Senior ICs, what’s your experience with career advancement? I disagree with my employer’s promotion requirements

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tmarthal@reddit

"Promotion Driven Development" is a thing, and why there is so many new products at Amazon/Google/Meta that basically die right after they're launched (and the engineer+PMs have been promoted).

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EnderMB@reddit

This is painfully true, especially in orgs where the customer is internal and user sentiment is unlikely to seep outside of the company.

I'd say it mixes well with empire building, something that aligns well with promotion-driven development. I've seen L5's work on tier 1 systems used by millions and get nowhere, while someone builds a shitty React web app that everyone hates and gets L6 because they are riding their manager/directors coat tails further up the company.

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aruisdante@reddit

This seems bad practice to me because it’d mean all engineers in my position will be trying to do the same and that leads to the wrong kind of competition: engineers fighting over what goes on the roadmap because they want to be considered for promotion.

In practice, yes, this is what happens.

In theory, the idea is supposed to be that to show staff level impact, you need to be finding problems that actually exist, that the business has, and driving them to solution. These problems can’t just impact a single team, they have to impact an organization at least the scale of a director (or higher for each of the levels above staff). Staff level impact isn’t about execution, L5’s are expected to execute. It’s about identifying technical problems proactively, getting buy in that the problems are real and worth solving, and solving them.

The problem is that, as you’ve so rightly surmised… there are only so many actual problems to solve. This creates two problems: 1. It sets a natural cap on the number of staff level engineers a company can reasonably have. More than 2-3 per director is stretching it. 2. It creates an incentive to invent problems for the sole purpose of promotion. Not because it’s actually the most pressing business need for the company.

In theory, number 2 is supposed to be kept in check by the whole “you need to get buy in that it’s a real problem to solve.” But that doesn’t do anything about the incentive misalignment problem that in order for an L5 to get promoted, they have to be identifying and solving problems they discovered, not execute on solving problems someone else already identified and scoped out.

There is a common joke at Google that literally the only reason any new product, service or feature is ever launched is because someone was trying to get promoted to L6+, and this is why similarly so many product/service/features are abandoned, because maintaining is only L5 impact, so once the thing is launched, there is no incentive to support it.

Alas, it’s pretty much the same story everywhere. This is why L5 is generally considered a “terminal” level in big tech, and the majority of employees’ careers will languish in this level. The business actually needs people to stay at what is considered “L5 impact,” those are the people doing the bread and butter of day to day execution work.

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Swamplord42@reddit

This creates two issues: 1. It sets a natural cap on the number of staff level engineers a company can reasonably have. More than 2-3 per director is stretching it.

This isn't actually a issue but very much by design.

Companies do not want unlimited number of staff+ engineers. There's a limit on the number of ICs a company needs at that level just like there's a limit on the number of directors a company needs.

There's a reason "Senior" is a terminal level at almost all companies - there's simply not enough room for everyone to move above that level.

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LogicRaven_@reddit

The good old promotion driven development. This is how it works.

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morswinb@reddit

Same with large investment banking.

People chase over pointless new systems, because that gives headcount and promotions

But ask them to fix a bug that costs millions annually. NO won't even acgkowlodge that the system has pointless design decisions.

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matjam@reddit

You've diagnosed this 100% correctly, I had not even really been thinking clearly along those lines at my current shop but as you've described it, so it is.

At Staff level where I'm at the gap to getting to Senior Staff ceases to be how good you are at your job or your experience. I have over 25 years of experience wearing almost every hat in the business as an IC, and getting to Senior Staff at my current shop is next to impossible, because "there is no business need for another Senior Staff engineer".

And that's fine and I get it, its cool. I get paid pretty well even though my salary is effectively cut every year due to inflation, so I don't complain. But I gave up trying to push for a promotion, if I want a promotion I'll have to go to a larger org.

The only problem with that is that right now the market is flush with jobs for people with my experience - as long as I'm willing to go work for an AI company with shitty 996 culture. Fuck that.

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hoopaholik91@reddit

I would also add that #2 doesn't get put in check because everyone else is incentivized to go along with it. The engineer that wants to go from L4 to L5 loves the opportunity to execute on a bigger project. The senior manager wants to deliver a new project to get to director. It's a really messed up incentive system.

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HNipps@reddit (OP)

Thank you!

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chipstastegood@reddit

Welcome to the world of large enterprise. That’s exactly how it works and your observations are spot on - but again that’s how it works. Moving up in the levels often requires one to become a politician and an influencer of sorts. Yes, there are many people probably at your current level all looking to do the same thing to get promoted but there are limited promotion spots. Simply put, not everyone can get promoted - there aren’t enough chairs to go around. This problem gets exaggarated as you climb higher. Your organization has just told you that they value those people who can influence others and get their agenda pushed through. That’s no small skill, not everyone is good at it, not everyone wants to get good at it - but that’s what it takes to climb higher in your organization.

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Connect_Fishing_6378@reddit

While I don’t really agree with your management’s idea of what senior vs senior plus is (proposing a novel feature or product direction, fighting for it to get on the roadmap, and then leading execution seems more like staff level to me) I don’t disagree with their premise.

Sure I guess a danger in encouraging this is that people fight over getting whatever their pet project is on the roadmap at the expense of features that users actually value, but the idealistic picture is that everyone on the team has the products’ interest in mind and product leadership are smart enough to filter for only good ideas.

There’s just not really anyway around the fact that senior+ engineers do need to be able to add value beyond implement the current roadmap and propose new features, new products, new initiatives, etc.

Part of that is the creativity to come up with new ideas, and part of if is having the confidence and communication skills to convince others to support your vision. There’s just really isn’t any way around this. You can be a damn good engineer but if you can’t do the other part of it you have a lower ceiling.

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HNipps@reddit (OP)

That’s fair. We technically don’t have a Staff Eng title and the IC4 level (Tech Lead/Sr Eng II) performs the role of Staff.

I know I can do it. I just hate going on the campaign tour.

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ding_dong_dasher@reddit

I just hate going on the campaign tour.

Just to echo - think really hard about if you actually want a Staff+ type position - part of the reason this is a common promo gate is because it leads to a world where hands-on execution of development tasks starts to be a secondary concern.

Groups of humans coordinating on difficult and expensive projects is inherently politics and it always has been, really no getting out of it.

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koreth@reddit

I know I can do it. I just hate going on the campaign tour.

Staff-level positions in a lot of companies are as much about interacting with people across different parts of the company, often to convince them to get onboard with new initiatives, as about technical contributions.

A "campaign tour" is not an arbitrary roadblock; it's a preview of what a lot of the job is. (Again, this varies by company, but it's often true.) If you hate the process of selling people on things, think hard about whether you actually want a role where you'll be expected to do that regularly.

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Mediocre-Pizza-Guy@reddit

I'm a nobody, but I have been promoted to senior (more than once), technical/team lead once, and manager twice.

Here is what I've experienced....

You don't actually matter. Your performance hardly matters. What actually matters is a combination of market conditions, team composition, office politics, and (most importantly) company needs.

In almost all cases, your manager actually has very little power. When I was a manager, I had almost no power. I could give a good rating, or a bad rating, and if I tried really hard I could get someone on a PIP.

Most of the time, promotions came after someone was mostly doing the job. And they started doing the job when the company needed someone to fill in.

And a manager only has so much clout. Promotions are limited artificially, sometimes to zero even. If there are four people on my team that are performing at the next level, only one is getting promoted this cycle.

But companies know, and benefit, from this arrangement. You can give someone a bunch of extra work and responsibility and say, 'Wow! What a great opportunity for you' and then exploit that extra labor for N years before they get promoted.

The guidelines they have about reaching the next level and all that...in my experience, is just utter b.s.

In my limited experience, anyway.

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Whitchorence@reddit

The "market condition"/org condition part is overlooked, I think. If your org is making money hand over fist and massively growing you can make more mistakes and keep moving up.

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beefyweefles@reddit

People rarely admit this but seems generally true

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roodammy44@reddit

Do your management come from big tech? This sort of thing is normal over there, and makes promotion a difficult situation that generally takes years and needs political support.

This is one of the main reasons why engineers get promoted by looking for other jobs. It’s dumb, but that’s how it is.

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Whitchorence@reddit

It's just any large company is like this. How could it not be

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keelanstuart@reddit

This is why I think Google, et al, culture is toxic and hostile. FAANG encourages shitty political behavior... ain't nobody got time for that.

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HNipps@reddit (OP)

I think they’re from corporate tech rather than FAANG. The political aspect is the part I dislike.

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chaoism@reddit

Trust me faang are the same

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Whitchorence@reddit

Yes, this is a common practice, and yes, it does have perverse incentives (though what doesn't?). But realistically whether you agree or disagree you've got to play the game if you want the prize.

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Never-Trust-Me@reddit

Oh fuk

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gimmeslack12@reddit

Its all bullshit. You essentially need to turn water into wine for them to finally admit you should be promoted. They'll string you along forever at a startup, go to a public company they're much more fair there.

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obelix_dogmatix@reddit

Welcome to my world. I am a principal trying to move to Distinguished. Guess what? I need to show business impact by 1) securing funding for my ideas and 2) have the funded ideas have a positive business impact.

Imagine the competition to get your shit funded. It’s like academia all over again.

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Teh_Original@reddit

If you have to secure funding for your ideas, why not run your own business at that point?

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obelix_dogmatix@reddit

I wasn’t clear. Funding from GMs and C-suites. Not random external firms. There is “seed money” allocated twice a year by every business unit for “groundbreaking ideas”. Of course most of what gets funded never makes it to market.

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Ambitious-Garbage-73@reddit

What finally made this click for me was watching perfectly good engineers stall out not

because they were weak technically, but because the next level was basically "become a

mini politician." Once promotion depends on getting your own initiative onto the roadmap,

you're no longer measuring engineering judgment cleanly, you're measuring appetite for

visibility, coalition building, and a bit of self-promotion. Some people are genuinely

good at that and enjoy it. A lot of strong ICs don't, and I think companies underestimate

how much talent they quietly filter out when they pretend those are the same skill.

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andsbf@reddit

I came to realise, maybe too late, that promotions are not always about meritocracy, there is a lot of politics inside companies, being viewed and/or known can be more important than how good you are at solving problems.

It is a bit sad, specially for those highly competent people that are not a big fan of the spotlight. But I guess that’s the corporate dance

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Clitaurius@reddit

Same. Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

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HNipps@reddit (OP)

I feel like that’s where I’m at. I’m not interested in the spotlight, just want to ship code and have more say in architecture decisions.

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yourparadigm@reddit

If you're not interested in the visibility and responsibility of being a Staff level engineer, then you should stay at your current level.

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mechkbfan@reddit

Maybe the promotion isn't for you?

Sometimes just finding your sweet spot and quitting the corporate ladder is the best move

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Soileau@reddit

Senior SWE II is a role they put in place because they need to extend the fishing rod they hang your carrot upon.

The same with “sr” labels they put in front of staff engineer or principal engineer.

These are rolls they’ve created so you can feel good about what you’ve done and not earnestly pop your head out of the sand and look around at the broader industry and what opportunities exist outside of what is being given to you.

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Mundane-Charge-1900@reddit

And this is why “promotion oriented architecture” is a thing. Lots of unnecessary crap is being built every day in large tech companies because of this. It’s a similar story for “empire building” for managers by growing their scope to enlarge the team they oversee. It’s the only way to get ahead.

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camelCaseCoffeeTable@reddit

This doesn’t sound too out of pocket to me. They want you to expand your impact in order to move up. Presumably you’re already at the top for just being given work, and to continue to move upwards you need to understand the business and exert some influence on the company.

That sounds totally fine to me.

Senior is a terminal position. There’s no shame if you don’t wanna move to that next level. I’m a senior 2 currently and that’s what was expected of me to get promoted. I pushed hard for infrastructure changes, finally got managers and DevOps on board and convinced my project manager to open some space to work on the initiative. The very next quarter I was promoted.

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_itshabib@reddit

I think what he suggested is completely reasonable and for some spots not a high bar for a senior. Unless there is implied leadership, architecting, and mentorship involved it seems pretty straightforward for a senior. It's a competitive world, of course the world is going to be biased to those who get after it. A fair world is one that rewards people that go for it. So if I were you, I'd ask urself how u can raise the bar and do that. And ur right, there's only so many projects and much more engineers. That's what makes it fun, be the one that wins the project. Be so good management can't imagine trusting anyone else leading it.

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tyr--@reddit

Getting in initiative on the roadmap has nothing to do with engineers fighting over what goes on the roadmap nor "dominant personality types" (lol).

It's aimed at seeing if you are able to build relationships with stakeholders, understand the true needs of the business, and use that to advocate for your initiative (or the initiative brought to you by one of the stakeholders). It's about developing relationships outside of the immediate scope of your work and team(s), and get you into the habit of identifying cross-cutting concerns for the company (or at least your organization), and how can your team(s) best contribute.

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canderson180@reddit

Note, not every senior aspires to this, need some strong and disciplined doers. The last person that wanted to check promotion boxes gave up pretty quick because they felt like it was herding cats getting buy-in and selling impact. That person realized they would be happier at their level for now.

It’s a perfect storm of relationships, skill, opportunity, and success within an org that makes climbing the ladder possible. Not everyone wants to drive that much forward unless they genuinely enjoy that kind of challenge.

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HNipps@reddit (OP)

I think this is me right now. I’d rather put extra effort into personal projects than push for promotion.

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mechkbfan@reddit

From experience, I'd say both are correct

It'd be lovely if everything was based off merit but the reality is office politics and personality, looks, etc

On top of that, if it's a zero sum game if what gets on the roadmap, then yes, it's likely going to lead to competition instead of cooperation

I don't think there's a great answer here if there's a limited amount of Senior positions available.

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bobsbitchtitz@reddit

That’s crazy for senior 2 at all the companies I’ve worked at that’s bare minimum for a senior Eng

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olddev-jobhunt@reddit

Eh... first, the general rule is "to make it to the next level, you need to show that you're operating at that level for 6 months." So if that's what the next level means at your company, it isn't completely crazy. I think this version of it is unusual, but not completely unprecedented.

Now, your point about it being biased towards certain personality types: oh it absolutely is. Absolutely no question. I think some employers are worse about this than others, but I think it is very much the case that outgoing extroverted likable people get promoted more than the quiet people. It's taken me a long time to really learn how to ask for what I want and advocate for it.

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Fuzzy_Sport808@reddit

I wouldn’t consider a role that involves adding items to a roadmap to be a purely IC role. If you’re responsible for advocating for ideas and influencing what gets prioritized, that aligns more with management or a business stakeholder role.

I don’t have experience working at large tech companies

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gjionergqwebrlkbjg@reddit

What do you think IC stands for? And why do you think having zero say in the roadmap is normal at all? How do you expect an engineering org to function if engineers have to be told what to do?

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Fuzzy_Sport808@reddit

I have worked for companies that some people fund the project and some people carry out the project. The people funding the project elect people to mange (own) the project and set the goals and roadmap. The people funding the project also pay a tech team that then aligns to the roadmap and turns the road map into a backlog. The engineers on the tech team then work the backlog.

There is usually a manager role that tightly works with the folks that work on the roadmap but their role is to provide projected timelines and engineering effort,

I'm not sure how other companies that sell a product work, but an IC writes code, a non IC does not write code.

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wilsonodk@reddit

Throughout my career getting promoted beyond a Senior has always entailed some of sort of political maneuvering. And there is a limit to the number of positions above senior an organization needs.

What I do find is odd is the there is a Senior SWE II, and that it’s not a Staff Engineer.

In my experience, the roles beyond Senior are less “hands on keyboards” and more “thought leadership”. They are a force multiplier within the organization. So, having some political acumen is required.

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aruisdante@reddit

I’ve worked for one company that had a 5a and 5b. The actual title was “Senior Engineer” for both, but it let them recognize and give a pay bump to high performance senior engineers when there wasn’t scope for or a desire to be a staff engineer. But the requirements for 5b were basically the same as 5a, just doing “more/better.”

The OP’s company’s definition of Senior Engineer II does sound like Staff. Maybe they don’t have a Senior Staff and it goes Senior II, Staff, Principal.

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honestduane@reddit

Software development engineer with over 3 decades of experience writing code who has been a principal Development Engineer multiple times as well as a engineering director and been offered the role of engineering vice president, here.

The titles that you're using don't make sense to me, And your boss is either messing with you intentionally or the people at your company don't seem to understand these title structures correctly.

There are not two different versions of senior unless you're talking about the version of senior where you're in IC and don't lead or manage people which is actually technically a demotion as senior is expected by default to be able to lead other people and that is why it is A prerequisite for things like staff or principal Engineer where to be a Principal Engineer you first have to have been a Staff Engineer which means you first would have had to be a Senior Lead Engineer because both a staff engineer and a Principal Engineer are expected to have those skills

The idea that you can be a senior SDE in two different versions just doesn't make sense to me, Either you're not explaining it well or the people who are explaining it to you are bullshitting you,

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entimaniac91@reddit

My experience has been from taking ownership of the project. Not actually taking charge of it and bullying out others, but by treating the code base as if I was the sole person in charge of the success or failure of it and treating my design and implementation decisions as such. This also means I will be the one to ask the dumb questions or say the obvious issues out loud in meetings with stakeholders. I tend to want to understand the problems the end user needs to solve and take it upon myself to figure out how to get there.

It worked for me out of college, got promoted a couple times from junior to mid level pretty fast and soon took on the lead role on a couple projects, which I count as a promotion. Switching jobs helps too, but I've stuck in my last role for 6-7 years now and have gotten regular promotions along the way.

I've never went out of my way to ask how to get promoted, just always internalized the projects and tried solve our users needs (versus "just doing the ticket"), and come review time I'd get surprised with a "BTW you are getting promoted!"

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hubert_farnsworrth@reddit

I also hate this part. I look at my company and see a lot of unnecessary tech being used and I believe someone did it to get a promotion. Just solves the wrong problem. Eg we use Cassandra and we are nowhere near the scale like we have approx 100k users. But I guess someone got their promotion.

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08148694@reddit

Seeking validation on Reddit won’t help you. what are you going to do, go to your manager and tell them their strategy for promotions is wrong because experienced engineers on Reddit told you so?

Play the game with the rules or change the game (get a new job)

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JohnnyDread@reddit

This practice also seems biased towards more dominant personality types (of which I’m not) which again is bad practice.

Bad practice or not, this is just life, especially in a career situation. Assertive, outspoken people will always have an advantage when it comes to advancement. It doesn't mean you have to be a domineering jerk, but also don't be a wallflower.

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valence_engineer@reddit

IMO the incentives are misaligned with what management actually want to happen.

Management would like no one to get promoted because it costs them less money. They'd also like you to fight to the death for a pointless carrot which is the promotion. They also want people who understand the business, can work autonomously with stakeholders and can put valuable projects on the roadmap. Without paying them more. Wasting 3 months on a no-impact project will not get you promoted and may get you a bad early review. Looks like they're achieving what they want just fine.

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dashingThroughSnow12@reddit

Dell is famous for what you describe. As you imply, it means a lot of people inflating things.

It isn’t insane and I agree with it in principle. Oversimplifying, juniours need a hand to hold, mediors can function independently, seniors mentor and are responsible for large initiatives, and the levels above that deal with conceiving them and having influence outside of their team.

Problem is that if you give a bunch of clever people a metric we know how to pick it apart and game it.

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tndrthrowy@reddit

Only promotions I’ve ever gotten were switching companies. Companies would rather hire some unknown who talks a good talk for an hour than promote someone who has proven their abilities.

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HNipps@reddit (OP)

Ha yeah that’s true. Switching companies has worked for me too.

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chain_letter@reddit

Money and thinking they gotta give it to you to keep you, versus how bad it would be to lose+replace you, and how easy for you to leave.

Promotions stalled at my place for 18 months, along with not backfilling when people left, before a mass layoff.

If it were me signing checks, I'd be pulling back hard on promotions in the current job market. No reason to bump up payroll.