It seems like both A and B trust you and value your opinion. You can definitely try arranging a 3-way discussion and resolving this yourself before escalating to the EM if you feel comfortable doing so.

Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Stripe

Harish Thiagarajan

That’s unfortunate but I’d argue that resolving these kinds of interpersonal issues falls under the job description of the EM. If this is something you feel unequipped to take a first pass at yourself, it’s crucial to the health of your team that your EM is made aware of this.

Sounds like you’ve already had success raising interpersonal issues with your EM, and this situation is no different. I’d continue to do that.

Gotcha, in that case, I always feel like honesty is the best policy. I’d be upfront with your manager that, while you appreciate their desire to uplevel you, you have personal obligations at present that would make it difficult to take on additional responsibilities (and you shouldn’t have to go into detail about what those are). If you genuinely feel like you’re up for the challenge after dealing with the personal issues, I’d let your manager know that as well.

This way, you communicate what is going on and get on the same page while also not coming across as unenthusiastic about your job or the promotion.

As for the disadvantages of delaying your promotion, I think this is primarily an issue in a place that has an “up or out” culture, but it seems your company doesn’t fall in that bucket.

One piece of context I’m missing from your question is whether your company has a stringent “up or out” culture. Are there time limits to getting to mid-level / senior at your company?

In addition to what Rahul mentioned, once they give you numbers and you hang up the call without committing, I recommend the following:

When I joined Stripe, I had competing offers but they were below the level of my Stripe offer (so I didn’t have “leverage” in the purest sense of the word). However, I still negotiated up my offer at Stripe to near the top of the range for my level and YOE.

How did I do this? I dug into recent offers from Stripe at my level at <https://levels.fyi>. I found a comparable offer and asked to be raised to a similar number. As a result, I increased my TC by $60k/year with about 30 mins of research. If the company you’re interviewing at also has data points on [levels.fyi](http://levels.fyi), I’d recommend leveraging them!