How important is people axis for E3 -> E4 promo?
I'm pushing for the E4 promotion in the next PSC cycle, and I've gotten some feedback that I could shore up my people axis contribution. Given that, I was wondering how important people is for this promo and how I can get points on this axis as a growing E3. People axis contribution seems harder given the hiring freezes (e.g. it's harder to be a bootcamp mentor) and the fact that the main intern season is over.
![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
(2 comments)- 02 years agoMeta, Pinterest, Kosei
For E3 promo, people axis is not weighed that heavily.
- As a manager, I'd say the standard is "does this person put in a good faith effort to help the team and answer questions?"
- Another way of phrasing it: don't be an asshole.
As a manager of an E3, I would not expect things like bootcamp mentorship or intern management, but those things certainly help. Doing those means that you're exceeding expectations on the people dimension instead of just meeting expectations, which is what the majority of people would get.
- 02 years agoRobinhood, Meta, Course Hero, PayPal
The expectations on people axis for an E4 MA (i.e. an E3 pushing for E4 promo) is quite low. This promotion is ~80% Engineering Excellence oriented. Here are some of the more common ways I've seen E3s growing to E4 meet the people axis requirement:
- Take on a successful intern (there's always some every season with co-op programs)
- Onboard teammates and work with SWEs thinking of joining your team
- Answering questions in Workplace for your team and org
- Build strong relationships with other ICs
- For front-end engineers, this generally requires a good working relationship with the designer (mainly working with them to flesh out designs to cover all cases) and maybe the PM as well.
- For back-end and infra engineers, this generally means getting to know other engineers and maybe partnering with them closely on some tasks. A common healthy working relationship I see with back-end engineers is getting to know front-end engineers to build high-quality client-server protocols.
The last one is the most important and can (and should) always be done, which is why I highlighted it. To help with that, I highly recommend watching my series on Effective Communication.
