Did your job give you the best environment to grow your career growth or did you have to create that environment yourself?
Posted by TheTimeDictator@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 59 comments
I've found that most of my career growth happened because of stuff I put together but more importantly after work hours. Is that a similar situation for other people?
Just wanted to get a sense of what other people's situations are?
Nezrann@reddit
My workplace is pretty generous in how much we are allowed to work on side projects that give us leverage and visibility when trying to move roles or push for promotion.
Its something I really admire about our culture.
TheTimeDictator@reddit (OP)
Sounds awesome! I would love to find an org like this!
Nezrann@reddit
I think it should be the norm - my team is more motivated to do the unfun shit when they're able to also context switch out and work on something they genuinely want to learn more about.
It also breaks down silos which are HUGE problems across our domain.
If my frontend person wants to learn how the backend works and take a ticket here and there, where is the downside?
The code gets reviewed either way, and now my FE team has more expertise designing for our data path.
nonasiandoctor@reddit
At my shitty org they would say the downside is you lose some velocity on the FE while that person picks up and learns BE.
I think that's a good tradeoff, but we are 7 months behind schedule so anything that causes a reduction in velocity or even the perception of it is verboten.
Nezrann@reddit
Yeah we are aggressive when it comes to team sizes and R&D hiring, very much following the mantra that more engineers is velocity, but not every company has the luxury of scaling every year.
Sweaty_Patience2917@reddit
Which company is this?
Dry_Builder_1251@reddit
Myself. Once the job starts to feel bland, I jump ship to new one. Keeps things fresh and my wage adequate.
CandidateNo2580@reddit
I would say it's both. My job gives me the opportunity to apply the things I've learned, which really accelerates the learning curve, and for which I'm grateful. But I could just as easily stagnate if I wasn't putting in the effort, it's not like they're giving me college assignments every week.
Cute_Activity7527@reddit
Best investitiom you can make is investition in yourself. Do bare minimum at work and switch to self-improvement. The moment you are not needed they will ditch you like used towel. You can be only sure of employment if you run your own business and still not 100%.
Historical_Ad4384@reddit
I am being constantly passed over for promotion to senior at my primary work for 3 years with management citing not integrated into the team while being technically adept.
While I continue to fight for my promotion, I have taken up a freelance CTO role to a startup in order to take up additional challenges for growing professionally in my career with respect to leadership, ownership and strategic planning.
I can't wait for my primary work to get their hormonal imbalance corrected to get a feeling that I'm well integrated into the team to be promoted. I have a career as well, I can't base it on psychopathic whims of the management and be left behind.
no_onions_pls_ty@reddit
Youre blaming a person, thinking they are inept or incompetent, but youre not yet seeing the system. That person is doing exactly what there bosses want of them, what they are being told to do.
In order to manipulate the organism that is the organization, you need to look at it as an organism. If you wobble it, if you try to move ir, white blood cells will come out and stop the cause of the wobble. Organizations are not made to confess, they dont care about truth and precision, only emotional comfort. It will let you stabilize it, but only if its clear that is what you are doing.
Once you understand that, you can find leverage. Areas of ambiguous accountability, pressure points for skip levels. And there lies your leverage, and you csn use that leverage to relieve pressure in exchange for promotions and pay.
Just asking will get you no where. Playing the game without understanding it will get the white blood cell response. Or worse, getting stuck in purgatory where it looks like youre moving forward but your judges and jury already decided to string you along.
Youre probably, 3-4 years out from really internalizing this if you start today. Its what separates the people who become cynical, angry snd think everyone is incompetent to those that dont let it affect them, that seem to brush off all the bs and keep getting promoted. They stop caring about what they care about and chill until there is leverage, there is always leverage plays even if its just refill the political capital bank and not a promotion.
The fact youre doing CFO work without understand organizational system dynamics as an organisms is a tad frightening but im sure its okay if its part time.
But this is the piece youre missing. Its what separates a manager from a director, a director from an executive. A senior from staff. How deep you go into this realm depends on where you need to be.
RightJabLikeZabJudah@reddit
Can you please give a concrete example? I'm having trouble understanding what you mean.
no_onions_pls_ty@reddit
Instead of asking for a raise, or promotion, wait until there is something that is ambiguous. Naturally if you bring in x more peope youll need a tech lead or a manager, that is just the business naturally stabalizing. When people leave that us a alo an opportunity as you have leverage, dont give it all away. Let stuff fail, let stuff slip, come back with a plan that cannot be implemented unless you get a promotion, the plan depends on it.
Or in an org that doesnt change much, you find the area where someone higher up needs something. It might take a bit, but youre always searching for leverage and slowly acquiring political capital. Then youll stumble on something eventually where you go, that's a fucking stupid idea, I should push back. But dont, start planting seeds... looking for areas that no one is responsible for. Let those fail, but be the guy that already seen it coming and have a solution ready to go. Then, when the time is right, you drop the mic. I've been doing this for x time, we should formalize it as the business seems ro require it. I can go back to doing my old stuff but this just makes sense.
We didnt ask for a raise, we didn't ask for a promotion. We simply gave an opportunity for it to make sense. And since youve been planting seeds, everyone agrees, it just makes sense.
That is how to ensure it happened. The I want a promotion and raise direct talk is a gamble and burns all political capital unless they are already invested, which now days, they are not.
Historical_Ad4384@reddit
I would rather not play politics for as long as possible
no_onions_pls_ty@reddit
No problem. That's more than a fair choice. But it is a choice. So dont get upset if the output follows the input, judged by their rules. Playing by your own rules can work if things align.
Playing within the rules of the system is just an established design patterns is all.
diablo1128@reddit
Every job I've had in my 15 YOE cared about making money and getting things done. Any individual employees career growth was not really a concern for management. Even when you asked to move to another project they would just say they look in to it, but really they hoped you will forget about it.
Crazy-Platypus6395@reddit
Its a group effort. You have to create it in a sense that you have to hold your business and product owners responsible.
superdurszlak@reddit
You always have to carve the room for growth yourself.
The company would rather mold you into whatever they think is most useful to them, even if it would be Senior Lead Staff On/Off Button Pusher. Really.
ReservoirBaws@reddit
Haha, I got PIP’d and was on the verge of getting fired and they switched my mentor to someone else (ironically someone that got PIP’d about 7 years before me). We had a 1 on 1 the first day and he talked to me about my experience at the company so far. I was working my ass off, but also felt lost with no way to get the information I needed. He gave me some hard truths about my behavior, and how it was being perceived. Ultimately the lessons that I learned from this mentor I carried with me to this day (met him approximately 7 months into my career, here I am 10 years later).
plastic_drops@reddit
if you don't mind, what lessons did your mentor share?
ReservoirBaws@reddit
One big thing was that perception is reality. I learned a hard lesson that the xkcd about goofing off while your code is compiling isn’t entirely true, at least for the company I was with at the time. If someone walks by and you’re not working on the project, it can make you look like a lazy employee, even if you were only distracted for 10 minutes.
The adjustment I made was to spend that downtime looking at documentation, checking email, putting tech related things on the screen etc. Productivity wise I was about the same, but it made me look like I was working harder.
Another piece of advice he gave me was related to attention to detail. I thought speed was more important, but nothing makes management more frustrated than bugs in the testing phase, especially ping ponging back and forth between the dev and qa team. I didn’t know the product early on, therefore I didn’t really understand how to test it on my end.
The adjustment here was to buddy up with the QA team. I would schedule time with them to understand the product, how they used it and how they would test it. By the time I would send my features to them, I’d already run though their test scenarios and edge cases. It also helped me plan work better.
There were a ton of minor adjustments. For example, getting ahead of PRs. Anytime there was some “weird” logic that had to be done, he would make sure there was either a comment in the code, or a comment in git with documentation to explain what the business logic behind it was. It lessened the amount of time it took to get PRs approved
Sensitive-Ear-3896@reddit
Had to fight for it.
Nezrann@reddit
That's tough, I'd love to hear your story!
TheTimeDictator@reddit (OP)
Doing the same right now. Happy to hear the experience isn't unique.
Sensitive-Ear-3896@reddit
It isn’t unique but tough
elisach3esy9615@reddit
sounds like manual qa is the escape room of tech jobs
Separate_Aardvark646@reddit
the spacing in that sentence is kinda odd
dbalatero@reddit
There isn't much formal training on the job, it's pretty sink or swim. That said if you have teammates you respect, trying to pair program with them or work directly together on a project where you can observe them can get you a fair amount of learning on the job.
Glittering_Print4189@reddit
i've seen this before somewhere
dbalatero@reddit
oh?
plastic_drops@reddit
I would say this is manager dependent. I worked at one job where I expressed interest in moving to a different role doing backend development, and he actually listened and took action by mentioning to my new manager-to-be to give me a backend dev story to build experience.
It was the first and last time I met a manager like that, and this was at a small-medium sized company. Now if I bring stuff like this up to my current manager at big corp, they basically tell me to figure it out on my own.
farzad_meow@reddit
even if they provide tools, you still need to fight for promotions and working with better tools. it is mostly on you. no one is going to tell you want to do to get ahead.
Ok-Werewolf319@reddit
I'd say it's usually a mix, but leaning heavily toward creating it yourself. Most jobs give you the basics (paycheck, some structure), but real growth comes from seeking out better projects, learning outside your role, and building relationships.
The people who move fastest don’t wait for permission, they shape their environment, even if the company isn’t intentionally doing it for them. In your case, those after work hours really helped you big time. For most people, after work hours is all about lounging and unwinding.
uno_in_particolare@reddit
I've proposed and then maintained dedicated learning time every sprint in multiple teams now (and now that I'm a team lead, it's even easier)
Other than that unstructured time, volunteering and taking initiative for work outside of your own team helps a ton, both for learning and for career growth within the current company
I can't really imagine doing any consistent work after hours, if anything I've been wanting to reduce my weekly hours for a while
engineered_academic@reddit
Most companies do not want to foster your career growth because that means they will either have to pay you more or find a replacement. You have to advocate for yourself every step of the way.
That being said, the best jobs I have ever had did 20% innovation time where we could work on whatever we wanted. Some cool projects came out of that.
ninetofivedev@reddit
There isn't a job in the world that doesn't require you to advance your career without you actively taking the initiative.
But for some reason, we all kind of enter the work force thinking it works this way.
You have to search for opportunities. You have to raise the issue. You have to play your cards to your leadership. And when all that fails because it always does, you have to convince someone from another company that you deserve it.
alexs@reddit
I've worked at a of companies that claim to be interested in developing internal talent and they are approximately as useless at is the ones which don't.
Be the master of your own destiny.
SoulTrack@reddit
Yeah - I've always been told by my previous employers that they value and want to develop internal talent. If they say that, it's bullshit. The moment you start setting goals that meet the next title/level job description and you meet those, you don't get promoted. And of course, the people working at those levels aren't expected to be able to articulate or understand the levels below them. So it's all bullshit. It's all about who you know.
Klutzy_Insurance_295@reddit
reminds me of when a boss told me "we'll revisit this in six months
NickW1343@reddit
The weirdest company I've ever interviewed for was one where the founder of it took c# and then put his own spin on it because he thought it'd be best for his business. They talked like there's opportunity to grow my career with the company, but I was thinking "no way am I going to code with a language that is literally only used in one company and nobody else in the world knows about it. that's not helping my career at all and just to tie devs to the company forever."
TheTimeDictator@reddit (OP)
Definitely agree and advocate myself. Mind if I ask what were some of the things you did to grow in your career?
alexs@reddit
I am not sure my personal path is a great example. I skipped university and worked extremely hard for 5-10 years to get anywhere.
I'd like to say something like: Be curious. Always keep looking for the next thing you need to learn to improve your skills and succeed at the goals of whatever projects you are on.
But TBH I cannot ignore that luck was a big factor in a lot of the growth I had.
nanotree@reddit
I had a level-up meeting with the VP of my org and his big tip was to seek mentorship. And I did. I told my manager and also proactively asked specifically people if they'd be willing to mentor me and set up some recurring meeting once or twice a month. I got mentors from a few different areas, management, architecture, upper middle management. 2 years on, I still have one of those mentors I meet with regularly, but I got my promotion to senior within the same first year of seeking mentorships.
The unfortunate reality is that you need advocates. While you of course need to be good at what you do, that isn't enough to have the recognition. And if no one recognizes you, who's going to advocate for you other than your direct manager?
max_mou@reddit
My manager and the other senior had a kid both around the same time. Was promoted from a senior dev to EM 🤷♂️. I still contribute code but also take care of EM specific stuff. My manager came back and was promoted to be a Senior EM to manage our team and another one. I don’t know, Im just cruising through professional life, don’t know where I'm going. Just be pragmatic and understand the needs of the business and your users.
Fickle-Tomatillo-657@reddit
Always grow your own career wherever you are
QuietSea@reddit
My perspective after being at a large private enterprise corporation
My current company was pretty good at fostering growth for the SWE1 and SWE2 roles. Once you get to the next level at Senior SWE, it starts to fall apart and your path to growth can hugely be hindered by politics and based on luck. A lot of our current Lead SWE's mostly became a lead due to circumstance. ie. a lead left or they needed one, so a senior was plucked and turned into a lead even though they weren't showing lead qualities. Also, if you're a senior wanting to grow, some Leads can take that as Seniors stepping in their lane and dont want to foster growth for those that come after. Very frustrating.
Although, there is some aspect to "you get what you put in" because I've seen some people grow faster because they truly were talented, and we have good managers that prop up that talent.
elusiveoso@reddit
I heard a saying that stuck with me. The saying was "if you're not rowing the boat, the current will take you where it wants."
In my experience, you have to ask for what you want. If not, the employer will just give you tasks that you might not enjoy doing.
I try to shape my job into as much of what I want it to be as I possibly can. Sometimes, that has meant volunteering for things and learning on my own time, but it has also included saying no or setting boundaries. I try to be judicious and intentional about where I spend my time.
TheTimeDictator@reddit (OP)
Have you tried to do this in more hierarchical organizations? That's where I tend to find myself in.
elusiveoso@reddit
I've been most successful at it in 250-500 person hierarchical or flat orgs.
PhysicalSession594@reddit
Better leave your job rather than love your job lesson learned by me. Company is for their numbers growth, your growth depends on being at right project and working on a crucial one, if company feels its good your growth will happen. There is a mirage that we are in a driver seat of our career growth in orgs.
throwaway_0x90@reddit
Both. It's possible to take a job at face value and do the bare minimum. But if you're seeking to self-growth you'll go at least slightly beyond and find things you weren't directly instructed to do.
MediocreDot3@reddit
IME those companies will give you promotions for nothing until you get to a point and then they're like "yeah that whole good environment thing that's on you glhf" and then youre in a year of meeting ownership kpis that may or may not be impossible
AHardCockToSuck@reddit
They don’t give a shit, they act like they do to keep you around
greensodacan@reddit
Both. The time you put in outside of work generally has the highest ROI, but don't stay in a position that's not supportive. It's very common for self starters to leave jobs out of frustration.
Devboe@reddit
Every growth opportunity I've had at my current company has been initiated by me. I have another co-worker who was hired before me at the same level who hasn't progressed at all because he expects the company to hand him growth opportunities instead of creating them himself.
drew_eckhardt2@reddit
I chose jobs based on what I'd do and who I'd work with.
I moved when there weren't enough local opportunities and ended up in Silicon Valley.
After hours there isn't enough time to build anything non-trivial.
Careful_Ad_9077@reddit
20+ years of experience working.
Besides the supermarket work when I was a student, Only one company I have worked got actually cared about helping with my career growth, and it was consulting company to booth.
Funny thing both situations were similar. The super market has no problem hiring simple peons, they struggle to hire anyolbody with skill, so if they see potential in you they want you to grow your skills here to compliment their outside hiring, as they have trouble with the latest because they pay below boutique.
The consulting company wanted you to become a highly paid senior consulting asap, fuentonthie geographical location they'd hire people for whom they were their first consulting job and then grow them up accordingly.
Admirral@reddit
I'd say there are two factors at play: 1) luck, 2) doing precisely what you said you are doing.
I think both of these feed into one another as well. If you are someone who genuinely enjoys this industry, loves building your own projects, have an intrinsic entrepreneurial mindset, that also positions you to be more likely to be picked up by like-minded teams/companies who will want to see you continue that development + help foster the growth.
This was essentially my experience. I still think there is an element of luck, but it definitely skews towards your favor when you visibly are putting in that effort. When I was laid off (company ran out of $$), I defaulted to building my own projects again and that was what grabbed the right people's attention.
GoodishCoder@reddit
You're always going to have to be the one leading the charge for your career growth. The company has no way of knowing what you want to do and often doesn't have the ability to cater to your desired career path. The companies should be doing what they can to facilitate if there's capacity but everything else is on you.