

So to do what you and TFA suggest literally you can either:

- Do 5 ICs worth of work

- Start managing people at the same level on your team, on your own initiative

I've seen coworkers try to manage their peers, aiming for a promotion. To say the least it harms team unity.

I only managed to do the 2nd once when I was thrown into a project with an absentee manager and doubly-booked half-committed members who were actually happy for someone to organize the work. Those sorts of situations are rare. Or maybe that's the unstated qualification.

And: Do 5x the amount of work, well...

Maybe I'm not thinking outside the box enough here, but I need some examples of how this is generally achievable. Maybe this was specifically _not_ about the IC-manager divide, and more like managers and manager-managers?

What I'd more generally expect is for a manager to explicitly put you in charge of a small, short term project with one or two other people and see how it goes: can everyone contribute, did you achieve results, were you transparent, how did you interact with the other members, etc.

> 2. As the OP says, if you are demonstrating performance at your boss's level, that's evidence/proof that a promotion is warranted.

That's not evidence for 1. At least you haven't explained a reason why it would be.

lol

It could simply be that spending time with your boss makes them know and like you more, and people tend to reward people they know and like, making up some post hoc rationalization about performance or whatever to justify it.

No one wants to think of themselves like this, though, so they would never admit, even to themselves, that this is what's going on, but I suspect for most people it's the actual reality.

If you’re not looking to become a founder, companies right around 100 employees is the sweet spot in my (very limited) experience.

As I read it, the article is simply trying to help people understand what kind of work is valuable to a company and therefore what they should focus on to make themselves valuable. I presume that making yourself valuable pays dividends, including promotions! Somehow the idea of going to work and not trying your best because “you’re not getting paid … for that” just feels so cynical and divorced from how I’ve seen successful people grow and make big bucks in tech.

(And this is all a bit separate, of course, than the debate about whether staying at a company or job hopping is better for career trajectory.)

Don't complain or ask for more unless you're willing and able to leave, and ALWAYS be seriously looking for your next role.