Promotion Q&A and Videos

I have been making progress towards meeting senior level competencies. My manager is aligned and wants to put me up for promo at the end of the year. However, I’m looking for a third project in Q4 to really nail down my case. Additionally, I want to provide more impact and learn how to define new initiatives. I love creating “swim lanes” for my teammates and leading projects that grow their scope. How would you recommend:

1. Coming up with a project idea
2. Vetting the project to make sure it has enough scope for a senior level (or staff! I would love to provide more impact)
3. Vetting the project to make sure it has enough impact for a senior level

I have a lot of ideas for step 1, but am struggling to choose which are appropriate to pursue. Previously, I built a reusable web component at a company wide scale, and am working with a cross org team who wants to use it. I am also working on a technically complex web authentication project that has potential to be used by other teams. Both of these project were scoped by me (with some guidance from my staff mentor) and my manager has communicated they are senior level projects. I have built good relationships with my teammates, our direct stakeholders, and several cross-org engineers. I’m also exceeding expectations at my current level, so there isn’t anything to worry about there. However, I feel like I’m hitting a wall and need to figure out the next project that will turn my promo case into a slam dunk. Any advice? I’m a frontend web engineer if that helps. :)

Hi team, as per my current situation there are cycles for promotion in August and in Feb. I am targeting the Mid-Level title and was told to wait until next Feb for Mid-Level instead of coming August.

I asked for data points and was told I needed more time to mature. I actually would have appreciated some actionable data points if there were any, so that I and my manager can track progress.
I have the following 2 pointers :

1. On a personal front I want to aim for the promotion in Feb and want to let my manager know my intentions and pick up work accordingly however I don't know how to put it across.

2. I would have liked if there were some actionable data points to nail promotion since my manager didn't mention anything explicitly, and I have read and watched guidance about your career is in your hands so wanted to know how can I extract these pointers from my Manager?

I ask these because 1:1's currently . And would have appreciated it if there were actual data points /action items

Would highly appreciate insights from folks on the platform . Thank you :)

Hi Taro,

I've just been lucky enough to receive an official promotion to Team Lead for my current team. It's a small company (~100 total headcount) and a small team, and I feel like my manager and I have very tight alignment as do I and the rest of the team, and thankfully there's no obvious/major problems (i.e. interpersonal problems, poor performers, etc). However this is the first time I've ever had direct reports or really been in any form of an official leadership role, and I'm concerned I'm going to instantly run into obvious traps/issues as a result.

I've read "Engineering Management for the rest of us" by Sarah Drasner, which has been really helpful in thinking about the role, but I'm really interested in hearing any advice people can provide to help me avoid fanning any hidden flames.

I’ve been e3 for about two years. my manager put me for promo last two halves but it didn’t go through .(due to a bunch of reasons which are ambiguous , the feedback I got both times was - you’re doing 4 work but we have a quota) I believe there was some politics involved but that’s water under the bridge.

I’m going to reach e4 end of this half. I’ve lost trust in my management chain. I do think my team may have good opportunity and everything else is good but I don’t think my manager is invested in growing me.

I’m very ambitious and would like to get to e5 asap. What would be good ways to set myself up for success?

Right now, I have to write a growth plan to grow from mid level to senior engineer in my company. For doing this, me and my lead have decided to write down a growth plan for me.

While searching for effective techniques, I found SMART framework and also how to set your goals. But I'm wondering if we have a growth plan expert here? And what framework/template/steps do they follow?

Recently I was watching Alex's , and to get promoted to the next level, it was essentially about acquiring an N+1 behaviour set.

That got me thinking, instead of N+1, why don't I observe and emulate an N+X behaviour, so that I can get promoted to N+X level?

If a Junior Engineer emulates a Staff Engineer behaviour set, won't he be promoted to Staff level at a rapid rate? (A Quadruple Promotion)

Taking this example to the extreme, if an engineer in Meta emulates the behaviour set of Boz, won't he be promoted to CTO?

Why or why not?