Promotion Q&A and Videos

I have been at my present job for a year now and I have been doing pretty well at my work. I have never had a discussion about the next level of responsibilities with my manager due to the fact that we have never had a one-on-one before (he has around 150 reportees and is always busy).

I am very keen on moving to the next level and I have a chance to ask for it in an upcoming one-on-one. I would not want to sound demanding or cocky but at the same time I would like to show that i deserve it. Apart from talking about my work, what would be the best way to convey to him that I am ready to move to the next level or at least to ask him to keep me on the radar and to help me grow so that i can get promoted soon.

Thanks a lot for the wonderful promotion courses, Rahul and Alex.

Getting promoted to an L6 role seems like it requires us to build a lot of skills and behaviors. What are some of the skills or behaviors that you observed that take a very long time to master in the journey of getting promoted to L6 and beyond? It would help to be deliberate and focus on mastering these skills/behaviors early in the career to get the promotions faster.

In the previous cycle, I wanted to be promoted to senior, but my manager stepped in relatively late into the process to let me know that my promo packet had gaps. Because of this, I wasn't put up for promotion and I'm still at SW2.

This all caught me completely off-guard, and my goal is to make sure this doesn't happen again in the next performance review cycle. How can I make sure that my manager and I are completely aligned going into the next promotion process, and I'm not hit with any last minute surprises?

I’m an electronics and communications engineer, I’ve been working in low-level software and hardware. I want to understand other domains – other technical teams and also dipping into PM strategy. I think this is limiting my growth in Amazon.

I see many experienced developers finding flaws in the existing architecture and also refactoring them to make it much better. I don't think I have yet gained the ability to identify loop holes in complex projects. However, I am able to fix issues if someone else calls them out pretty quickly.

How can I improve on this? What are some good resources to develop this skill?

I got feedback from my manager that I can do more to increase the scope of my influence within the company, and this involves getting more recognition and visibility from leadership for my projects. How can I do this?

I am joining Amazon soon as SDE 2. At my previous job, I was a higher end SDE1. I have owned small internal services at my previous job. I would like to know what are some of the things that can be expected from me as SDE 2 @ Amazon ? I am expecting more ownership, but is that the only thing? I did ask the same question to my manager but he seemed very chill about it and said that he cannot say anything at the moment, maybe in our 1:1s we can discuss more clearly. Also, if you can let me know how the expectations vary across levels for Junior and Mid level and what can I do to hit the ground running and create a good impression from the very start, that'd be great. I am sure that you must have seen various E3 / E4s at Meta. If you can relate to what exactly was the difference that you saw, that'll be super helpful.

Promotion is one of the most difficult and nuanced topics, so there's no way any course can absolutely cover 100% of all possible scenarios. If you have any questions about , please ask them here! I'm happy to talk about:

• What gaps you may have to get to the next level
• How to create additional scope in your team
• Whether a prospective team you're considering looks good for promotion
• Why you're getting stuck at your current level
• Maintaining that dialog with your manager about promotion

Hey,

I have 10 years work experience, and I have previously worked at a FAANG that had no levels (big clue here!). So regardless of the scope of work, we were Senior. That kinda played at a disadvantage to me when I found my self looking for a job due to a layoff and visa issues.

I believe I am working at staff capacity, leading 5 folks, driving initiative. But I feel like I am unable to "show" Impact. We have metrics at each level. I have addressed the same with my manager, went over the metrics and identified gaps and took action.

I got lukewarm response, at best from other staff engineers and management. No idea if at all I will be considered for promo, and I get no response besides stating, it is a lagging promo.

Right now, I have no visa issues, so I can hop around other companies, I want to move back to a FAANG+ company because of higher pay.

Question is :

How do I ascertain my promotion?

and which of the following is a good bet:

1. Move to staff at Intuit -> Move to (Meta / Google/ Netflix) as L6
2. Move to (Meta / Google/ Netflix) as L5 -> work towards L6
3. Move to staff at Intuit -> Move to (Meta / Google/ Netflix) as L5 (as they down-level, at this point might as well move now)
4. Move directly to (Meta / Google/ Netflix) as L6 ( Highly optimistic, almost delusional )

Here's the experience I have so far with leadership:

• I schedule meetings between teammates to clarify things for everyone when people seem to be lost or start asking a lot of questions in a trend. This usually helps unblock them.
• Most of my success comes from cross-team communications in terms of knowing and finding the right people for local tasks. I also jump on opportunities myself which usually end with good results. But I haven't yet been able to make a significant impact within my own team.

And here's more details about my current team:

• My team is myself, a PM, one full-time developer, and two other developers/Solution Architects that juggle other responsibilities part-time.
• I've had issues with a particular person who leans too aggressively sometimes questioning the impact of the work items I'm proposing. I'm able to work it out with them, but this relationship could probably be improved further.