Getting Promoted To IC9

In this lesson, Philip explains what operating at the E9 level looked like during his time leading Meta’s London engineering office. After arriving with just 12 engineers, he helped grow the organization to roughly 400–500 people—a shift that dramatically changed the complexity, ambiguity, and time horizon of the decisions he was responsible for making.

• Greater seniority means solving increasingly ambiguous problems. As organizations grow, decisions become less black-and-white, requiring leaders to navigate complexity, competing priorities, and uncertainty.
• Senior-level impact requires thinking much further ahead. At E9, Philip was making data-driven decisions about hiring and organizational needs as much as 18 months before their effects would be realized.
• Scope is measured by both breadth and time horizon. Progressing to the highest levels means influencing larger groups of people while identifying strategic problems and opportunities that others may not yet be thinking about.