Promotion Q&A and Videos

Hi,

I got promoted last half to IC5 and have been leading impactful work streams within our team. I am enjoying my new role and work. In our last 1:1, my manager asked if I wanted to lead a very high priority org level initiative that has impact across multiple teams and suggested this could be a potential staff level project. While this is a great and unique opportunity for promotion, I am also nervous about taking this up because:

1. I am scared this might be more challenging than I am ready for and failing this would put our Org's key launches in risk.
2. I just got promoted and didn't want to actively pursue promotion as I wanted some time to settle in and become a solid IC5 first.

Wanted to get your thoughts on this and what you would do in my position? And if I say no, should I be worried about my manager passing me up for potential opportunities in the future? Thanks!

Hi Taro Community!

I am in a very similar position as mentioned by someone here: and from the responses it is evident that switching teams/companies will be an unavoidable step soon. I am currently at an entry-level position (will be completing 6 months at current company soon) and wish to look for roles at the next level of hierarchy (for instance my current role is equivalent to SDE 1, I wish to look for roles similar to SDE 2 or equivalent next). Few points:

• I am planning to complete 1 year at my current company, so by the time I switch I shall have ~1 yr of experience as an entry-level software engineer (apart from other experiences as internships/side projects/etc.)
• Firstly, is it realistic to prepare for mid-level at the current position? Do companies hire entry-level SWE's with at most 1 yr of experience for mid-level?
• If yes, is it advisable to apply now (or 6 months down the line)? I do not wish to work as an SDE-1 (entry-level) in another company by leaving my current one as it will only lead to further delays in promotions (I believe it takes at least a few months to set a good impression in a new team that you are capable for a promotion)
• How can I best utilize the next 6 months before I aggressively start applying to companies? I understood the point related to side projects - is it advisable to build side projects in the tech stack my team is using, or should I expand my scope to include new technologies I am interested (but not actively working on right now)?

Any insights/suggestions/interview tips will be really appreciated. I have very less workload right now and really want to make the best use of time to switch further.

Thank you!

I've been an SDE 2 at Amazon for the past 4 years, consistently exceeding expectations. However, I'm feeling burnt out, and it seems like support for my growth is lacking. I'm contemplating taking a career break, but uncertain about the current state of the industry and whether I'll find equivalent-paying jobs upon my return. What advice can you offer?

Hello, I have 3 years of experience and I'm an SDE II at Amazon. The Q1 promotion results are out, and I'm surprised to see many fast-track SDE III promotions. It seems to me that when the time is right and stars align, SDE III promotion can be quick, and if you stay in one team long enough, it wouldn't be hard to get to SDE III.

80% of my team are SDE IIs, and I don't see my possibility of SDE III promotion in the next 2 years unless:

1. I find some big opportunities that bring huge revenue to the organization
2. There's a major reorg, and I'm assigned to a new team, and the new team expands
3. My current team shrinks for some reason, I stay, and my team grows again. Interestingly, my team's senior manager and 2 senior engineers actually fall into the third bucket.

What do you think? Should I just relax, keep pace, and grow my skills, hoping for a promotion by job hopping when the market recovers?

I had a question on how does one exhibit impact and staff level behavior as a Senior engineer.

The staff engineers on the team code as much as me. Although I am a lead for a team, there is distinction between me and how another lead is being perceived. I am happy for them.

They have been in the company way longer, they advocate, question and are not afraid to speak up.

But code wise, I have way more commits. We are both leads, but I can tell they are on the way to becoming staff, and it is the behavior. I am not able to put a pin on it.

How can we be perceived of being extremely valuable and influential to the team without crunching code.

What are common limiting beliefs that you all believe software engineers have that aren't true that typically cause them to hold themselves back or causes them to not progress as quickly as they'd like?

I would assume that at each stage there are some beliefs that we have that cause us to not progress, I am currently most interested in SDE2->Senior, but would also be interested in hearing other common limiting beliefs to progress past senior as well!

Hi Team,

tldr: My skip suggested that I come back with Promotion Doc ready by this Tuesday.

Context: My manager was let go in the reduction of force couple of months back and all 7 of us now report to skip. This is the first 1:1 I had with Skip .
She asked me if there is anything she can do as we are overburdened with work and stress is on the rise. In reply , I asked her suggestion on promotion conversations which stopped with my manager's departure. I am SWE L3 working in the team since Jan'22.

Question: I copied the ladder doc for L4 , but I am unable to make a solid doc out of it. Skip said I will have 5 minutes to present and if she likes my doc then she will put my name at the Promotion Board. Any best practices that I should follow?

I have covered the below in my promotion doc:

• Mapped the work in my 3 projects to various sub categories of ladder in L4.
• Got the peer feedbacks from my 1 coworkers, 2 Seniors and 2 XFN teammates.
• Pasted the list of awards that I received - Two Top contributor awards in Q3.

My previous manager never formally agreed to work on any promotion doc. He did agree that I am working at next level and was always happy with my work. I have watched multiple times, it is awesome!! Except for getting Manager work on a shared doc I have done some of the suggested items already.

I’m considering leaving a startup because of 2 things I’ve seen on Taro:

1. faang+ as a long term investment in your career
2. .

2019 Goal of Joining a Startup

• Learn a lot about how to be a good software engineer

• Be an early employee at a startup that makes it big

• Quickly become an Engineering Manager because I like working with people, helping others

2023 Thoughts on Staying as an Eng Manager or Joining Big Tech

• Dream of being an EM, is happening on small start up scale with a growing number of reports who like my management so far

• The dream is to be early at a unicorn and that is close, but

  • The new standard should be 10B not 1B

  • Doing this with a first job is not necessary and high risk

• In 2-4 years I’d likely still be a engineering manager from a no-name startup

• L5+ engineer in big tech may fit well with my personality right away based on Taro, where I love collaboration, helping people, product and technical challenges

  • I like not just spending 80% of my time heads down coding and that may be possible and expected right away in big tech, no need to be a manager

• Getting a 2 FAANG+ badges on my resume over the next 4 years would be more way more worth it than even a million dollar payout from a startup

  • Could have many doors opened for high level roles at startups OR faang depending on what I feel like at the time

  • Big tech stock offer may also easily be worth 1M in 4 years

Priorities 2019

• Supportiveness of team

• Growth opportunities

• Company prestige

• Maximum outcome (Risk)

• Compensation

• Company ethics

• Product space

• Technical space

• Work-life balance

• Level/title

• Benefits

• Location

• Stability

• Remote work

Priorities 2023

• Supportiveness of team +0

• Work-life balance +7

• Compensation +2

• Company prestige -1

• Growth opportunities -3

• Stability +7

• Company ethics -2

• Remote work +6

• Level/title +1

• Benefits +1

• Location +1

• Product space -5

• Technical space -5

• Maximum outcome (Risk) -10

Taro priorities video is

Startup Stats

• 150 people, 25 engineers (doubled from a year ago)

• Fall 2021 had 50% investment at 250M valuation

• Dec 2022 450M valuation

• Revenue has since doubled in last year to 125M

• Profitable per years with 20% gross margin

• Growing industry

• Not venture backed, so not expecting 20x growth

• Estimated in 2-4 years to sell for 1-2B

How to evaluate a startup video

Current job stats

• Team lead for a year after 2.5 years as Software Engineer

• 0.1% equity, 100k cash

• 18th employee, 4th engineer

• Dream of being an early employee at a unicorn, seems close

• Would lose all stock if I leave before acquisition/ipo

• Biggest point for discussion: ***2-4 years of being manager at a small startup may not qualify me to be an EM in big tech***

FAANG+ Offer

• L4 equivalent

• 190k cash, 350k stock over 4 years, 60k sign on bonus

• Work life balance is supposed to be great

• Great food, big tech lifestyle that I’ve always heard/dreamed about

• Would work to be promoted to L5 in 1-2 years, then manager a year after that.

• Being a new person at a fresh company sounds very exciting now, I know the business fully and the tech stack of the current place to the point where many things Ive see before and feel stale/boring

Questions

1. Based on my write up about values, priorities, liking collaboration, would I like being an IC L4 coming from being a manager where I have solid tech skills but strong soft skills that I enjoy using.

2. If I stay at the start up would I be able to get a big tech EM offer with 3-4 years of management experience at the start up? Note this question shows what I’m learning now as a manager.

3. Should I down level myself from L5 to L4 if I think I could get the offer at L5 but am not sure about the certainty of success? (Question asked separately )

I have been working on writing a case for my promotion and one of the biggest challenge that I face is bragging about my own achievements. I took the advice from Rahul's other post and started keeping a daily todo/brag doc. Its a bullet point list of things that I do on the daily basis and has been helpful.

But when it comes to creating a full blown promo case, I feel there is a need to focus on the impact and actions in a more verbose way and I really struggling with that. Maybe I need to learn more documenting skills.

Any suggestions or even resources I can refer to improve my writing skills would be appreciated.

I'm an Android engineer working on an infra team, and like every other Meta E4, I am working towards the E5 promotion. Because of this, I'm spending a good amount of time building up the non-coding skills needed for the people/direction axis, doing things like XFN alignment and project management.

My question is how "all-in" should I go developing these behaviors: How much of an engineering excellence commitment do I still need to maintain? How often should I still be landing diffs?

Sorry if this seems like a rant. Trying to collect my own thoughts.
I have been at my current company as a mid level backend engineer (a startup - around 10-12 years old, went public recently) for around 4-5 years and have a total of 6 years of work experience.

I feel like there has not been much career growth. Got my first promotion after an year of joining the company and not much thereafter. Thus, feeling very lost about where to go next from here.

In the current climate, we had our recent round of layoffs in the organisation. Also, I don't feel very good about some of the things in the organisation such as the stuff I am working on. I don't feel I am learning enough. It is just business requirement - one after another, that too often getting cancelled. Last project I worked on for 3 months, got cancelled after that due to changing priorities. Stock price is plummeting as well. I feel like the best way forward is to restart my own learning journey - what are your thoughts? I used to be one of the top performers in my current and past company and even got awards around 3 times in last 6 years. I tried to work hard for promotions as well, but even after multiple rounds of my manager asking me to do things such as leading the team, multiple XFN projects, infra level revamps etc. - I did not get a promotion. I asked my manager if there is a list of things I should do consistently for a good enough time and if then, we'll be able to make a case for me. He said, that I am trying to gamify the system, but I was only trying to set goals for me. Now, I feel somewhere midway, I have lost my motivation. Feeling a little depressed and often evade work, just coasting to get by.

I want to take charge of my life again and be positive. Quite often I think about other career choices, but have always been in love with CS (and math in my childhood, particularly due to them being intellectually challenging). Just want to make up for the time I lost, and want to do some things I am proud of. I often think of my life being pointless in last couple of years. And want to get a renewed sense of motivation and be excited for the things I work on.

I feel like joining a fast paced place or somewhere I can learn a lot (even outside of work) might help. Don't feel very happy about my current situation though.

I'm a Staff Engineer in the satellite telecommunications industry where I am responsible for the strategic success of the software products in my department. My organizational responsibilities and weekly calendar align almost perfectly with the . I'm sure that it will come as a surprise to no one that getting to this point in my career was an intense and conscientious journey. I am self-taught, I fell in love with programming as a child, and I have never attended a University. Things are not even close to perfect, but I am happy with my career so far.

My day-to-day work does not involve much programming, but I spend the vast majority of my time communicating with Tech Leads, Scrum Masters, PMs, TPMs, EMs, etc. to coordinate and accomplish different tasks. The rest of my time is split between communicating and aligning with high-level product stakeholders, such as my boss, and mentoring engineers. When I do code, it is because there is some experiment I want to run, i.e., I might create a prototype of a new product or feature that could massively impact a departmental OKR.

Outside of my day-to-day work, I dedicate as much time as I can to learning and practicing new technical (programming, cloud), professional (LinkedIn Learning), and domain-specific (satellites, AI) skills. I also consume a lot of content here on Taro and I often participate in company and community programs that I believe in (change maker programs, diversity and inclusion programs, etc. as a participant or as a coach).

I would love to have input on this aspect of my career as a Staff Engineer who would like to be a Fellow one day. As I make progress in my career, I find that (obviously) the expectations others have of me, in regard to being at the forefront of technology and really knowing what I am talking about in domain-specific (science-heavy, business-heavy) topics, have grown exponentially. I've already adapted my approach to developing domain-specific skills, for instance, instead of relying solely on MOOCs, I also now have regular sessions with domain experts (business folks with advanced industry-relevant university degrees), something my boss encourages and expects me to continue to do. I have now also considered the prospect of going to university myself, something my employer would sponsor.

So the question is, how can I best invest my personal development time so that as I progress in my career I can continue to meet, or even surpass, exponentially growing expectations?

I'm sure someone will have a great idea of how to approach this challenge. Also, there is a quote I appreciate from Alex Chiou that gives me hope that I can do it.

It wasn't due to natural talent or anything - I'm honestly not that smart.

Hi Taro,

I've just been lucky enough to receive an official promotion to Team Lead for my current team. It's a small company (~100 total headcount) and a small team, and I feel like my manager and I have very tight alignment as do I and the rest of the team, and thankfully there's no obvious/major problems (i.e. interpersonal problems, poor performers, etc). However this is the first time I've ever had direct reports or really been in any form of an official leadership role, and I'm concerned I'm going to instantly run into obvious traps/issues as a result.

I've read "Engineering Management for the rest of us" by Sarah Drasner, which has been really helpful in thinking about the role, but I'm really interested in hearing any advice people can provide to help me avoid fanning any hidden flames.

I recently started a side project that could have an org level impact soon within this year. The feedback for the prototype is pretty good and I got a green-light to put more bandwidth in it.

I used to think once I get the good work done, promotion should come naturally. But both my manager and skip manager are telling me to leave proper documentation and communication as evidence for promotion - docs like PRD, roadmap planning, status update etc.

I usually do communications pretty well, so their feedback make me wonder if I missing something for a staff level promotion.

• What kind of evidence is being valued in a staff promo packet? Any differences between senior and staff promo packet?
• What do I need to highlight and keep track of if I'm creating scope outside of daily work?
• What kind of data I should keep track of to quantify the impact? How do you usually learn about finding the matrix to track?

Thanks!

I've been on ~5 teams during my ~4 years at Meta, and I'm wondering if I need a mindset shift when it comes to choosing a team and staying there. Is it more on Meta that teams don't fit or should I make a bigger effort to stay on teams longer and establish myself there? I'm also looking to get to E6 someday, so the team switching makes things tricky.

Hey folks, I recently got promoted to L5 (Mid Level). Looking for any advice in general on how should I approach my work, what to look for etc. Any words of wisdom that people would like to share?

TIA

PS: Apologies if this sounds too generic. My intention is just to learn from other people's experiences. Any advice is welcomed.