Engineering promotion, working hard is not sufficient
A common mistake engineers make is to simply work harder on what they're already good at. It's important to realize that not all factors for promotion are within your control.
I’ve seen many great engineers struggling to get promoted. They’re doing an amazing job for their team. Yet, they are not getting to the next level.
In my experience with promotions, a common mistake engineers make is to simply work harder on what they're already good at. It's important to realize that not all factors for promotion are within your control.
In this post, I will cover aspects that engineers can control, but may not always realize. In the second part, I will share my thoughts on external factors and their role in career advancement. Here, I will focus on promotions for individual contributors. Not all the things mentioned here might be applicable to managers.
What you can control
There are several aspects of your work that you can control to accelerate your progress to the next level. I highlight these three because they work together to enable you to gradually increase your impact within the organization.
How you do your job
You were hired for a particular job, it might or might not have a formal job description. Anyway, there are expectation of your role. If they aren’t clear to you, talk to your manager. Clarify your responsibilities and carry out them well. They are foundational for your future growth. If you’re not doing this part well, the rest doesn’t matter1.
Once you have figured out what is expected of you, hone your skills by learning the technologies and tools required for your day-to-day job. The better you know how to perform regular tasks, the more people you can mentor and share your knowledge with in the organization. Investing in this learning will make you more efficient and free up time for other activities. For instance, you may know all the pitfalls involved in provisioning a new service, while others may spend days figuring it out. This is an opportunity to increase productivity for others engineers.
Build knowledge about the domain
In which industry do you work? What are the industry standards? Does your company adhere to them?
What is your company’s business model? What is the most limiting factor to grow the business? Who are the competitors, what are they doing? Who are the people in the business side, what problems are they trying to solve?
These questions might sound nonsense for an engineer. Indeed, they are way beyond the technical scope. However, it’s worth pondering on questions like these. It will help you to build a mental map of your area. You will understand what success looks like, what brings value, and also the unsolved issues in the company. This opens up a variety of opportunities for you to make an impact.
Maybe you can build a tool for sales people, that will save them hundreds of hours. Possibly there are ways to automate the laborious effort of customer support. It could be that, people who talk to clients need the data you can easily query. Things that you take for granted, might have a huge value for people in other roles. It’s your opportunity to fill gaps and smooth out inefficiencies. Which leads us to …
Identify projects and driving execution
When you are proficient with technologies in your company and know the landscape well, you probably don’t have problem onboarding other engineers into your area and explaining why it’s important to deliver these initiatives. These position you well for being in charge of a project. If you’ve got so far, you’re probably the best person to decompose new features, handle a complex integration, or re-architect existing systems to enable future growth. For sure, this stage will require skills that are less technical, like project management or influencing people. All these are trainable.
I have never seen, in my career, someone proposed a reasonable plan for solving a problem in the company and be told to stick with their job. However, I have seen several projects get closed or slowly die because the person in charge had left the company.
Factors outside your control
Things that you can control require commitment from your side to stay in the company for a while. It’s a crucial decision. You’ll not have that many jobs in your career. It’s important to assess that the current area meets your career ambition. Consider the next points.
Organizational context
Seniors and staff+ roles, are not just reward for the great job you have done. These roles address certain issues in the organization(e.g., alignment, execution of big initiatives, etc).
Furthermore, the career ladder can be compared to a pyramid, as the higher you climb, the narrower it becomes.
How many engineers are in your company? How many of them are seniors? Maybe 1 out of 10. How many staff and principal engineers? Maybe 1 out of 50.
Do you see signals that your company will need more of these roles? Are they actively hiring? Is there a fast-growing area, where you can make an impact? What role does the engineering play in the company – is considered an investment or a cost-center?
You might be in the wrong place to get to the next level. By the way, it doesn’t mean you should leave, you can still practice skills that will be needed in the next level.
Scope of your team
In many companies, promotion requires that an individual is already performing according to the next role expectation. The only way to verify it, is to provide an evidence that you’ve done something that corresponds to the next level.
For instance, a senior position may demand expertise in designing scalable systems. If your team naturally has this kind of work, then you are fortunate. However, this may not be the case if you are working on a system for internal customers that does not experience a heavy load. Alternatively, your product may be in maintenance mode and have already reached its potential.
Alignment with your manager
You know you want to grow, but does your manager know that? Are they on your side? When you get promoted, you will likely report to a different person. Is there a succession plan in place? How much do your aspirations overlap with your responsibilities on the team? Are you receiving the support you need? All of these topics need to be discussed between you and your manager. You should see real signs of their support, such as them providing you with opportunities to exercise skills required for the next role. This depends heavily on how much trust you have with your manager. In a best-case scenario, you should feel comfortable discussing these topics.
Promotions can be tricky. Your commitment to the work is necessary, but not sufficient. Other organizational factors may support or limit your growth. In my experience, trying to push through while ignoring these factors leads to great disappointment and frustration.