Things I wish someone told me about getting a promotion

https://radhika.dev/mid/

by _ttg • 5 years ago

128 125 5 years ago

radhika.dev

milliams• 5 years ago

That mouse trail is so unbelievably obnoxious.

yholio• 5 years ago

I just spent 10 minutes playing with it while my cowworkers were blabbering about. Very relaxing.

dspillett• 5 years ago

Maybe I'm a bit desensitized by how obnoxious most of the web is these days, but really?

I didn't even notice it until I went back after reading your comment, as first time around I clicked the link then once their use page-down to scroll. How much were you moving the mouse around to find it that obnoxious?

mywittyname• 5 years ago

At least reader mode works.

willcipriano• 5 years ago

The visibility point is worth noting. I've noticed that in SE jobs, luck of the draw plays a lot into it. If you make modest progress on a project people are excited about, management will shout your name from the rooftops. On the other hand, toil nights and weekends on a loss leader and people will ask "do we really need Bob?"

If you get put on a project like that, it's probably best career wise to find a new role.

Jenk• 5 years ago

God yes, and if you work on the literally visible (UI) your work is so much more valued than if you are working somewhere amongst that cloudy bit of the platform diagram with all the lines and boxes that just does stuff.

thinkmassive• 5 years ago

I was on a project to automate provisioning of trial environments (VPC, EKS, our software deployed on top) for prospective customers. Other members of this group were primarily marketing and management, I was the only engineer.

My portion of the work was described as “pressing a button” so I removed myself from the project at the earliest opportunity.

moshmosh4• 5 years ago

About the only times I've seen backend work get any kind of positive reaction in a meeting or presentation, like UI does constantly, is when a bad DB query has been fixed so it drops from 20s to 20ms, or something like that.

jerf2• 5 years ago

A bit of career advice that has served me amazingly well over the years: Stick your head up every so often, maybe every six months, and assess where your position is in the company relative to the company's goals. If you're on a sideline project, or if your company is moving away from where you are, or you're in a project that just isn't doing well, take action to start angling away from that. Try to get moved to a good project. Or, if you've got the institutional reputation, see if you can't be the lead or part of a team for a new project in line with the company goals and headed towards obvious revenue bottom lines. Or, worst case, find a new job, but this is not always necessary.

It may be a months-long transition, even, but often if you are persistent there's nothing impossible about this, and it doesn't have to be something that you're constantly stressing about. It's just a light touch applied every so often. Once you're in such a position it'll usually be some years before you need to worry about this again. But even so, keep sticking your head up every so often and see what's going on, just to be sure.

But do it on purpose. Don't just sit back and take whatever gets assigned to you. This doesn't even have to be stressful necessarily, because while you may encounter local resistance, at the corporate level nobody is ever going to complain that you're trying to align yourself harder with where the company is going. It's not like you're asking to pursue a pet project on the company dime with no prospect of payout... it's the opposite of that in almost every way.

conjectures• 5 years ago

Seems like a variant of the Fundamental Attribution Error. Explain in terms personality something caused by situation.

muttled• 5 years ago

This unfortunate reality is probably why Google services keep ending up deprecated and abandoned as everyone flocks to the new-new.

pietromenna• 5 years ago

Great article, I specially liked that you pointed out 3 points: Visibility, Keep learning and being in the right place makes all the difference.

rgblambda• 5 years ago

I thought that the only way to get a promotion was to get a new title along with a new job.

Are companies finally catching on to this and starting to encourage upward progression?

dominotw• 5 years ago

No. Its almost impossible to go to different level of a ladder in a new company. Maybe if its a startup;

adaml_623• 5 years ago

Good solid actionable items. Number 5 is something to bear in mind, sometimes you need to look externally.

100011_1000012• 5 years ago

I started working as a Jr Dev at 32. Looking at other Jr Devs that entered the company around the same time I have had the fastest rise. Visibility is huge, this is true for any job. However visibility is a double edged sword, because you can fail spectacularly as well.

Here is my perspective, take it as an opinion.

I personally dislike people that talk the talk, but don't walk the walk. So if you want to wow your managers with lies and falsehoods this does not apply to you. (and you are part of the problem).

My approach is based on a few pillars. Work smart, be willing to fail, get uncomfortable, force yourself to be extroverted, always be learning, give something back.

Sometimes hard work is invisible. Anyone that had to spend countless hours on an end of life application fixing endless bugs with no one you can talk to is hard and thankless work. Work smart means fixing the right things, what has a big impact. You can do that anywhere, but doing it for a bleeding edge group or a problem solver group in your company makes the same amount of work appear better.

For agile teams, another part of working smart is choosing the right stories. Some stories are easy but invisible, others are harder but visible, choose the one that have a visible effect, usually they are higher stake, but it's part of the process.

Be willing to fail, goes hand in hand with smart work. If you try to avoid mistakes too much, you will get stuck trying to be perfect which means your output will drop. Also if you are working in high impact teams occasionally things will go really wrong. It might not even be your fault. That's fine.

A lot of people mess failure up. They fail and try to cover it up. This might work for management, but other devs know. Guess what, they will remember that, not out of menace, but it will become part of their opinion of you. They'll know that if things go south you will lie about it, or throw someone else under the bus. In my humble opinion the best way to deal with failure that's your fault is be in the forefront of the fix. A simple "I should have noticed this issue, but I did not. I am already working on a fix, and have talked to X team on mitigation strategy" is all you need. Most sane organizations recognize that mistakes happen, I mean this is why QA exists to begin with. If your response to a defect is to blame the PM for not having clear direction, or the QA for not catching it...guess what, you just made a PM and QA not trust you.

Discomfort is part of doing new things. The familiar feels safe. If you made a blue widget, then it's easier to make a red one, and if you make 10 widgets it's a walk in the park. However making a widget today, a bicycle tomorrow, a house next month will feel uncomfortable, however you will learn a lot. A counter point to this is don't be a generalist, try to master your tools a little bit. In other words don't always go for the new tech all the time, you want to be acquiring skills not dabbling.

Force yourself to be extroverted. Most developers tend to be introverts, I love machines, I find them fascinating, and probably it's a lot easier for me to deal with input/outputs that follow patterns than the chaos of human reactions. However it's really really hard to be visible if you are an introvert and talk to no one. There are some very talented devs that can be fully introverted and are recognized. You have to be really spectacular to be able to do that. It's much easier to be extroverted. If you are actually an introvert you most likely have noticed that extroverts tend to get a lot of undeserved cred.

For me it's a necessary skill. I am not suggesting you talk about the weather and have benign talk that no one cares about. I mean, say "hello", if someone mentioned they where going hiking this weekend, and it's Monday, ask them how it went. So perhaps it's more about being friendly. There is another aspect though, that without it you miss out on a lot. That's being willing to make presentations or sending emails to massive amounts of important people. You know, the introvert nightmare.

Think about it, if you write good code and no one knows you did it, how on earth are you going to be promoted / respected / mentor others...whatever your drivers are. It's not really possible.

Always be learning should be an obvious concept. If you are following my advice and you are working on cutting edge projects, being willing to fail, getting uncomfortable and even being more extroverted...you are learning.

Finally, give something back. Don't be the person that does things and never helps anyone else. Write that documentation. Mentor other devs, pair program with others that seem to be having a hard time. Ping the chat with a recent thing you discovered.

In the end, if your fellow devs like working with you, most likely your manager will sense it and that makes all the difference. Just make sure you are not full of crap and actually write some code.

busterarm5• 5 years ago

As someone with a similar career start as yourself, there's a certain amount of maturity that comes with age and often that matters a lot more than technical capability.

I think all of us "late-bloomers" see a fast rise typically as we already have a host of other hard-to-train skills that we bring to the table.

100011_1000012• 5 years ago

I agree. Knowing how businesses work helps. Having experience in other job markets also makes you be more appreciative of the easiness of the job as well.

sneak4• 5 years ago

There's little/no penalty to jobhopping frequently in this field, so I wonder how much benefit there is to sticking it out (presumably underpaid) until you can catalyze a promotion/raise.

I think the best way to optimize your interaction with the market as an FTE is to simply always be occasionally interviewing and scouting around. There are lots of biases and inertia and anchoring and stuff with orgs with which you have an existing relationship.

dijit2• 5 years ago

There's little/no penalty to jobhopping frequently in this field

This is not my experience as a person involved in hiring in Europe.

If you never stay somewhere more than a year it’s a red flag.

If it’s less than 6months then you won’t pass the HR filter.

sneak4• 5 years ago

I didn't mean to suggest anything less than a year. The topic of TFA is internal promotions; are people getting promoted in their first year?

My suggestion is that you shouldn't wait very long at all for an internal promotion if you can just get a new job that pays better. I can't imagine this is a process that you engage too much in in the first year of a job, where you likely wouldn't be eligible for a promotion in the first place.

Bulpi3• 5 years ago

i would not subscripe to saying a year or 6 month is frequently.

At least for me frequently is 1-3 years while i do wanna know why you left your company after a year.

But it is easy to come up with a reason why you switched early and in this market, i take one person who swtiched early but feels like a good candidate over one who feels like a bad one.

The market in germany was empty the last 5 years, we were happy to get what we could.

bibinou2• 5 years ago

European job hoppers I know ended up in the Valley or fully remote.

deelowe2• 5 years ago

I see a string of 1-3 year stints as a potential red flag personally. Anything less than a year will definitely be scrutinized. There have absolutely been resumes I've passed up on where there was a trend of ~2 years in a role before moving on to another company or team.

My rationale: Especially in more senior roles, 2 years is about the sweet spot where your house of cards can start to fall apart. You start a new role, spend 1-3 months ramping up, another 3-6 months strategizing/planning, and a year or so executing. By the end of all this, you're ~2 years into it and those initial ROI statements of $XM per year will start getting assessed.

bradlys• 5 years ago

And for every person like yourself - there are plenty of companies hiring people like me who are going into their 6th job in 8 years. (Comp is ~400k/yr, was much higher in previous role but that’s stock appreciation at work)

:/ 2 years is usually where people can only put up with so much toxicity before leaving. Even at 1m+/yr, I couldn’t last longer than 2.5 years. A lot of work environments change too - so, often you’re quitting your new manager (who won’t let you transfer) and not the company.

triceratops• 5 years ago

I've been in the industry over 10 years, only one of my jobs has lasted over 3 years. And even when I don't leave the company, I do change my team after about 2 years.

yowlingcat• 5 years ago

Have you ever worked at a startup before?

analyst74• 5 years ago

Job hopping up to senior engineer is fine, but to progress beyond that requires support network and influence, which is hard to acquire quickly if you join as a new face.

Of course, if you made a bad first impression or grew the wrong kind of reputation in your firm, it may be easier to do a lateral switch to start fresh.

danaris2• 5 years ago

There's little/no penalty to jobhopping frequently in this field

As long as you're already wealthy enough to be able to comfortably afford to move. And single, or with a stay-at-home or fully-remote spouse.

sneak4• 5 years ago

Who moves in 2021 to write software?

Bulpi3• 5 years ago

I moved to a big city when i started my work life for this single reason: opportunities.

No need to move when you just switch your public transport line.

Nonetheless, honestly i think career progression is totally different if you don't live in a city or if you are not very flexible.

rufus_foreman• 5 years ago

> There's little/no penalty to jobhopping frequently in this field

First point, there absolutely is. I review resumes, if someone has a history of moving on after a year, I assume they are going to move on after a year again, and since it typically takes that long for someone to be truly effective in the environments I have worked in, that's a hard no. Nothing personal, but no. With a job market as good as today's that might not be a huge penalty, but it's there.

Which leads us to the second point, people who are doing this are playing a game of musical chairs. If you have been in the software dev world for a few decades, you have been through some rough job markets and you know another one is coming, you don't know exactly when. You have seen people much smarter and more capable than you walked out the door, and not be able to get a job for years. You have seen half the company you work in get walked out the door suddenly one morning. And when that job market hits, the selection standards of employers suddenly gets much higher.

Just a friendly warning in case this is your first rodeo.

sombremesa• 5 years ago

Yuck.

The fact that junior devs are learning this as facts of life should be a point of shame for the industry. I thought similar things when I worked at Amazon, but by and large a life built around corporate bullshit is not for me.

There are other companies out there that are much more human and don’t force you to restructure your mindset around what it takes to climb the ladder rather than what makes a great software engineer.

hansor4• 5 years ago

You will never get a promotion or raise if there's no formal performance review process and career ladder.

That is total BS. I had promotion multiple times just because business owner liked me and valued my work.

You have to be performing at the next level for several months

Total BS too. Maybe in India.

VISIBILITY

This one is not BS! I have seen many many developers without any rise - just because they do not attend any meetings, they look like bumps(no suits!), and those who do not talk much with their own boss or boss above...

When I manage to do something BIG - i make sure that my boss, his boss, and boss above KNOWS that we tried hard and delivered. It's not a shame to brag about real accomplishments :)

In that way I received 32% pay-rise in past 2 years.

deeblering4• 5 years ago

Some people are happy taking a 32% pay cut in exchange for not needing to wear a suit or attend pointless meetings.

The behavior you describe sounds like that of a good team lead/manager. Praising their team members for their efforts and drawing attention to successes and progress. It's a solid path for advancement up the corporate ladder, but it's not for everyone.

Clubber• 5 years ago

That is total BS. I had promotion multiple times just because business owner liked me and valued my work.

Yes, I would say in my experience that in an environment that utilizes formal performance reviews, I was less likely to get a promotion. When it's a small company that is making money, and you wow your boss and make yourself invaluable, you get promotions / raises. It really boils down to busting your ass to get things done and letting the powers that be know it.

elliottcarlson• 5 years ago

Total BS too. Maybe in India.

That was unnecessary -- this is something that is indeed an expectation in _some_ career ladders -- it's not a global truth, but nothing is.

While the author made generalized claims and absolutes, so did you to the contrary - when the reality is always "it depends on who you are, and who you report to". Claiming total BS is probably more harmful in this case.

jerf2• 5 years ago

Keep in mind the high degree of variance we're all going to experience due to the fact that there's a lot of variance in the field and in general most of us have held a small number of jobs. Those of us who have held enough jobs to have even an anecdotally-significant sample arguably weren't around long enough in any one place to get a solid sense of how their promotions worked!

There's plenty of places that hand out promotions as rewards for being good at your current job. There's plenty of places that require to you to have been doing some percentage of the promotion already. There's plenty of places that just never promote you. Heck, in different times and places, the same company can end up doing all of the above. Calling bullshit on any one of those because you've never experienced them is not sound.

KevinAiken• 5 years ago

You have to be performing at the next level for several months

I worked at a slow pace large US tech company and this was an absolutely critical part of being promoted, which could only happen during the one or two promotion cycles a year.

For a bit of context, this was a place where the best of the best during good years (so not the last year) may get promoted from a junior engineer to an engineer II in 2 years, so climbing was pretty slow.

AlwaysRock• 5 years ago

Yup. In larger companies, and honestly in most start ups I've worked in as well, I always said expect something you "deserve" to come a quarter or two quarters after you've "earned" it.

Frustrated that you havnt been promoted even though you have had all the conversations about getting promoted, your boss agrees you should be, and you consistently perform at that level? Give it 3-6 months and it will probably happen.

The machine moves slowly.

philjohn• 5 years ago

Both my current, and previous employer (US tech firms) practise trailing promotions.

giantg26• 5 years ago

">You have to be performing at the next level for several months

Total BS too. Maybe in India."

This is not BS. My company in the US expects you to be performing at the next level before promoting you. Where do you work? I work at a company that is regarded as doing the right thing and having good intentions, yet they will make you work for up to years in a role above your own before promoting you.

I did this for at least a year before getting promoted to midlevel. Then I performed the role of senior dev and then tech lead for a year each and still did not get promoted. (They started to talk about it, but wanted me to take a 13% increase in hours for a 7% raise - that's not a real promotion in my book)

I would say the list the OP posted is not great. It might be generally applicable, but every company is so different that it doesn't really matter. Even in the same company with a standardized process, promotions can vary greatly from manager to manager.

I hate visibility. I do begrudgingly agree that it's necessary to get promoted in most companies. I really think that talent identification and rewards should be handled by the managers. Having people toot their own horn can take away from the team spirit between members and even create a perverse motive for what work/tasks people are willing to do. I've seen terrible tech leads that only for to where they did because they were yes men and would take credit for putting out fires - fires that were a result of their own shortsighted designs.

But hey, I guess that's why I'm still a shitty midlevel dev that's only seen a 30% (22% inflation adjusted) pay increase over 9 years and doesn't even make $100k.

hansor4• 5 years ago

I hate visibility. I'm still a shitty midlevel dev that's only seen a 30% (22% inflation adjusted) pay increase over 9 years and doesn't even make $100k.

My advice: 1. Buy cheapest black or dark blue suit, buy few cheapest white shirts, buy cheapest leather shoes. You can do it under 120$ - and it will be best investment in your life.

2. BRAG when you do amazing stuff.

Managers WILL notice if you CC them in email or talk about it in public. No need to "steal" success from anyone from your team - honestly brag about stuff that you personally made!

You can for example send email at 9 PM to your team, boss and HIS boss such us:

HI! I'm glad to announce that FEATURE XYZ IS WORKING, I will further test it in night, but it seems that its ready for production. WE MADE IT :)

Otherwise your BOSS and HIS BOSS will never know that you are amazing! You need to show them that you are doing fantastic work - otherwise, they might be too busy to notice.

selimthegrim• 5 years ago

IIRC you had talked in the past about working on a not widely adopted tech stack?

Manishearth• 5 years ago

Total BS too. Maybe in India.

This has been the case at both my current and previous (American tech) jobs.

And it's pretty racist to assume that a person is working or has worked in India just because they have an Indian name.

lmz• 5 years ago

17% of humans, disregarding the name, live in India. I'm sure the percentage of people with Indian names that live in India is larger.

hansor4• 5 years ago

Ohh sh*t. Sorry if i offended anyone by "Maybe in India"!

What I meant is that there are some sane companies where promotion or rise is more about motivation, and its not driven by "up or out" mentality that you can see in Accenture and similar companies exploiting their workers in poor countries.

emrah• 5 years ago

Promotion does involve more than just technical chops so it is harder for those who just want to put their heads down, code and get things done without much funfair.

You have to be performing at the next level

Apparently this happens more often than not, but I don't buy it. First of all, the next level should involve activities that your current level should not allow or leave enough time for you to do. So, no you can't perform at the next level.

If you have been performing at the next level, and for a while, then the company has been taking advantage of you. You should have been paid at the next level too.

It's very unfortunate but it does often seem easier to jump ship to get to the next level or skip a few.

impoppy• 5 years ago

Don’t let this article get in your head if you want a promotion or a raise.

1 and 6 are total BS. If your company does not have KPI or whatever useless and evil things project managers invent, just go to your manager and tell them you want a raise the moment you feel like you’re doing good and deserve it. And if the company still won’t give you a raise then I doubt it values you enough.

My salary raised over 200% in half a year just because I underestimated my base tag and asked for a raise every time I felt like I was doing very good. Although that’s not only about my performance but soft skills as well as pointed out somewhere in the article.

My manager once said: "Business does not care about you. How modesty can help you achieve things?”.

EricE2• 5 years ago

Six has been key to my carrier advancement. Every single job I got was people coming to me - because I was visible and they liked what they saw of me and thought I would be a good fit. And in all but one it ended up working out for both of us, and in that one not so great fit I transitioned to other satisfying and mutually beneficial work.

Visibility should never be underestimated - not just for potential positive, but negative effects too. So many of our younger generation doing so many stupid things on social media is going to be a real long term problem if attitudes around things like cancelling people for anything uttered at any point in time on Twitter aren't changed more broadly in our society.

ironmagma• 5 years ago

This is accounted for and preempted at many corporations who enforce that promotions are only given once a year, and at a set time, or something like that.

aynyc• 5 years ago

Hmm... is this how current startup or "agile" companies environment work now? #1-4 are utter non-sense. #5/6 are generally true in every job if promotion is what you want, plenty of folks just don't care about that. Sad part of me thinks that this will be the future workplace culture, but I want no part in.

shard• 5 years ago

I find #2 and #3 more relevant the higher you move in the hierarchy. For #3, to me it's about how well you can move up levels of abstraction: If you are working on features, can you develop a product-level view? If you are working on products, can you develop a portfolio-level view? A company-level view? Each level up has less to do with engineering and more to do with finances, marketing, company resources, and cross team collaboration than before. It's not easy to see two levels above you. However, relating to point #2 in the article, you have to show that you are able to think and work at the level above you if you want to be promoted. If you have tunnel vision and can't expand your point of view to encompass the larger picture, you're not going to be promoted. This assumes that we are talking about promotions that include more responsibility as opposed to merely a change in title or more salary.

intricatedetail• 5 years ago

Is this "climb the ladder" thing still relevant when companies move to just in time equivalent for workers? You get hired to do X tasks and then move on to another company.

Bulpi3• 5 years ago

Not sure what you mean.

I'm not aware of this schema in big companies or smaller ones. Getting a head count is hard, hiring is a lot of effort.

For everything else you have service providers. If you wanna be independent and work per task, thats a totally different story all together.

You have to do acquisition yourself, you have to do training yourself but you earn a lot more money faster.

I still prefer the jobs where i hire/control an external person while having my career in a stable work environment. Which also means i'm the expert and while you can get experts from external, as a company you still need your experts who keep all the business experience with them.

bibinou2• 5 years ago

Ah. Modern Times.

notaspecialist• 5 years ago

Yeahh...I'm gonna have to ask you to come in on the weekend.

_qwfv• 5 years ago

One thing I tell all my folks and mentees is to understand why they are pushing for promotion. Engineering promotions are different jobs. You'll be taking on different responsibilities and expectations, and blindly chasing a level bump just because the number of bigger can lead to bad outcomes.

Whether it's pay, prestige, interest in expanded scope, whatever... Make sure you know that motivates your drive for the promo.

PapaSpaceDelta• 5 years ago

This is an excellent point. If you are a hands on techie by inclination, then you should be aware that blindly chasing promotion in an organisation that doesn’t have a track for “individual contributors” is simply going to lead to more time in meetings and less time doing what you are good at and enjoy. Most of the corporate world is built around the idea that promotion will entail more and more (formal) leadership responsibilities.

My personal experience is that people who wish to specialise in developing their own technical work to a higher level, without taking on management responsibilities, need to be more proactive about seeking the next role that will be right for them and very often that means looking externally.

Of course there are a number of organisations that explicitly provide a specialist seniority track outside management (Sun Microsystems was the first that I encountered), but you probably already know if you work somewhere like that.

frankfrankfrank• 5 years ago

One thing I was expecting to see was that promoting yourself by moving, i.e., selling yourself to other companies is not only the best method for price discovery for yourself, but also that it will not come with excess responsibilities, i.e., promotions without/inadequate pay and mostly more responsibilities/work.

It is an issue and something I have been thinking about, because the corporate machine thinks it is saving itself money by screwing its employees, but there are many other way in which in reality is just undermines value and cuts growth and future earnings potential when your "human resources" decide to take their resources and institutional knowledge to a different company after years of sub optimal deployment due to the corporate culture.

For some corporations the burn and churn model may work; some big finance, insurance, tech, and consulting firms come to mind, but I don't think it can work without having generated a certain (al)lure.

frobozz• 5 years ago

Yes! Several months of doing most of the higher grade work to prove yourself worthy of promotion.

Then you actually get the promotion (normally with the smallest possible payrise). They still won't let you let go of all your old duties while piling new ones on you. And they keep hounding you to aim for the next promotion, which is increasingly unavailable.

busterarm5• 5 years ago

A track record of fast internal promotions also sends an incredibly strong signal to your future employers though. Much stronger than if you change companies into each promotion.

Then when you advertise success to your next employer and deliver on it when you get there you are going to stand out from your peers with not a lot of effort.

Also "gets promoted quickly" usually makes people completely fail to notice that my resume doesn't have a degree/education attached to it.

akavel• 5 years ago

(Per HN guidelines:

If the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

eyelidlessness7• 5 years ago

Not to get too meta, but this guideline has repeatedly led to me significantly misunderstanding the nature of a post, and either opening things that seemed interesting but weren’t, or skipping things that seemed uninteresting but quite caught my attention elsewhere with the title intact. It’s also worth noting that in practice these title croppings quite often run counter to one of the examples, cropping off a leading “How” which can significantly change the meaning of a title.

tristor• 5 years ago

My experience, as someone who's had internal promotions multiple times in my career at different companies, is that the only point here that's actually true is #6 about visibility, but that the author's take on visibility is a bit too narrow. Getting promoted is mostly about three things as an engineer:

1. Execute with excellence.

2. Establish a positive reputation, preferably as a subject matter expert

3. Align yourself to the direction of your business unit or the company.

In pretty much that priority order, actually. Whether you have a formal review process, quarterly goals and KPIs, take on duties off the HR-approved job description of the next level up, et al, none of that matters.

Visibility is all about #2. Being the engineer that sits in the dark corner hacking away and nobody even knows you're in the office (if you've ever had the lights turn off while you're still at work because someone else thought they were the last one out of the office, this is probably you) is not going to get you promoted. I am an introvert, and I will tell you directly that you do not need to be gregarious, charming, and a social butterfly to get visibility, nor do you need to go into 1:1s with your boss and brag for 20 minutes every month.

Visibility is as simple as:

1. Say hello to people at work when you come into the office.

2. Remember (or write down) people's names and what they do, understand the organizational chart of your company.

3. When someone asks you a question, answer honestly, including "I don't know." Use these questions as an opportunity to grow your knowledge.

4. If you find an area where there are a lot of questions and you consistently know the answers, lean in and be willing to answer those questions.

Doing this establishes a positive reputation (or at least a neutral one) and sets you up to be considered a subject matter expert on whatever niche you find yourself fielding questions about the most, which may not even be your specific job duties.

If you're consistently executing your job duties at above baseline standards and your coworkers across teams and departments think positively of you and consider you an expert on some topic, you'll find internal promotion comes relatively easily even if you don't have any formal review or KPI process.

Finally, and this is a big one. You have to ask for the promotion. Do not expect anyone to just randomly swoop down and promote you. It does happen, sometimes, but generally you have to advocate for yourself. In really well structured companies it as easy as asking your boss and they take care of the rest, but the reality is most people don't have great managers or exist in a well structured organization. So figure out who to talk to, and ask them.

I don't touch as much on #3 at the top because even if you're doing maintenance work on a legacy system nobody cares about, if you can become the hero to whatever department uses that system as their SME or be known positively as an SME on other things and are willing to answer questions outside your strict job duties about it, you can get promoted. It makes it vastly easier if you're working on something where your day-to-day aligns with the company's direction and vision, but it's not a requirement.

EricE2• 5 years ago

Two followed by Six on his list got me every promotion/increase. Only twice within the same org was I able to get a promotion/increase my salary. While it's possible, it's often way easier to get an increase by moving to a different organization or company. Which can be annoying - or an opportunity for growth you hadn't considered.

gofreddygo• 5 years ago

Another post on promotion hacking ?

Top comment [1] from another good HN discussion [2] about this from late last year. Worth repeating

  Here's some of my learnings about getting promoted for those that really want to play that game:

  - Only the perception of your work matters
  - Attend the social events and get in good with the bosses
  - The countability of your major achievements is important. Make the list long, too long to hold in the mind
  - At the same time the gravitas of your best achievement is also important since that will be the soundbite that is shared about you behind your back
  - Get allies who can proselytize about you behind your back
  - Be the best. The difference between one and two is bigger than that between two and three, as far as promotions go
  - Take credit for your work (use pronouns I and Me when talking about your work, not We) and do not allow others to take credit for your work
  - If it's a teamwork situation with other people on your level, don't do most of the work, because the credit will end up being split 50/50 in the eyes of the bosses even if you did most of it
  - Make a very good first impression
  - Shape the narrative around the role you played in the success of the mission/team/company
  - Get the bosses to make a soft public commitment regarding your competence
  - Even if you have a really good boss, all of the above is still important, because they are fallible humans and aren't omniscient
  - Actually do good work, it'll make the above easier

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24622111

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24618707

aliswe2• 5 years ago

Wth? This sounds like a bunch of narcissistic junk to me.

The sauce to performing successfully is to add value and to communicate clearly - and to also do these two things outside your "box" (intentionally vague).

This stuff on the other hand seems completely disingenous.

isoskeles• 5 years ago

Yeah, some of the items read like the types of things you'd witness in a "toxic" organization, where cynical individuals are engaged in these behaviors and have convinced themselves that they're not part of the problem.

jiofih2• 5 years ago

It’s not narcissism, it’s survival. I don’t like it either, but agree that this is how most larger companies function.

akarma• 5 years ago

This started off quite well and it's valuable to think about the manager's perspective but:

Take credit for your work (use pronouns I and Me when talking about your work, not We)

This doesn't apply to everyone but having worked in Product and in a team lead and managerial capacity, I can't imagine this coming off well at all.

do not allow others to take credit for your work

Of course that's dreadful, but there's a difference between a coworker taking credit and a manager taking credit. In some tech companies and many older-style companies (law firms I can say with certainty), the latter is super common and it may be bad for your career to protest too hard.

If it's a teamwork situation with other people on your level, don't do most of the work, because the credit will end up being split 50/50 in the eyes of the bosses even if you did most of it

There are ways to privately and without placing blame make clear that you did most of the work in a way beneficial to your career. I can't imagine trying that hard to not do more than 50%.

MeinBlutIstBlau• 5 years ago

I've found I come across better when giving other people credit and asking for more work from said people. Sure I got more to do, but 9/10 it's never come back to bite me. These people often noticed I "got it" in how the game is played and they almost always reciprocated it as well. The 1/10 is the person who cares about their work being done right over the perception of it being done.

eyelidlessness7• 5 years ago

- Take credit for your work (use pronouns I and Me when talking about your work, not We) and do not allow others to take credit for your work
- If it's a teamwork situation with other people on your level, don't do most of the work, because the credit will end up being split 50/50 in the eyes of the bosses even if you did most of it

These are truly awful pieces of advice, not just because they’re adversarial toward your team, but also because they undermine most or all of the good in the other points.

Doing good work includes supporting the people you work with, in fact sometimes that’s the most important part. And just from a basic psychology perspective, no one will want to speak well of you behind your back if you strategically refuse to speak well of them in their presence.

ramraj07• 5 years ago

That list didn’t have “don’t be a dick”, so not sure what you’re talking about. You can be collaborative and still ensure your own work gets its due credit. The way i interpret “if it’s a collaboration don’t do more than 50%” as making sure that any collaborative project where you’re sharing credit equally, ensure that the work is originally planned itself equally as well.

If you are not a team player who helps each other out and still manages to get promoted then that’s a problem to be in such an org.

xwolfi• 5 years ago

Wait the guy is talking about getting promoted, the team doesnt matter at all for that.

When you talk to the bosses in promotion mode, you dont say we or what does it even mean ? That you want them to pay a pizza to the team ?

No you feel you re not at the pay level you desire, you alone, while probably the rest of the team is, so you must show why paying you more will provide an advatage to the bosses, the team, maybe even the company.

If you re not in promotion mode, promote your good colleagues. Use their name, not the team name, if you want to accomplish anything.

Doing good work is entirely unimportant when discussing salary. What matters is who is doing the good work, precisely.

vanusa• 5 years ago

Of course most of this "advice" is intrinsically adversarial, if not to say just all-around dickheaded.

And that's precisely the point. Because that's the kind of behavior that helps you get ahead in many environments.

tejasvi88• 5 years ago

Get the bosses to make a soft public commitment regarding your competence

s/commitment/compliment ?

txsoftwaredev• 5 years ago

"I've had (cis, white, male) friends tell me that they were basically promoted on potential and didn't have to actively go out of their way for several months to prove their performance. It'd be nice if that happened to the rest of us, but don't bet on it."

Where is all this white privilege? I seem to have missed the boat (I have the correct pigmentation apparently). I had to provide value in order to be promoted / get raises and actually speak up and ask for it.

908B64B197• 5 years ago

Where is all this white privilege?

On Twitter.

eyelidlessness7• 5 years ago

Just because a type of privilege exists doesn’t mean it’s universally applied or doesn’t coexist with other disadvantages that might dampen it.

I’ve experienced biased treatment in my favor as a white person who presents male, and against me because I’m neurodivergent. I’ve also experienced fair treatment, and learned correction toward such, by leadership who value inclusion and listen.

The author isn’t suggesting that all white cis men always get promoted based on potential without having to demonstrate the relevant qualifications consistently, but that it’s more likely.

If you don’t think that’s true, there are a zillion studies that validate it. I say this because I’m a month and a half of weekends into writing what I thought would be a weekend blog post about addressing comp disparities, and so far all I have is a draft explaining why I chose the source I did. I’d be happy to link it, if you’re interested in learning more!

fighterpilot• 5 years ago

I'm curious and want to read one of these studies, can you share a link?

TOSSAWAY_13• 5 years ago

It's just the narrative slant of the era. Going to be super embarrassing as time goes on, just be sure to remember.

lwhi2• 5 years ago

You're being downvoted because you are dismissive of something you have no understanding of.

I can say that with certainty, because you made the comment.

w0mbat• 5 years ago

You will never get a promotion or raise if there's no formal performance review process and career ladder.

Well that's obviously not true. Chaotic rapidly growing startups with little process, promote people at a vastly higher rate than established big companies with a lot of process and less growth.

mypalmike• 5 years ago

You have a good counterpoint. But I think the point is fair when looking at more established companies. Even at places with formal reviews, many companies don't have a real process for career growth.

didymospl• 5 years ago

That's exactly my story. I spent first few years of my career in a large company with a formal performance review. Everyone had to set some measurable KPIs with the manager at the beginning of the year and then regularly review it on 1-on-1. It was supposed to be the main factor in determining promotions. I really liked that job and I wanted to get promoted so I worked my a.. off by writing tons of code, tests, fixing bugs that no one had time to look at, doing code reviews, participating in architectural design meetings, helping interns, giving presentations on new libraries etc.

Every year, around September-October when I was close to the finishing line for A grade, either by resolving 200 Jira tickets or increasing test coverage in my code to 85%, my boss would congratulate me, say something about lacking "bigger picture" and then simply add a totally unrealistic goal to my list. One year it was to increase the profit of our department, another to activate ten-person project which was started a month ago in production before the end of Q3. Something that suits a naive junior dev very well, you know. Then at the final review by the end of year he would say that even though my individual objectives were met, I'm not that much of a team player because I failed to achieve goals that are team-oriented.

I have to admit it was a strong team and I was far from being the best developer there but in fact I was doing senior work for junior's salary. When I found out new junior hires earn much more than I do, I decided to hand in my notice. I was offered promotion immediately but still said no and ended up going from regular to a team lead in two years in a startup with no performance review whatsoever.

quacked• 5 years ago

That's symptomatic of a dead organization, in my opinion. All employees should be compensated at the highest level the organization is willing to pay them at that moment, in terms of responsibility, compensation, and title. If there's no room to promote them because the org chart is full, but they deserve it, congratulate them, explain the situation, and give them a raise and more responsibility. Your employees should never be able to call your bluff, because you shouldn't be bluffing!

It really throws me for a loop when people say they were offered better work for more money when they threatened to leave. How can you call yourself a good manager if you're not advocating for the best possible work in exchange for the best possible compensation out of each of your employees?

eyelidlessness7• 5 years ago

1. I think the author knows that “never” is an exaggeration, having cited cases to the contrary.

2. I think the intended audience is more likely to experience this as a limiting factor than the people who experience the contrary.

3. Yes, rapidly growing startups notoriously throw all kinds of titles and promotions around. They also notoriously do so extremely unevenly... because they don’t do so methodically. This is part of the point I think that part of the article is making.

tkiolp4• 5 years ago

Sorry but: fuck this. I also work as a software engineer, and I focus on one thing only: professionalism. Professionalism is about:

1. knowing my stuff. I got my degree, I read, I experiment with new tech and I never stop learning.

2. responsibility. Am I working on Issue 345? You bet I’ll do my best finishing it on time or I’ll inform you if that’s not possible way beforehand.

3. don’t harm others with the excuse of points 1 or 2.

I don’t care about visibility or playing politics. I don’t care about levels. The idea of “performing” at a certain level is ridiculous. I do care about getting compensated for the stuff I do, but based only in points 1 and 2 above. It has worked for me in many cases, although sometimes I’ve had to quit because companies were expecting me to play the game.

irrational2• 5 years ago

This is me. Every year at review time I get the usual, where do you want your career to go? What are your next steps? Um, frankly I very happy where I am, with my current compensation, with my current benefits, etc. I don't really want to go anywhere? It has worked for me the past 20 years. Hopefully it will work for the next 15-20 years or whenever I retire. Though, I enjoy my work so I'm in no hurry to retire.

jiofih2• 5 years ago

Do you manage to make the same as your peers? I think this strategy tends to limit your earnings significantly compared to playing the game.

Jemaclus3• 5 years ago

(Caveats for this post: First, my experience is largely in rapidly growing startups, so take with a grain of salt if you are not in a high-growth environment. Second, I'm going to be using you as an example, but this post isn't really necessarily for you, it's for anyone else who happens to read it and can maybe take something away from this.)

I've been managing engineers for the last 6 years, and I just want to put it out there that this is a perfectly acceptable thing to say as far as I'm concerned. It's refreshing to have someone who knows exactly what they want out of things. If you want to stay at a company for 4-6 years and then move on to another one and do the same thing, this is a great strategy.

But from a managerial perspective, there are reasons why people don't want to hire people like this. The most obvious one is money. (Note: I'm going to use nice round (and unrealistic) numbers to illustrate the point. It's not the specifics that matter, but the overall pattern.)

Let's say you make 100K, and your company has a generous 10% merit increase each year. Let's also postulate that you can do 1000 scrum points worth of work per year with your current set of responsibilities. As far as a compensation efficiency ratio goes, you're basically making $100 per point worth of work. In Year 2, you get a 10% raise, so now you're at 110K. Based on your statement of "I am happy where I am", that suggests that you aren't interested in additional responsibility (I.e., promotions or management). Due to that, your output is still somewhere around 1000 points. Now you're making $110 per point of efficiency. In effect, it's costing the company 10% more for you to do the same work! Year 3, you're at 110K + 10% = 121K. Year 4 at 133K. Now the company is spending 33% more for the same amount of work.

Rough numbers, take with a huge grain of salt. But the point remains: generally speaking, management wants engineers that are ambitious and willing to take on more responsibility and grow. From the business perspective, this means that you're getting more done with fewer resources. (After all, it's cheaper to pay you 10-20% more than to hire a second engineer.)

All of that said, if you are happy doing what you're doing and earning the compensation that you earn and getting the benefits that you get, then I, as a manager, think that's fantastic. But the "business" will most likely eventually decide that's not enough. I personally manage three engineers whose answer to "Where do you see your career in 5 years?" is "Doing exactly what I'm doing now, 9-5. I enjoy coding, but my true passions are elsewhere." All three are great engineers, and I would hire them again if I move to a new company.

Just my two cents. I'm glad you're happy and I hope you continue to be happy in your role. To me, that's the most important bit about your job! Keep it up.

rjmill• 5 years ago

Great points overall. One thing I'd add if you're looking to get promoted in an individual contributor role:

Ask your manager what it would take to get a promotion. It's different at different companies.

Furthermore, asking lets your manager know that you're trying to push yourself to the next level. If you're already operating at the next level, it'll help the manager notice sooner. If you've still got some ways to go, your manager may be able to help you find opportunities for growth.

The worst cases would be where your manager can't help promote you (no matter how much you deserve it) or your manager actively thwarts your advancement. In the former case, asking early can help ease feelings when you get your promotion at another job. In the latter case, your manager has probably been thwarting you all along. But now you know. Don't waste your time trying to impress someone who will never acknowledge your efforts.

If you want to advance, talk to your manager. They can help. If they can't/won't, find an environment that's more supportive of your growth.

izgzhen• 5 years ago

I think we should not follow the mindset of doing X things to get promotion. The most important thing is to know the whys behind promotion, and combine that thinking with what you want out of life. Think top down, as if you are running this company, ask yourself how do you decide about promotions and why.

caturopath• 5 years ago

You will never get a promotion or raise if there's no formal performance review process and career ladder.

This has not been my experience. I've gotten promotions and raises at multiple companies without a formal ladder or meaningful performance review process. Sometimes to more-senior roles that were invented for me and played to my strengths.

In my limited experience, promotion/leveling at small companies without much formal process has mapped way closer to people's actual skill level and accomplishments than at large companies with formal process.

You can't skip two steps ahead into whatever skills you wish you could learn.

I don't get how this title summarizes the insight of this passage.

busterarm5• 5 years ago

the difference is that in companies without the formal process, you have to ask for your promotion/raise.

Seems a lot of engineers aren't comfortable with that. I'd just like to say that patio11 is 100% correct about profit vs cost centers. Working at such a company in a profit center let my double my salary after 6 months and again after another 6 months.

That would never happen in a company with a formalized review process.

shubik22• 5 years ago

I generally agree with the advice in this article; I feel like a lot of the pushback here is people who don’t like the system this post is describing. That’s totally fair! I share many of those complaints. However, in my experience the post is correct as a descriptive matter.

The one point I’d take issue with is:

You have to be performing at the next level for several months.

This is definitely what you’ll be told (and was the party line at the FAANG company I recently left). I don’t think it makes a ton of sense though (so you perform at N+1 for a month, get promoted and then slip back to N?). And in my experience, it’s more often used as an excuse to avoid promoting people when they should be promoted and then avoid having to justify the outcome. (“Of course I agree with you that you’re performing at an L5 level! But you need to do that for just a little longer, wait until next cycle.”)

This is a somewhat cynical view, and doesn’t apply to every situation. However, I would advise any engineer who gets told this line (you’re doing great, just a few more months!) to not accept it as fact and push back against it every single time.

lazyant• 5 years ago

The most important thing to get promoted is to 1) have a boss that supports/wants your promotion. For this you have to do some 2) decent, visible work outside your team, so that your boss can confidently go to peers and own manager to propose your promotion.

Things I wish someone told me about getting a promotion

Related Stories