Promotion Q&A and Videos

My manager and skip both put me up for a promotion, but I was told it was blocked because it is not in the budget. They seem to empathize with me and was told there is a possibility for promotion during the midyear cycle but it's not certain, so I don't want to get my hopes up.

I'm really disappointed because I been working hard and taking on additional responsibilities that are beyond the scope of my level. I have received feedback that I am a "top performer" and "workhorse" of the team, so this is a hard hit to my morale. I feel I have done everything I could do, but it seems like there is nothing more I can do and that is what's bothering me. I been trying accept that is out of my control but it lingers in the back of my mind.

I have read several articles on becoming a Staff Security Engineer or Principal Security Engineer, and I understand that career growth is not just about personal aspirations but also about aligning with the organization's needs. In my current situation, my goal is to increase my visibility within the organization. I believe I've spent enough time working internally, but a significant part of my visibility in the security community is still pending. My ultimate goal is to enhance visibility, establish a brand as a security engineer, exert influence, engage in cross-collaboration projects, and grow my presence in the community. To boost visibility, I realize I need to engage with the community by writing blogs, creating tools, giving talks, and attending conferences.

I've observed exceptional performance by certain engineers and have often wondered how they can think outside the box, achieve skip-level promotions, and grow exponentially within the company. Do they have mentors? How can one find a mentor, and how do you determine if you need a mentor?

How can I start this journey and find the motivation to do so? Additionally, how can I maintain consistent motivation, as motivation may fluctuate? For instance, after two weeks of hard work, there might be a dull and weak period, and then you need a kickstart to regain the curiosity you had the week before.

I do find curiosity in my current role and the nature of work as an Application Security Engineer, but sometimes I also think, should I explore a bit of change towards offensive security or red teaming?

Furthermore, my personal passion and motivation always lead me towards delving into technical aspects. How can I align more with the business needs of the organization and develop my business acumen skills? How can I develop multiple skills to operationalize application security engineering in a team?

In my current location, there are limited job openings for security engineering positions, making it challenging to switch roles. What are other possible options for me in this situation?

In summary:

• Is there a roadmap to grow as a security engineer within the organization, gain influence, create a personal brand, and secure promotions?

• How can I enhance my visibility in the security community and maintain consistent motivation?

• If I find myself stuck in my current role, because of limited openings in my current location, what alternative things can I explore?

• Given that many interviews for security engineer positions now include coding rounds, is there a structured pathway for enhancing coding skills specifically tailored for security engineers?

• How can I maintain consistent motivation, as motivation may fluctuate?

• How can one find a mentor, and how do you determine if you need a mentor?

• How can I develop multiple skills to operationalise application security engineering in a team? What does even operational excellence mean?

Any insight will be highly appreciated.

Hey,

I have 12+ years of experience and would like to move to management ladder. I have been working with my manager for over a year to get there.

Couple weeks ago I got to know that my manager is leaving the company. I am worried that with his departure all the effort I put in over the last one year would be wasted. My manager mentioned that he has recommended me as his potential replacement to his skip(Director) but he(manager) is not sure if the company will back-fill the position or not.

My departing manager gave me the following suggestions so that I stay on track with my career goals:

• Have regular conversations with the skip(Director) and VP so that they know I am very much interested in moving to leadership positions
• Keep HR folks in the loop too, so that they can spot/help me with any managerial positions opening up outside of my org(different team in the company)

I have monthly skip level 1:1 & have mentioned this interest of mine(moving to management ladder) to him.

I am not sure how frequently should I talk to VP & HR as well as how to bring this career aspiration of mine to their notice. Should I have monthly sync's with VP & HR personnel too?

I have been generalist my whole career, I have moved from front end web development --> platform as a service web development --> microservices cloud development and now as a ML engineer, all on different tech stacks. I am pretty late in career now, 12-15 years in. What do you recommend, in terms of going forward, do I have a chance with trying to be a staff, or should I switch to PM/EM role? I would eventually want to be a good EM.

Hello,

I joined my team as a new grad engineer a year back. Recently, in my 1:1 conversation with EM, he brought up talks about a promotion to next level and a plan to execute it in next couple of months.

Although, I think I am getting better in my current level, I don’t wish to take on added responsibilities of next level from this year, due to some personal problems.

My question is, how can I communicate this to my EM without coming across as someone who is not willing to grow or worst an employee just quiet quitting?

Also, as someone who is new to the tech industry, what are the disadvantages of delaying your promotion?

I started working as an entry level engineer at my current company a little over a year ago.

I'm working with my manager to aim for promo in this next half (cycle would take place at the end of the year) to go from L3 -> L4. We both feel reasonably confident about putting up a packet. I also really like my manager and my team. I feel that I'm learning a lot and have decent WLB. Additionally, the L4 compensation range at my current company appears to be near top of market.

However, the L4 -> L5 promo timeline at my current company appears to be somewhat slow (2.5-3 years) and there's always some risk that the promotion doesn't go through this cycle.

Is it worth passively looking for jobs on the side to cross promote to L4 or should I just focus that time and energy on building a stronger promo packet for this half?

Which choice is better for long term career growth in FAANG, especially senior to staff?

1. A team of extremely talented engineers (where showing an impact would be very hard)
2. A team of decent talent (but hardworking) where it might be easy to stand out

I know the way I’ve framed the question makes it more like option 2 is better; but, I would love for hear your thoughts.

I recently accepted an offer as a full-stack developer for Atlassian (P4). I have about 2 years of experience.

My first company was about 12 people (all engineers, no teams) and my current company is about 400 people (about 20 engineers, with my team size being 5 people). The team I'm moving to at Atlassian has about 100 engineers in total, and the team I will be on should have around 10 engineers I have been told. The hiring manager said that the teams are made up mostly of mid-level and senior engineers.

What can I do to make sure I get up to speed in ample time and be able to make an impact? I would like to become very career focused starting with this job and focus on advancement. My main concern is that maybe my experience in only smaller teams at smaller companies will cause friction for me as it will be a big adjustment.

Hi Team,

My team has a really great manager who I've been working under for past 3~ years who has aided me in fast tracking my career growth, however there will be change in structure, and our team will be led by a new Manager. As a result, I'll be required to build up the relationship with the new manager, earn trust, etc.

However, at the same time I'm worried that all the progress I've put forwards to build a good case for my promotion might get lost as I've been doing a lot of work that doesn't directly reflect in overall Team's Yearly planning such as drastic improvements in OE (Saving multiple SDE weeks yearly), many architectural upgrades to existing systems (as a clean up activity while working on my main project) etc.

I feel these data points might get lost: How can I ensure that the transition between managers will not end up affecting my long term growth plan? I still have 3-4 weeks till the transition is complete.

I'm on a small team attached to a specific fund at a hedge fund (there are many different funds both in the main org and subsidiary orgs). Due to compliance reasons, my specific fund has been firewalled off from the main hedge fund so we don't have leaks and conflicts etc, and as a result our codebase and infra are entirely separate.

Generally, what can engineers do to grow if they've been placed on teams that operate outside the main engineering org? Is the solution just to transfer to the main org eventually?

Background:

Our team inherited a set of products which are full of spaghetti code and bad design. We are currently building a high visibility and high impact project based on the backend of this system.

Although the main project UI goes on-track, some critical backend design flaws will hinder product performance and reliability within a couple of months - maybe close to or right after official product launch, which will turn our whole effort into a joke since we have executives' eyes on it.

My progress this year so far: (besides my roadmap item commitment)

• 1. Identified a system hotspot, finished analysis & design, and convinced our EM to rewrite this module (currently 95% finished by a junior engineer.)
• 2. Rewrote 1 foundation module to eliminate legacy design flaw (ended up with less code, less complexity, same performance, more system reliability.)
• 3. Design and rewrite another foundation backend module to address legacy design flaw & unblock development of the next milestone
• 4. Leading on technical design and discussion of a re-architecture for the overall backend end to end flow. (simplify design, improve performance)

NOTE:
- I tried to delegate 2 & 3, but no other engineers can do them after a few try since it's too tightly coupled with the rest of the system.
- our team lead is championing for all these work, which is how we are able to make room for them

Benefit of these work:

• accelerate other engineers' work in the system
• cut clean with the legacy system design flaw, improve product reliability and performance
• ensure our team's win on the high visibility project that built on top of this backend
• easier oncall for the short run or long run

My questions:

• In terms of performance review, my manager thinks this is better engineering work, while I think is closely tied to the success of our main project. What kind of evidence do I need to convince him? (My EM is not very technical)
• From his tone, I sense he thinks better engineering work in considered "lower priority contribution". Is this true? How do I communicate the importance of code/design quality with him?
• I'm trying to reach the staff level promo, does this initiative demonstrate any trait for the next level? (I'm not doing it for promo, but my EM's neglect on this makes me pretty frustrated because refactoring and rewrite is such tedious and painful work... I want to make it count)

Thank you!

My first order priority is to ship great projects and have a strong narrative behind them, one that can help in future interviews when switching companies. Does it make sense to also pursue promotion (a move to Staff in my case) as a core goal? I know that this promotion can take a while, and I've been told Etsy falls under this bucket as well.

Right now, I have to write a growth plan to grow from mid level to senior engineer in my company. For doing this, me and my lead have decided to write down a growth plan for me.

While searching for effective techniques, I found SMART framework and also how to set your goals. But I'm wondering if we have a growth plan expert here? And what framework/template/steps do they follow?

Hello!

I used to work for a large fin tech company but recently got a job at a client-based company. They flew me into the office for an onboarding week and the culture and people are fantastic. I even made a decision to move from DC into the Houston office just cause of the people and weirdly I realized that my personality is a bigger asset than I realized. I enjoy chatting with people, and a Director of Product even told me "I don't usually hold 1:1s with the new folks but your personality was shining so bright!"

I only give this info cause I'm not very confident in my technical skills. While I got a great performance review in my last company, it was because of my determination, my willingness to go full stack when no one wanted to, and cause I was very close with the Product and Design team. Tbh that's also cause I don't really nerd out about state management or the newest framework or whatever like everyone else seems to. I enjoy frontend cause I like making pretty things and that's it. I'm not the person who is constantly thinking about how to make our testing process or pipelines better. I can learn those things if I need to but it doesn't come naturally to me.

I have admitted some of this to folks at my new company and they've been super cool about it. They even suggested I dabble into a Technical PM role. That's still something I'm chewing on cause while it's silly, I love typing things on my pretty little IDE and I like fewer meetings. But I don't imagine coding forever. In my company, a senior engineer gets to lead a project, manage people, and talk to clients. I'm aiming for a senior role cause I think it aligns more with my natural skill sets as I believe my soft skills are stronger than my technical skills.

My manager became a senior recently and told me it was because he was willing to do whatever client project came in whatever language that was required. He's the same age as me and only started coding 3 years ago after a BootCamp. This is his only company but I'll admit, I feel like he's a stronger engineer than I am. I've been in the company for a few weeks, and I've been getting my stories done quickly even though their tech stack is new (but everyone is fast) but I'm not sure how to even become a Senior since I don't know if I will be able to become the rockstar engineer that my manager is. I will move earliest in September so I'm remote until then. Projects also come and go so fast. Any ideas on how to standout?

I recently changed teams(been over 4 weeks). The current team did not have a manager/sr. engg manager to report to, and everyone reported to an Sr. director. This sr. director reported to a VP in my org.

Unfortunately during a round of layoffs, our director got laid off. So, now imagine my team is "headless".

Our VP did mention that they will try to bring in someone interim. Say that happens, and I am able to make a good connection with this "new" but temporary manager, but after a few months, we get a "permanent" manager, my questions and/or concerns around these are

1. This would be my first time I will be in this situation mine is a tier-3 company, also not a tech-first company, is this how even Big Tech works? How do you all navigate this change, and continuous (non-technical) context switch of leadership?
2. As you might have guessed how do I best make sure that my accomplishments(refers to the brag doc*) gets clearly communicated between my old manager, me, and my new manager?
3. Does it make sense to even "talk" about getting promoted with the old manager if I have been on this team for 4 weeks?
4. Re. to point 3, some notes about my accomplishments: I already was able to find bugs in their pipelines, and communicated about this to cross functional teams too, and everyone acknowledged this, and we have been able to avoid a major failure while shipping to prod environment, thereby saving us time(in months). What I am trying to say is I have been making(in my humble opinion) impact from day 1. I also am contributing to an internal library which will be used for onboarding several teams(cross regional too) in my company. I am the second developer on this repo. I already am keeping track about all of this in my "brag doc", I have been clearly communicating about my work with my scrum master, my current Principal Engineer, and other engineers.
5. This is painful to write but, we have 3 engineers including me who are on the same level as mine(level 2), 1 Level-1, and 1 Principal Engg. Now, I am not comparing, but how do I put my best foot forward so that I too get a shot of pushing forward my promo packet along with others? There is a notion in my company(I dont know about Big Tech) that we "tend to" not have more than 2 level-3 engineers on a team, so should I just give up of not hoping to get promoted, and instead keep my head down and wait for new year or until I quit? Sorry if I sound negative, but its what it is.

Some more information about me:

YOE: 6+ this is what has been killing me from inside, 6+ yoe, and stuck on Level-2, I agree things were not hunky dory with me(been through a lot of personal s***), and couldn't focus on this side of my life.

I agree this is my mistake, but I know myself, and I know I can make it work,I can push myself and make it work, but asking for a guidance is all.

Appreciate you all for reading till the end, can't thank this community especially Rahul,and Alex.

I'm currently SE2 in my company, which is the earlier side of mid-level and am trying to make progress to SE3 and then senior engineer. Knowing that, how can I start making headway towards that SE3 promo? Do I need to be able to draw the line between my work and business impact?

I’m currently a relatively new senior engineer at Pinterest trying to get to staff engineer. The area where I need the most help is the direction axis of the next level. How can I meaningfully shape the vision for a decent project?

I’ve recently been applying to various jobs, just in case of an unexpected layoff (golden parachute). Lately, I’ve been motivated to upskill as a developer. I’ve now reached the two-year mark at my company. After the reorg, I have a new manager, team, and director, and I really like this team. My performance over the past six months has been better than it was with my old team. Recently, Google reached out to me for an interview, but I haven’t really studied data structures and algorithms (DSA) due to work. My performance hasn’t been great, and now I also have a phone interview with Meta.

On the plus side, my company's stock has surged, and we’ve received bonuses, raises, and promotions. In my last 1-on-1 meeting with my manager, he told me I should be more independent and that my performance is great (hinting at a promotion)—fingers crossed. My family and friends are encouraging me to interview with both Meta and Google, but I don’t really want to leave my current company.

Recently I was watching Alex's , 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?

I just watched . Great material! In a couple of session, it was mentioned that Infra teams works differently, e.g. there is not as much XFN. Can you shed some light on how Infra team promo works?

If your organisation is not promoting you, what can be the possible reasons? Does it make sense for one to join another organisation at a higher level or is it a recipe for failure?

I know for sure that one of my friends got that at OCI -> Oracle switch. What about Faangs?

Hi team, as per my current situation there are cycles for promotion in August and in Feb. I am targeting the Mid-Level title and was told to wait until next Feb for Mid-Level instead of coming August.

I asked for data points and was told I needed more time to mature. I actually would have appreciated some actionable data points if there were any, so that I and my manager can track progress.
I have the following 2 pointers :

1. On a personal front I want to aim for the promotion in Feb and want to let my manager know my intentions and pick up work accordingly however I don't know how to put it across.

2. I would have liked if there were some actionable data points to nail promotion since my manager didn't mention anything explicitly, and I have read and watched guidance about your career is in your hands so wanted to know how can I extract these pointers from my Manager?

I ask these because 1:1's currently . And would have appreciated it if there were actual data points /action items

Would highly appreciate insights from folks on the platform . Thank you :)

I spoke to my manager about putting a promo packet up this half for an E5 promotion. I didn't rush into this. I've watched Taro's E5 promo crash course, have listened to my manager's feedback and consistently improved myself each time.

Now I feel ready. The Staff Engineer (TL) I work with has also vouched for me and said on the engineering excellence axis I'm performing way better than the other E5s on the team and he's not concerned about the other axes either. I've shared this with my manager. I've been performing at this level for about 2-3 months now and will continue to do so for another 2 months before perf season.

For some additional context, I joined Meta in Feb as an E4 and was aiming to get to E5 in 1 year. I know this seems aggressive, but that's because Meta down leveled me.

My manager said that I need to continue doing this for another half. Is this usually the case? Maybe I set my expectations too high by reading Alex's Linkedin Posts about mentoring engineers to E5 so quick :)

FYI on the internal career pages it says "1-2 quarters (or more)" which could mean absolutely anything