Promotion Q&A and Videos

When I joined the startup, I was the most experienced engineer and I had two junior engineers working with me. At that point, I had the choice to make architecture decisions and the CTO would work with me to design new systems. The systems I created have worked well, it has been 1 year now and there are no issues with them. The company has grown and we have hired a lot of seniors now. I have not been included in any new discussions like hiring, the product roadmap. Even on a project where I had taken the lead on it from a very long time (I was not assigned to it, I just assumed the ownership) now the CTO wants the opinion of another senior engineer. I'm good at infra work and have setup infra when the senior engineers are not able to do it. I'm not sure about my level either as during the 1:1s I was level as an upper mid level while my colleagues believe I'm senior. It shouldn't really matter as I want to just write code and help others, but with a proper title, I think people might take me more seriously. When speaking to the CTO about my performance, they believe that I'm doing good and probably I'm being too hard on myself. I do know I have dropped the ball at times as I have too much on my plate at times. I'm just scared that I'm becoming becoming less relevant in the company & really want to increase my influence.

I was wondering if you need to be part of a specific type of environment in order to make quick jumps in your career? Like to get promoted to senior level in 2 years. I was asking because from my experience, there seems to be an invisible social hierarchy in every work place. Other people in the team may not allow me to make these jumps since this kind of anomaly will break the social hierarchy: There is project specific information, in absence of really god wikis you have to rely on the peers in the team to provide you such information (like how are specific parts in a service working, or how is an obscure internal tool working etc). From what I see, often times they will provide small chunks of information, as much as you need to do your task, but small enough such that they still have the information and you depend on them (probably a measure to prevent others from replacing them). Envy might appear between other senior folks if you progress quicker than them and might start to backstab you (For example, you need some information from them about a piece of code they wrote in order to progress, but they might do the knowledge transfer in such a way that it looks like they told you what you need to know, but in reality you got nothing; or might tell you to go debug to figure out how is something working, and you can spend days debugging modules when it would've been an 1 hour stretch if they simply told you or there was any wiki). Manager might not want to give you extra money and compensate at your true value. If you work too much, or too hard there's going to be problems withe the peers, because you increase the bar and kind of force them to work harder too. I was asking these things, because I was wondering if I got anything wrong about these fast jumps or in general that I have a broken view about work. My first professional experience was an internship at a big tech and when got there the seniors told me that I have the same knowledge as a senior engineer, but best they could do was another internship next year (still in college).

Hi everyone, This is my first time posting on this forum, so I apologize in advance for breaking any common etiquettes. I have some clarifications to make regarding my career path. I always loved writing, and I have experience in writing for the newspaper, online blogs, user manuals, etc. over the years. I also have experience in the tech industry in full-stack development, game development and DevOps related tasks. Since I have passion for both domains, I am sort of in a crossroads in deciding whether I want to pursue a software engineering role or a writing role. I feel like being a technical writer brings together the best of both worlds, although I could be wrong. Is it a realistic career path with a good career progression? How does it compare to being a software engineer in terms of pay and work-life balance? Is it easy to switch back to a software engineering role if I feel like tech writing is not for me? Thank you!

A kind of out-there question... What is the range of possible problems, solutions, breakthroughs, insights, skills, etc. that come after you've earned your stripes as one of the best human engineers on Earth?

Hi Team, My team currently consists of 2 Pods, for one of which I'm a Pod Leader for and a good friend of mine being a Pod lead for other. I've been helping the other lead consistently in making better design decisions and providing right set of resources to help aid in making right decisions. I also consistently review their documents pre-design reviews, and have contributed to close to 50% of design decisions taken. However, I have lately been feeling this consistent help from my end would end up affecting my promo path (Due to team needing only 1 SE3 at the moment), I do not get any open credits for this except random one off instances where my friend mentions that he discussed xyz with me. My current scenario is that If i stop helping abruptly it might seem odd, and can affect overall team's health, but at same time i feel a bit demotivated with the lack of credit as this takes decent amount of bandwidth (5-6Hrs a week). How can I best navigate this situation where I can help as well as get credited for the help I provide?

My new manager has worked with me in the past for around 2 years (6-8 months as a manager and rest as a teammate) after which his team got switched. I have been working for the last 2 years (since the last time I got promoted) towards a promotion and even though organisational requirements need my team to be switched, I still want to target a promotion in upcoming year end review cycle. I have brought in several process improvements in the previous team and have tried to uplift my previous team forward in the last 2 years as a mid-level engineer. Given that the new team I would be joining is in a similar scenario in terms of code quality/processes etc. as my previous team was sometime back, what all should I do to get maximum leverage for a promotion? Do you suggest is it better to look for an up-level outside of the organisation or stay put ? What factors does it depend on?

For some context, I am a L1 with 1 yoe with experience in DevSecOps and was recently transitioned to an ML Ops role on a AI team where they have no CI-CD pipeline infrastructure and I am tasked with setting all of that up for them by myself. My goal is to hold off asking for a promotion until I actually prove myself and achieve this feat first and it’s also my long term goal to stay on this team as an AI developer, so I don’t want to bring this up with any potential negative consequences. I’m curious to hear more opinions on this matter.

I started working at TikTok last September. So far I feel like I have learned a lot but am unhappy with the work-life balance and the expectations to work long hours. I don't see a path for promotion here so I would like to move to a company that isn't under so much political pressure and the path to career development is clear. One caveat is that my official title is DevOps but I am doing SRE work. I like SRE work and would like to get that official title. I have 11 months to prepare for my next role. What should my preparation look like? What kind of companies should I aim for? I made a list from blind of the 2023 prestige companies and wanted to shoot for high TC. I am thinking that after the prep phase, I would start interviewing at companies I don't want to work at and get practice and offers so I have some leverage during negotiations. How can I connect with other SREs from top companies that I can ask them how it is to actually work there? At this stage of my life, I need to begin more focus on my social life. I have been working on my career only and I don't have the abundance in my social life to justify the work I have been doing. So I am hoping to land a role at a company with prestige, solid TC, and work-life balance so I can accomplish both my personal goals and my career goals.

They recently rolled out the Booking Career Framework, creating itemized lists on the expectations for each level, so I know what it takes to get promoted. I'm 70% - 80% that I'll get it in the next performance review cycle, but I have some concerns. My main concern is that Booking doesn't have a lot of space to grow, evident by the fact that I spend ~50% of my time on the company's migration effort to move from Perl to Java. The effort for this started in 2014 and is around 30% done. It's not a super high company priority according to my manager, but my team spends a lot of time on it, which worries my prospects about finding scope with better business impact. On the flip side, I had Java experience coming into Booking, so I am well-equipped for this migration work. For example, I was able to solve a deep image loading issue recently that required a strong understanding of default Perl behavior.

I'm pushing for the E4 promotion in the next PSC cycle, and I've gotten some feedback that I could shore up my people axis contribution. Given that, I was wondering how important people is for this promo and how I can get points on this axis as a growing E3. People axis contribution seems harder given the hiring freezes (e.g. it's harder to be a bootcamp mentor) and the fact that the main intern season is over.

I work for a very technical and niche start-up as a Frontend Developer. For context, we have 3 F.E. devs and 3 B.E. devs. I was hired as a vaguely-level intermediate developer, and after about nine months at this company, my F.E. lead is advocating for me to be a Senior developer. The only issue is that the company hasn't done internal promotions before, and they're a bit stalled whilst considering how to best handle the process. There's also some ambiguity in measuring a Front-end developer's skills - especially compared to a back-end developer; Our CEO is also a seasoned back-end developer, so he understands technical skills but is unclear on how it maps to Front-end skills. What are some things I can bring up to my company's leadership on how to measure my skills and value? Such to help facilitate a conversation around my promotion.

I joined Meta as an E5, and now I'm looking to get to E6. I want to stay on the IC track, so my goal is concretely to get to E6 and stay there, not become an M1. I know that leadership is crucial for EMs, but is it the same for staff engineers at Meta? I'm currently leading <5 engineers who are probably E3/E4, and I'm wondering if I need to expand my leadership scope there.

I was lucky to join a very competent and lovely platform team when I joined my current company. I have been working in the same team for 18 months but due to re-orgs people have moved out and we are currently 3 people and we were 9 people when we started out. We have been doing mostly maintenance work for the past 3 months after re-orgs and recently we were given a choice to work on two projects. There is one project, lets call it Project Hero which my skip level manager wants me to join. I would be the main PIC for this project and it will involve a lot of integration work and system design. This project is with new team mates and a new manager with whom I have not worked but they don't have the best reputation. However, going by FAANG level, they should be good enough to get the job done. Only downside is work-life balance might be skewed if I join here. However, if the project is a success, it sets me up for Senior level promotion. There is another project, lets call it Project Nero. This will be with my existing team but from a company perspective, it's not a very important project. But I will be working with my existing team mates who are both capable of delivering a solid project and a joy to work with. However, my work here will be overshadowed by other Senior engineers on the project. Which project should I join? I personally want to do Project Hero but not with the people present there. Also it will be challenging. Project Nero will be challenging also but more up my comfort zone. Given the current economic climate, I feel being in more important teams will help keep my job.

Hey everyone! I am looking for some advice. I have weekly 1:1 with my manager and during our last interaction, he suggested to come up with a yearly plan on things I want to achieve. Can someone shed some ideas/templates I can follow to create a roadmap or plan.

I've reached a point in my life where I believe I can live off my salary comfortably and start a family. I work at a startup that doesn't have levels but I was told this was the equivalent of a mid-level engineer. For the longest time, I wanted to make X amount of money so I can provide for my family. With my current salary, there is still room to grow but I don't have the same ambition I had with trying to get promoted. I am more focused on learning new concepts, building new apps and just having a solid work-life balance. I would still consider myself early in my career 4 years of experience. Would you recommend I try to level up to a manager or any advice on what you would recommend as the next step?

Question: "For being promoted from SWE I to SWE II, how do I take the behaviors my company has associated with each role (below) and make that more concrete for a growth plan, taking into account the changing & flexible timelines startups have?" For context, I already have weekly one-on-ones with my manager (who is new at being a manager & is also my mentor), and a growth plan (that I created with him) that roughly outlines (meets most expectations, meets expectations and exceeds expectations for my role). Additionally, keep in mind I work at a startup w/ <30 people so highly specific concrete goals set on a particular date can change in 2-3 weeks as priorities change. Also, my company has defined a series of behaviors as to what each SWE level should be able to accomplish. Here it is. Software Engineer I (<1 year - 2 years) Technical Skill - Broad knowledge of CS concepts - Focus on growing as an engineer, learning existing tools, resources, and processes Getting Stuff Done - Develops their productivity skills by learning source control, editors, the build system and other tools as well as testing best practices. - Capable of taking well-defined sub-tasks and completing these tasks Impact - Developing knowledge of a single component of our architecture Communication & Leadership - Effective in communicating status to the team - Exhibits company’s core values, focuses on understanding and living these values - Accepts feedback graciously and learns from everything they do Software Engineer II (2-6Years+) Technical Skill - Writes correct and clean code with guidance; consistently fellows stated best practices - Participates in technical design of features with guidance - Rarely makes the same mistake twice, begins to focus on attaining expertise in one or more areas(eg. embedded , testing, algorithm, support code, commlink). - Learns quickly and makes steady progress without the need for constant significant feedback from more senior engineers. Getting Stuff Done - Makes steady progress on tasks; knows when to ask for help in order to get themselves unblocked. - Able to own small-to-medium features from technical design through completion. - Capable of prioritizing tasks; avoids getting caught up in unimportant details and endless “bikeshedding”. Impact - Self-sufficient in at least one large area of the codebase with a high-level understanding of other components - Capable of providing on-call support for their area including systems that they are not familiar with. Communication & Leadership - Gives timely, helpful feedback to peers and managers - Communicates assumptions and gets clarification on tasks up front to minimize the need for rework. - Solicits feedback from others and is eager to find ways to improve - Understands how their work fits into the larger project and identifies problems with requirements.

My goal is get promoted to senior [5A], and I'm currently working remotely. My manager is okay with me working remote only, but the promo committee might not be as Uber leadership overall is investing into RTO, and my team has gone back to the office for the most part. Do you think this will hurt my chances, and if so, any tips on how to navigate the situation?

I'm trying to better understand how to select a company that has good growth opportunties. My priority is to get into a company where I can grow the fastest in my career. Unfortunately, at this time getting into big tech/prestigious companies is not an option for me and I am choosing between typical tech companies I have already watched the masterclass on selecting teams and companies My questions are as follows: In the video, it's mentioned "Growth solved all problems". It's not really clear to me why? Obviously if a company is moving backwards, then I understand, but between a company that ships products every 6 months vs every 1-1.5 years why exactly is 1 company better than the other in terms of how it impacts my growth opportunity How do I know if a company has good growth opportunities?

Background: I interned on my current team last summer and returned full-time at the beginning of this year. I've been performing well and have a great relationship with my co-workers, manager, and skip manager. However, I'm not satisfied with the level of engineering in the org as a whole. Specifically, our service does not operate at a high scale and thus the engineering constraints are very relaxed. It feels like we can get away with making poor decisions and I often think that I am not learning good engineering principles by being here. It also feels like my peers are not that ambitious or passionate about engineering which makes me feel like I don't fit in at times. As a result, I'm looking to change teams even though I am only ~6.5 months into my career. I recently did an internal loop with another team that does very interesting work with high-scale and low-latency services. The interviews went well and I was given the transfer offer. I think my mind is mostly made up on joining the new team, but just wanted to ping-pong my situation with the Taro community as a sanity check on whether I am making the right choice. I'm aware that switching teams is essentially a "soft reset" on my promo timeline. I have a lot of substantial work artifacts from my current team such as: code reviews for important feature work and docs that contributed heavily to the service we just launched. I'm okay with taking a hit to my promo timeline because in my mind, if I zoom out and view my career as a 30-40 year span, it won't really matter whether I got promoted from new grad engineer in 1.5 years or 2.5 years. What does the Taro community think of my situation? Am I thinking about this in the right way? I tried to keep some details vague as to not speak too negatively on my current team in a public forum. But I'm happy to provide more details to the best of my ability!

I’m currently relatively happy in my current role working on challenging problems, I like my technical peers and management and during my 3 years here I got promoted from entry level engineer to senior engineer (SD1 to SD3). However, given the scope and impact I provide, it feels like I can potentially make ~100k more (50% increase) with a job hop talking to multiple recruiters. The worry is that I lose the equity I built in my current role and be exposed to layoffs at the new company. Also, getting promoted to staff engineer for a similar compensation increase would probably take a while. I’m tempted to switch jobs to maximize compensation.

I've raised this concern to manager in almost every 1-1 once even in front of Director of Eng that I'm interested in more roles and responsibilities. Cuz I was not a fresher even when I joined the current company at entry level and now that I've done decent work too at current company. But manager fails to give me a path/timeline of when will I be entrusted with some impactful work. He criticises in public, and has a favourite too who uses this to influence the manager against others. Manager also wants every small thing to be done his way and he presents the whole thing as learning opportunity for me. If junior engineers are not supposed to do anything on their own then why are they even hired as engineers? Should I look for new opportunities? Or how can I take away most from the current situation?

I'm a pretty new SDE 2, and I know that the SDE 2 -> SDE 3 promotion is really difficult at Amazon. Given that, I would like to start working on this promotion as soon as possible. However, I'm new, so I don't want to make things weird for my manager and I. When does it make sense for me to bring up this topic of promotion and start working on a growth plan with my manager?

I have 5 years of experience as a “backend Swe” with the first 2 years at a company where I didn't get much chance to learn, and the following 3 years at a mid-sized company (where I have learned much more). Currently, I feel stagnant in my mid-level role and am eager to advance my technical skills. Although I've worked on modifying existing systems and made minor improvements in scaling, I haven’t had the opportunity to design medium to large scale systems from scratch. I’m contemplating whether to join an early stage startup to gain broader experience rather than being confined to a single team. However, I’m uncertain if this is the right step for my career or if it’s just FOMO influencing my decision to leave my current team. I'm also debating whether I should spend more time preparing and aim for other larger tech companies instead (wondering if there is a penalty for having too much YOE and having the expectation of a Senior)