Concerned About Promotion
I'm an L3 software engineer that been working for a bit over 1 year. During this time, I've had three managers and am about to get a fourth that will be hired externally.
I did not have great experiences with my past two managers. The team was also a bit of mess during that time (we would have oncall rotations that would average ~100-200 pages/week, 60+ page hours). I have a strong working relationship with my current manager and the team situation is better.
We had discussed putting me up for promotion this past July, but that didn't materialize due to concerns about time at level and shipped impact. I was a bit disappointed but understood. However, I did receive Exceeds ratings and was been told that I am performing above my level.
The current plan is to put up my promotion packet in the next cycle. I was operating under the expectation that, barring unforeseen circumstances, this should go through.
Additionally, the company has been planning to hire an external manager that would report to my current manager for the past ~3-4 months. I expect that this position will be filled by end of year. I expressed concern about context loss for the January promotion packet, but my manager assured me that he would ensure the packet put up was strong and all context would be written by him personally.
However, recently my manager has been hinting concerns that the packet may not go through in the next cycle and we may want to think about creating a strong packet in the cycle following.
I am concerned about my promotion not going through in January and having to rely on an external manager (who I don't know and who doesn't know company processes) to put up a packet in the next cycle. I believe I've demonstrated my ability to execute and perform at L4 level for many months at this point already, shipped some meaningful and high impact projects, and feel that I should be promoted in the next cycle.
I trust and really like my current manager, but I want to communicate these concerns in a professional way. How should I do this?
Additionally, should I also start to look externally? I'm quite confident in my Leetcode/interview skills, have a Tier-1 school on my resume, and work at a FAANG tier company currently, but I understand the market is bad. Would it be possible to get an L4 level role externally now or in the next six months?
![Senior Software Engineer [E5] at Meta company logo](/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffirebasestorage.googleapis.com%2Fv0%2Fb%2Ftech-career-growth.appspot.com%2Fo%2Fcompany_logos%252Fmeta.jpeg%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3Da7a5bcc0-e178-4b5b-b71e-09bf6c6aefae&w=48&q=75){kind=small}
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Discussion
(1 comment)- 22 months agoEng @ Taro
Additionally, should I also start to look externally? I'm quite confident in my Leetcode/interview skills, have a Tier-1 school on my resume, and work at a FAANG tier company currently, but I understand the market is bad. Would it be possible to get an L4 level role externally now or in the next six months?
I think it's worth interviewing externally because a lot of the promotion process is out of your control.
Given that that you went to a tier-1 school, are working at a FAANG-adjacent company, and have a few years in the industry, you are in a good position to get interviews.
You should have two parallel tracks going: 1. trying to improve your chances as much as possible to get promoted at your current company, while 2. interviewing externally just in case everything falls through.
You want to hedge against the case where you are waiting ~6 months for the January promotion cycle results to come back (it sounds like the cycle starts in January, but it might take some time after that before you get results?). The issue there is that there's a chance that the results don't come back with what you expected, and you've wasted time that you could have been interviewing.
Even though the market is bad, it doesn't hurt for you to try to look for opportunities externally because you'll at least get information for what you need to work on. The chance for success is >0% if you go through the interview process, but it's 0% if you don't try.
I trust and really like my current manager, but I want to communicate these concerns in a professional way. How should I do this?
I would let your manager know that you want to leave no doubt in the committee's mind that you deserve a promotion and that you want to work with them regularly to ensure this. Your manager mentioned that they have concerns about your current packet. Can you go over with them projects that you can work on that would seal your promotion? I would also go over all of the promotion criteria and make sure there's a strong case that you are operating at the next level currently.
