What is the best way to let my management know I am looking for internal transfer?

Question

For me i am looking for promotions. I architected, led a staff level project successfully with 5 engineers working with me over a period of 5 months.

Nor one person had a bad thing to say about me or the project and everyone agrees it was a major step for our team.

To be fair, I had a troubled relationship with a principal engineer who namecalled me in a public meeting with my engineering manager in that meeting and I decided to stop talking to him (i would avoid going to meetings with him instead of confronting him)

The principal engineer gave my managers feedback that I am trying to hoard information.

Now my manager is giving me the feedback that I don't go along well with more senior engineers (which is not true, it is just 1 person). I was denied promotion even though more senior engineers than me who I led are getting promoted.

There is also some resume driven development going on at the management level and pe level which is what I was asking questions about.

This was the reason for strong resistance against me and product.

From my end I have tried to normalize my relationships. But it seems my hard work may be better rewarded elsewhere.

I don't want to say all this but am curious how would one let their managers know that they are looking outside within the company. The reason for letting them know is they will get an email when I apply internally.

Rahul Pandey · Accepted Answer

Are you exploring both internal and external opportunities in parallel?

How do internal transfers work at your company? If your manager has a lot of power in choosing/blocking your next team, then I'd honestly prefer an external job change. Given your troubled relationship with the manager, it'll be hard to have a clean break from them (also depends on the size of the company).

If you do want to do an internal transfer, I'd definitely give your manager a heads up and frame the conversation with a few of these points:

You're grateful for the time you spent on the team: the experience you had and the learnings you had.
Talk about the team/project you may join, and why it's exciting (you should do this thinking before meeting your manager). You don't want to make it seem as though you're primarily leaving the current team. Instead, you want to make it seem as though you're excited about where you're headed.
Talk about the benefit to the company. You can bring up the issues you've had with the Principal Engineer since that's no secret. Talk about how this will allow everyone to move faster and get more done.

Some other great discussion about team switches:

What is the best way to let my management know I am looking for internal transfer?

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