Promotion Q&A and Videos

I have been with my current team (a platform team) for about almost 3 years now, and I believe I have build good relationships with others in the org. I am thinking about projects that can get me to E6.

So far, the projects that I come up with, feels underwhelming after talking to more senior IC. The IC either think there the ROI is not high enough, or the project is too much of BE. For other ideas, it feels like that I would have scope collision with other ICs. I sometimes feels too tired to churn through more ideas. I am not sure if this is normal, or if I would be able to succeed in my current team to get to E6. How would you decide it is time to change teams?

I'm looking to get promoted to E4 in the next cycle, but I'm worried as my impact contribution isn't very clear. I've done a lot of work, but due to churn within my org (which includes a recent re-org), a good amount of my code isn't truly in production yet. I've documented my work in Quips and tasks to show that I did it, but I'm wondering if a lack of shipped impact will hold back my PSC.

I'm at a company where we are migrating from AWS to Snowflake due to Snowflake's simplicity and cost savings.

The Team responsible for the migration and in charge of Snowflake is led by a guy who is difficult to work with. He's not unpleasant, but if he gets you on the phone, he loves to talk and take up a ton of time. I was literally on a call with him for 2 hours yesterday because he goes off on tangents and likes to hear himself talk. He also has a bit of an accent which makes it harder to understand him.

So he's a Director and leader of that team and I'm a Data Engineer on an adjacent team. As part of the migration to Snowflake, he had the company agree to license a piece of 3rd party software to move data into Snowflake. This piece of software is one that none of the Engineers in the department want to use: it's old, closed-source, no one knows it and is a dead-end on a resume. On top of that, I'm pretty sure it's completely unnecessary! I think Snowflake provides a way of getting data into it that works as well. The biggest thing is the cost! It's a whopping percentage of our cloud spend!

This director had a good relationship with the VP of my department (my former skip) who was the one who signed off on the 3rd-party software but recently left. I was discussing the situation with a colleague today and realized that since my former skip is no longer around, I could potentially make the case to my new skip, which could earn my plaudits. It's an easy way to save the company a pile of money every year (multiples of my salary).

So I'm thinking of doing a POC of how I can replace the 3rd-party. I mentioned this to my manager today, and he said we already have a 3 year contract with the vendor. I think he's resigned to the idea that we're locked in for 3 years.

If I can reproduce the functionality of the 3rd party software (just bringing in data into Snowflake), should I make the case to my new skip (who doesn't know me yet)? I'm assuming I should go through my manager first.

Should I try and share the credit with my coworkers who also don't want to use the 3rd party and would probably back me up?

Thanks!

Hi all, recently during Q1 roadmapping I chose to move on to a new workstream from a growth/independence point of view as part of working my way up to E4. (My earlier effort was a 1->100, this one is 0->1 and was decided by me, my TL and EM together), and I had a couple of questions about this move.

1. I have spent the past 6 months gaining context on a set of technologies and tools (internal to Meta) that perhaps only 2 other engineers on the team have context on.
   1. Should I do a knowledge transfer session or write up a doc to ensure all the context I have doesn't get lost?
   2. Should I allocate some time to supporting the team until I'm here on areas I gained context on?
2. There is some possibility of scope thrash since I'm also long-term supporting one of the projects part of the earlier workstream (I delivered the v0 and have been making iterative but small changes since then). Should I talk to my manager about this?
3. This is a very n00bish question: from a growth perspective, is it better to go 110% on the new workstream and all its nuances/open problems or go 80 and 20? As far as allocations go, I'm slated to be 100% on the new workstream as part of the roadmap.
4. Bonus question: should I do a year-in-review/look-back post in tandem with my self review? (This is a very Meta-specific question in a way, but would love to hear other views too!)

I see some senior engineers getting promoted to staff within 2 years. Whereas other senior engineers take 5-7+ years.

What are some hurdles that senior engineers face when getting promoted to staff engineer? How to watch out for and avoid these hurdles to get promoted within 2 years?

What’s the biggest skill to start mastering or how to set yourself up for success at an early stage to make this promotion faster?

Is it easier to get this promotion in big tech or a startup?

Does changing teams or orgs or companies delay this promotion? 

I have some doubt around my ability to capitalize on my work and opportunities to get the recognition and credit I deserve. How can I make sure that I’m doing this properly, so I’m properly leveled and promoted over time?

Here are some of the things I’m doing to achieve this:

• I have a couple of Google docs that I share with my manager where things are tracked (e.g. accomplishment by month, what’s gone well/poorly, etc).
• I have another doc is what’s required for promotion, split up into sections with objectives.

For additional context, I’m working on a big refactoring effort to move the company’s Perl codebase to Java. Is there anything I can specifically do there to get the maximum amount of points?

I heard from Tech Career Growth sessions that promotion is a main indicator. Is that the best one or are there other ways to identify if you’re truly becoming a better software engineer?

How to identify my gap to next level?

How to narrow my gap to next level?

As you climb up the career ladder (senior -> staff), this soft skill becomes more and more important. What are some ways I can keep honing it? Are there any professional courses I can consider?

I would learn to be effective and efficient at it, specially in scenarios such as public speaking, team meetings, project status, emails etc.

Also, English is not my first language.

I don't feel like I've grown as an engineer lately and it feels like I lack cool stories for promotion packages and behavioral interviews. I came to the conclusion that I don't get to work on projects with big enough scope.

The last time I worked on something that made me feel like I was growing was a whole year ago. There was another good but slightly less significant task 5 months ago, but I had to come up with it myself out of boredom (all the other alternative projects/tasks felt weak by all 6 axes of scope from Alex's "Nail your promotion course").

I'm unsure, if in my teams we actually don't get meaningful work, if the issue is with my frame of mind, I just have not been bold enough to volunteer for exciting work. But I'm sure that it's worth bringing up with my manager.

The only reason I hesitate to do it, is that I just got transferred to this team and assigned to my new manager one month ago. I feel like it may be too early for this kind of conversations, as I have not established myself enough. What do you guys think?

Just went through Rahul's amazing . Excited to learn the different staff engineer archetypes that exist.

I'm curious what your Staff Engineer archetype is. At what point in your career (and how) did you start identifying your archetype, and strengthening it? Once a staff engineer falls into an archetype, do they generally change over time, or do they fix on their archetype for the rest of their life?

I joined Cisco Meraki like a year ago as a Sr. SWE and got promoted to a Technical Leader.

I kinda did the role of a Technical Leader as a Sr. SWE like mentoring junior engs, doing lots of code reviews, keeping up the code quality, contributing to org wide projects and such. I learnt all these things from working for Meta as a L5.

Now that i got a new "Title", i have a feeling that i should do something more and different - I am not sure if i should feel that way because this is the first time i am at this level in my career. I am wondering what i should do to keep up with the expectations. When i had this convo with my Manager, got some tips but all around, it was the same things what i did before but i got repeateadly said that expectations for a Technical Leader is going to be much higher than a Sr. SWE.

I saw a whole bunch of youtube videos and blog post reg Technical Leader role but i kinda know that already, I am sure a bunch of engs already been through this already.

Any advice would be super helpful.

The company faces significant challenges regarding quality and leadership, which permeate across various areas. For more detailed insights, please refer to this .

When the engineering manager lacks genuine skills and prioritizes people management over upskilling, promotions often favor those who conform and agree rather than those with genuine merit. I have encountered disparities in privileges, such as certain engineers receiving extended remote work due to vague health reasons while others face scrutiny for slower feature delivery without proper performance evaluations.

My current resolve to stay stems primarily from the promise of an upcoming appraisal, although the specifics remain uncertain. However, the lack of clear project direction for the next six months is making me consider leaving.

Despite this, I plan to stay for the next year, which is till April 25' - focusing on preparing post-appraisal for interview and system design. My strategy involves dedicating the last three months solely to working on the "the feature that can make me visible," and put bare minimum efforts, aligning my efforts with long-term goals in big tech opportunities.

I have been making progress towards meeting senior level competencies. My manager is aligned and wants to put me up for promo at the end of the year. However, I’m looking for a third project in Q4 to really nail down my case. Additionally, I want to provide more impact and learn how to define new initiatives. I love creating “swim lanes” for my teammates and leading projects that grow their scope. How would you recommend:

1. Coming up with a project idea
2. Vetting the project to make sure it has enough scope for a senior level (or staff! I would love to provide more impact)
3. Vetting the project to make sure it has enough impact for a senior level

I have a lot of ideas for step 1, but am struggling to choose which are appropriate to pursue. Previously, I built a reusable web component at a company wide scale, and am working with a cross org team who wants to use it. I am also working on a technically complex web authentication project that has potential to be used by other teams. Both of these project were scoped by me (with some guidance from my staff mentor) and my manager has communicated they are senior level projects. I have built good relationships with my teammates, our direct stakeholders, and several cross-org engineers. I’m also exceeding expectations at my current level, so there isn’t anything to worry about there. However, I feel like I’m hitting a wall and need to figure out the next project that will turn my promo case into a slam dunk. Any advice? I’m a frontend web engineer if that helps. :)

I recently read an existing question "Do FAANG...ever hire M1 from outside?"

I am aware that M1 is usually filled internally. The part that shocked me is that the questioner stated they are a Sr EM with 10 years of management experience. I would expect they would interview for Tier 1 as a Sr EM with that background.

This relates to my own career strategy as well: I plan to move from Sr IC to EM at my current company, gain 2-5 years of experience, and consider interviewing out for promo if I can't achieve internal promo in that frame.

Am I thinking about this the wrong way? We know promo to senior for engineers by interviewing is often easier than internal promo, but is that a poor mental model for EM?

Hello, I've seen the term "maintenance projects" (basically, projects where you do bug fixing most of the time) and green field projects (projects where you write code from scratch).

I've been told that the maintenance projects are generally the ones that you want to avoid since you won't learn much.

I didn't see this view against software projects on TARO, like to divide the projects in to these categories from a high level view and I was wondering if you guys can tell me more about this business view of the software projects.

Are there other categories besides maintenance and greenfield? How can I avoid maintenance ones or recognize them?

Rahul used to say that Growth is the solution to all problems. If the company and the team is growing, then you get promotions much faster. But, currently, I guess other than AI teams, literally every other team in big tech seems to be shrinking. Due to the AI tools, lesser employees can produce the same output. There are too many layoffs in the last 2 years.

Do you think this trend of shrinking companies will continue as AI tools keep evolving?

Does this mean promotions become much harder and will take much longer for non-AI folks?

For someone struggling to get promoted in big tech, do you recommend moving to startups for faster promotion? Does being promoted to L5 and L6 in startups have a similar value as in big tech?

My manager is all supportive of my promo from L4 to L5, but I am worried that my skip might be leaving the company. I can tell my skip is in a difficult position with their boss (director), so if my skip leaves the company, my confidence of getting promo will go down (my direct manager will stay for a while, though). So what kind of considerations should I have? Should I jump ship, just because of the fact that my skip might be leaving? Thank you

Rejected for promotion based on one missing metric. Due to some conflicts, I didn't get to work on a project which would have helped me bridge the gap.

1. My manager has insisted on proposing my promotion this quarter as well. Even after not bridging the gap specified in last promotion cycle.
2. What happens if I am rejected second time? Would it affect future promotion cycles?