Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 23] - Sell Yourself, Claim Your Wins

So many software engineers don't realize that perception and reality are 2 very different things that often drift apart. The painful truth is that perception is far more important than reality. This lesson teaches you:

- How software engineers can do amazing work but their teammates actually think they're mediocre
- Why you need to put in the work to get full credit for your work, especially for promotion
- Why you shouldn't only wait for huge launches to communicate progress
- Which mediums to use when it comes to sharing progress updates
- The many benefits of high-quality project updates

For more concrete tactics on writing a top-notch project update, check this out: ["How to get more visibility on work?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/XA0X51AypDLCeVeleJv4/how-to-get-more-visibility-on-work/)

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 22] - The Project Credit Formula

You have been given your projects for the performance review cycle, and they're okay but not amazing. How can you make the most of this opportunity and cobble together a case for promotion? This lesson teaches you:

- The definition of scope, another tech term that is commonly thrown around but horribly misunderstood
- The overall formula to determine how much credit you get for a project
- How to be creative and get the most credit from every project you work on
- How projects of a certain scope can either by increased by 1 level or decreased by 1 level

Paper Reading: Self-Discover - Empowering Large Language Models with Autonomous Reasoning Structures

In this talk, we delve into Self-Discover, an innovative framework revolutionizing Large Language Models (LLMs) by enabling them to autonomously discern task-specific reasoning structures, thereby empowering them to tackle complex problems without explicit prompting. 

At the heart of Self-Discover lies a self-discovery process, wherein LLMs independently select and amalgamate various atomic reasoning modules, such as critical thinking and step-by-step reasoning, into explicit structures to guide their decoding process. The broad applicability of these self-discovered structures across diverse model families—from PaLM2-L to GPT-4 and from GPT-4 to Llama2—underscores the framework's versatility and adaptability, suggesting seamless integration with an even wider range of advanced AI models. This holds promise for a unified approach to autonomous reasoning in artificial intelligence.\
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Whether you're an AI researcher, engineer, or simply curious about this achievement in AI research, join us as we explore the intricacies of Self-Discover and its potential implications for prompt engineering and advancing the capabilities of Large Language Models in complex reasoning tasks.\
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Paper: [**https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.03620.pdf**](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.03620.pdf)

Lucia on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucia-mocz-ph-d-35a98a1b6/>

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 21] - Attribution

The best software engineers don't need to be told what to do; they're able to come up with impactful projects on their own. This lesson teaches you:

- Why ideas are worthless and how engineers can come up with great ideas and get 0 credit for them
- The hard work you need to do to convert an idea into an actual roadmap project
- What it takes to get massive credit on the attribution axis for projects

Here's the case study Alex referred to in this lesson: [\[Case Study\] Revamping Oncall For 20 Instagram Engineers - Senior to Staff Project](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/esVxIGXYC5BdgxXUkO6H/case-study-revamping-oncall-for-20-instagram-engineers-senior-to-staff-project/?playlistId=EWIo3USNcsgXbCs5PS0h)

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 20] - Quality Of Delivery

Anything worth doing is worth doing right, and this applies to software engineers as well. This lesson teaches you:

- Why quality of delivery is such an important project axis when it comes to promotion, especially to senior levels and beyond
- The immense value of smooth delivery when it comes to your perception among engineering leadership
- Concrete angles to consider when maximizing your quality of delivery

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 19] - Depth Of Contribution

Just because you got a meaty, high-impact project doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get rewarded a lot for it when it comes to your promotion case. This lesson teaches you:

- Why volume of code contribution often doesn't correlate with the depth of your contribution and the credit you receive
- How to figure out if your project contributions had lots of depth
- Concrete examples of hard tasks that have great depth and are greatly rewarded for in promotion cases

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 18] - Organizational Complexity

In order to get promoted to senior engineering levels and beyond, you can't just be good with code, you need to be good with people too. This lesson teaches you:

- A basic, straightforward framework to understand what the organizational complexity of your project is
- How to calculate the quantity of your organizational complexity
- How to calculate the quality of your organizational complexityIn rode

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 17] - Technical Complexity

In order to get promoted, especially to senior levels and beyond, you need to work on technically complex problems. But here's the tricky party: How can you as a software engineer determine if a problem has enough technical complexity? This lesson teaches you:

- A simple framework to determine the technical complexity of a task
- The classic system design principal of *"Dumb client, smart server"* and how it relates to technical complexity
- How product and infra teams differ when it comes to their scope and how it affects promotion

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 16] - Impact

Impact is a word that's constantly tossed around the software engineer community, especially at Meta. But what exactly does it mean? This lesson teaches you:

- The definition of impact and how it varies between bigger and smaller tech companies
- The 2 core industry terms you should know when it comes to impact
- How junior and mid-level engineers are rewarded when it comes to project impact (spoiler: they usually aren't)

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 15] - It's Not Just About Impact

*"I'm not getting promoted because my manager isn't giving me the proper projects"* is one of the classic excuses of software engineers who want to get promoted but are definitely not functioning at the next level. This lesson teaches you:

- Why impact has devolved into a near meaningless buzzword
- The right mentality to have when it comes to picking projects and thinking about impact
- The 6 axes that determine how much you get rewarded for working on a project (only 1 of them is impact)

To learn more about identifying the best projects and prioritizing properly, go through this discussion: ["How to figure out what the most important projects are?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/CgCPA60bDDHoOteN7Lmb/how-to-figure-out-what-the-most-important-projects-are/)

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 14] - Observe Other Engineers

Don't know what you need to do as a software engineer to get promoted? Observe engineers who are better than you! However, this is a surprisingly difficult skill to develop. This lesson teaches you:

- Which engineers you should observe and how to find them
- What you should be looking for when observing other engineers
- What "silent hero" work is and how very senior engineers do a lot of it
- The concrete avenues you should look at when trying to figure out why a higher-level engineer is superior to you
- Why getting jealous of engineers above you is a colossal waste of time, even if you are truly better than them

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 13] - Create An Expectations Plan

Don't leave your promotion to chance - Getting promoted as a software engineer should be as close to a contract as possible. This lesson teaches you:

- Why you need an expectations plan to get promoted efficiently
- The right mentality to have when it comes to crafting an expectations plan
- How to organize your expectations plan, particularly at bigger tech companies
- What a top-tier expectations plan looks like with a real, in-depth example from Meta

If you're interested in the growth plan mentioned in the video, here it is: [Meta E4 -&gt; E5 Growth Plan](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/tech-career-growth.appspot.com/o/articles%2Fmeta_e4_to_e5_growth_plan.pdf?alt=media&token=e13d88fd-9356-4c20-a229-cf0cad78a9af)

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 12] - Talk To Your Manager

In order to get promoted, you almost certainly need your engineering manager on your side. However, this is much said than done, and many engineers mess this up. This lesson teaches you:

- The importance of being deliberate about promotion
- Why your engineering manager is so important to your promotion case
- The fundamental principal to remember when it comes to asking for promotion
- What to do and what *not* to do when having that promotion conversation with your manager
- How to react gracefully and effectively if your manager doesn't believe you are ready to start really thinking about promotion

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 11] - Step 0: Establish Yourself

So many software engineers want to move up the career ladder as soon as possible, but they're way too hasty when it comes to seriously thinking about promotion. This lesson teaches you:

- The embarrassing failure mode to avoid with bringing up promotion
- How to know if you have established yourself as a rock-solid performer
- How long you should generally wait before asking about promotion

To dig deeper into becoming a high performer, check this out: ["What's the difference between a low performer software engineer and a high performer?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/nMxx2EMVIlJbl1oK4SGu/whats-the-difference-between-a-low-performer-software-engineer-and-a-high-performer/)

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 10] - You Need More Junior Teammates

Every software engineer pushing for promotion understands that they need more senior teammates to emulate as role models and seek mentorship. However, many software engineers don't realize they need more junior teammates too. This lesson teaches you:

- Why you need more junior teammates
- How scope dynamics work on an engineering team
- The classic "pyramid scheme" of growth that a healthy engineering team runs
- What healthy and unhealthy teams look like when it comes to more junior engineer presence

To learn how to scale yourself through more junior engineers, check out this incredibly in-depth explainer here: ["How can I help juniors?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/OzbQJCzLPbOKTEqpeSxF/how-can-i-help-juniors/)

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 9] - You Need More Senior Teammates

As a software engineer, it can be confusing on what's actually needed to get to the next level. Having more senior teammates helps tremendously with that. This lesson teaches you:

- Why more senior teammates are important
- What the ideal senior teammate looks like
- Healthy vs. unhealthy teams for promotion when it comes to seniority

After you find a more senior engineer to mentor you, follow the advice here: ["How do you get the most out of mentorship?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/IbuZydz0QzsVVqESVaxQ/how-do-you-get-the-most-out-of-mentorship/)

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 8] - Avoid Level Overload

Not all teams are created equal when it comes to promotion opportunity, far from it in fact. Don't sleep on this crucial angle when it comes to planning out your promotion plan as a software engineer. This lesson teaches you:

- The 2 types of level overload to avoid and which one is worse
- How to a team that has a healthy mix of levels vs. one that doesn't
- Why level overload is bad, particularly when there's a lot of engineers at the same level you are

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 7] - The #1 Piece: Engineering Manager

In order to have a real shot promotion, you need an engineering manager who's in your corner. Despite this, so many software engineers index entirely on company and product space, ignoring this crucial angle. This lesson teaches you:

- Why your engineering manager is so important for your promotion case
- The #1 concept to remember when evaluating a manager to support your promotion
- The exact differences between an engineering manager who is great for your promotion vs. one who is more risky
- How to get the real information you need to judge an engineering manager

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 6] - An Easy Way To Understand The Next Level

What does it actually take to get promoted? A lot of software engineers are overwhelmed with all the possible ways to grow, which ultimately leads to inaction. This lesson teaches you:

- A straightforward mental framework to understand why you aren't at the next level yet
- Questions you can ask yourself to identify gaps in your behavior to level up

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 5] - Underleveled? It's A Feature, Not A Bug

You're doing better than almost all other engineers at your current level, at least the ones you can easily compare yourself to. So why aren't you getting promoted? Well, it might actually be dangerous to do so. This lesson teaches you:

- Why if a company is doing promotion properly, getting to the next level always involves fundamental behavior change
- The Peter Principle and how it explains the danger of promoting engineers based on their mastery of their current level
- What lagging promotion is and why it's important, both for you and the company
- A framework to understand what it means to go from one level to the next, paired with an in-depth example of the mid-level to senior transition

If you want to learn more about the concrete differences between engineering levels: [\[Taro Top 10\] Understanding Engineering Levels](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/e9rjATPbSyvRPsukXiHn/)

Tech Career Growth Videos

Our instructional videos provide software engineers with insights needed for career growth. Masterclasses go incredibly in-depth on a specific tech topic while case studies are real examples from established engineering leaders.