A Quadruple Promotion
Recently I was watching Alex's excellent course about promotion, 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?
Discussion
(2 comments)- 4
4 months agoStaff Eng @ Google, Ex-Meta SWE, Ex-Amazon SDM/SDE“Behavior set of Boz”: You mean burning billions of dollars on dead end projects, rejecting inclusivity, being utterly self-assured while being protected from those at the very top? If you can swing it, I guess you can try to find out.
That’s 1/2 joke, 1/2 sincere anger at his behavior.
Promotions aren’t an evaluation of how far to promote you, the question is only N+1. If, without any experience, you tried to emulate Staff behavior it would be… sad. Being able to influence at that level with no practice, talk about systems and their behaviors with first-hand experience that you’re missing, etc isn’t tenable.
What’s true is I was stepping into places a Principal (L7) belonged as an L5. It ended up with me being told I was way overindexed on leadership and didn’t have tech artifacts to support an L6 promo. It isn’t helpful to get too far over your skis.
In the near-impossible scenario that you are successfully performing your whole job at a level that’s N+3 or whatever, know it won’t get you promoted to that level for years. I’d guess no fewer than 5, but I know there are wunderkinder. Going elsewhere and aiming for N+3 will be rough. N+2 is a huge reach. N+1 is very possible, maybe promo to N+2 in a year if you’re killing it, but still another couple of years to N+3. It could still save a couple of years to bail.
Is this real, or a joke?
- 44 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
A big part of promotion is not just about exhibiting the behavior and skill of the target level, but also:
- Having enough scope
- Having the trust of colleagues and leaders
The issue is that, even if you were air-dropped into a company and had the skill equivalent of the CTO, you wouldn't get that promotion because you'd be lacking on the other dimensions above.
Trust in particular is something that fundamentally takes time to develop. Trust is one of those words which becomes hard to define, but I'd describe it as "Repeatedly following through on commitments over a long period of time."
So, almost definitionally, this takes time to develop, and likely will be earned piece-meal (you earn progressively more scope + trust over the years).
A great related discussion on pitching for promotion here: How do I pitch for a promotion?
