You need to be deliberate about peer feedback

Regularly post updates when you hit milestones, this helps detect alignment issues early

How many times have you been up for promo and missed it?

Is your company in an overall downward spiral?

Are you getting promo’d slower than your peers?

Is your org thrashy with manager / TL changes?

How’s the job market? Are you getting inbound messages?

You have to develop connections and build trust again

Interviewing puts a pause button on developing your actual skills

Onboarding takes 3-6 months

You need to balance stagnating on a bad team vs the super high costs of switching teams / companies

Looking at the bigger picture

Most people way undercommunicate - senior people are busy and aren’t checking in on you all the time

Keep track of your wins

Makes performance review way easier, helps you remember what you did at the start of the cycle

peers at your level should see you as a leader

Figure out who you want feedback from ASAP - leverage your manager to find good people

Work backwards from the signals you need and match peers accordingly

peers at the next level should see you as an equal

Writing your promo packet

Anchor your packet against your expectations plan

Leverage artifacts from sharing your wins (demos / posts)

Be as specific as possible about your development areas and how you’ve met the delta with the next level

You should ramp things up in the end of the cycle - finish strong

Due to recency bias, the end of the cycle is way more important than the start

you want a mentor within one or two levels of you, outside of that they’ll forget what it’s like to be at your level

you want people less senior than you that you can mentor

you want people more senior than you to mentor you

most organisations have hard caps on how many promos can happen by level (leading to competition)

avoid level overload

External hire (i.e., they came from outside the company

“Home-grown” talent, grew through company as an IC

Veteran in the EM role (>3 years of experience)

Relatively new to the EM role (<1 year of experience)

stellar track record of getting engineers promoted fast

Has never (or rarely) gotten an engineer promoted before

Talk to engineers, EMs will always try to get you to join

The best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour

Your EM is the most important person in your promo

Look for EMs with a track record of growing people

learn to make the most of the scope you have - expand it as much as you and execute on it

depth of contribution

growing as an engineer is all about behaviour and mindset change

master your promo packet

get maximum credit for each project

define a clear, concrete plan for getting to the next level

have a framework to understand the different levels

understand how promotion actually works

course objectives

quality of delivery

technical complexity

4. Design the system and break down the work into tasks

3. Work with product / design to scope out requirements

2. Put together a compelling presentation to create buy-in

1. Find evidence to justify your idea

having an idea is 1% of the journey

This is one of the key markers of a staff engineer - being able to independently identify and execute projects

You get credit for coming up with and driving a project

5. quality of delivery

Leading the team through SEVs

Aligning other teams with yours

Helping the team move faster without causing burnout

Shielding the team from XFN issues

how hard were the things you worked on? could other people do them?

4. depth of contribution

Very senior engineers have reputations as “steady hands”

There is tremendous value in being someone who doesn’t crumble under pressure

have clear impact

grows other engineers and strengthens relationships

have minimal thrash (changing requirements)

a successful delivery should:

ideally, have no bugs / cause production issues

What mix of stakeholders do you have? (depth)

How many people does your project depend on? (breadth)

low tech complexity / high org complexity

high tech complexity / low org complexity

How senior are the stake holders?

How distant are partner teams from yours?

Are you working with completely new partners?

Focus on doing a really great job of the projects you’re given

Junior and mid-level engineers are generally not held responsible for impact

Scope and impact is determined by higher level engineers / PMs

You need technically complex tasks to progress to senior+

Technical complexity is relative - see how other engineers react to different tasks

Key idea: think holistically about the problem

build-oriented (common in smaller/newer orgs)

metrics-driven goals (common in larger orgs)

The impact of a project is how much it contributes to your team’s goals (OKRs/KPIs)

3. observe great engineers: look for how they get things done

what does their calendar look like?

what kinds of people are they talking to?

how do they contribute to meetings?

how do they organise their code and prs?

how do they plan projects and design systems?

Quality of delivery

✅ How can we expand the roadmap to add scope?

Depth of contribution

Organisational complexity

❌ I need to have the biggest and most impactful projects

Technical complexity

There are six main axes to consider when evaluating a project

impact is only one component of a project!

You should break down expectations by the different performance review axes

Create a document with clear expectations and update it over time

2. Create an expectations plan

1. Tell your manager you want to go for promo

Frame the discussion as mutual benefit - you want to expend your impact

“I really enjoy working on this team. I want to do more to increase my impact and empower my teammates - what are the steps I need to take to get to that next level?”

Normally this takes 3-6 months to get onboarded and operating efficiently

Be empathetic: your teammates are asking too but there are limited slots

0. Set yourself up as a strong performer before starting promo talks. Get feedback on how you’re trending

PROMOTION

therefore, at most companies, you get promo’d when you’ve shown you can operate at the next level

we want to be somewhere in the middle

people just naively think doing good work will result in them being promoted

promos are a lagging indicator of your skills

people become promotion-obsessed and it’s their motivation for doing anything

Promotion requires doing things that are fundamentally new to you. Your behaviour and mindset has to change in a meaningful way.

there are two extremes when it comes to thinking about promos

3. Grow like a rocket

2. Be hungry, consistently add value over a long period of time

you can’t job hop to success, you don’t get to see the whole SDLC or compound your knowledge/relationships

HOWEVER, it is important to find the right team/manager/projects for each stage of your career

seniority = number of people that you’re adding value to

1. Find an organisation that pushes you to get better and rewards you for it

promotion is more beneficial to your growth for the time invested

how to become a 10x engineer

interviewing is parasitic - it takes up a lot of your time and the prep tends to be not relevant to your job