Comment by khazhoux | Hacker News Reader

Comment by khazhoux | Hacker News Reader

At this point I've mostly given up on the concept of promotions anyway. The amount of downwards pressure against promoting people is unreal.

I've seen managers stuck in their level for years and years. Then a new candidate comes in for a Manager role, asks for more money, and (boom!) they're hired as a Director. Fuck everyone else who was already running teams successfully and trying to grow. Same for individual contributors. Best route is the insta-promotion during hiring negotiation.

You want a promotion but don't want to switch companies? Gee sorry your scope isn't wide enough yet. You're doing a fine job --a good job, even-- but you have to understand that this was already the expected job level... we need to "see more."

Every performance-review meeting I've been in, when one manager brings up one of their people for promotion, immediately some other manager will jump in and say "No I don't know about that, someone on my team had a bad interaction with them once... nope not ready for promotion" and that's that. Only once in a blue moon does the room agree that someone should get the promotion. Hallelujah!

I absolutely agree with you, and this tells me one thing: If you want a promotion, get another job. The leverage you have by already having a job is fantastic, if a company likes you they'll give you a better position just to pull you away from your current company.

I understand your point completely. I just wonder how much negativity bias plays a part here. Do we remember these instances of employees being overlooked for promotion more so because they produce strong negative feelings? I'm sure there is some truth to what you say, as I've seen it too.

I imagine there is also some (likely several) cognitive phenomenon happening in the meeting where these employees are considered for a raise. If my boss were to ask me my opinion in front of everyone whether we should promote someone or not, as a middle manager I may be expected to have an opinion, even if it's helpful or not. I also may be tempted to share that one bad memory of that person (negativity bias could be at play here, as well) so that I appear to be insightful and observant.

It sure is exhausting trying to figure out humans, but endlessly interesting. It's just hard when I'm only an "armchair-everything" and lack the data and/or knowledge to figure us out.

That's also a takeaway from "Moral mazes" book.

> You want a promotion but don't want to switch companies?

This is the current situation I find myself in. In my current company, there's just no way to get a promotion whilst staying in my current team. I can probably get one if I apply for a role in another team, but this honestly feels stupid.

So the only other way is to switch companies.

I’m at Sr. engineer so any promotion will have major trade offs. I don’t know if the 20% increase in pay and expectations and responsibility is really worth it anyway. I’d much rather work a shorter week.

I understand your frustration, but also consider, being promoted over your colleagues poses its own risks to the social fabric of a company. Your last paragraph alludes to this kind of rancor.

Bringing in people from the outside (or leaving to go somewhere else yourself when you're ready to make the jump,) has its benefits for what it avoids.

Internal discontentment follows from promotions being so difficult, and it's worsened by everyone seeing new people walking in at a higher level than seems justified. Then, having to deal with the new person once they land and it quickly becomes obvious (in 99% of cases) that they are not more accomplished and don't deliver more results than the internal people they leapfrogged.

My first job two decades ago didn't have engineering levels (apart from Tech Lead designation, which wasn't a formal level). People still fought for raises and the salaries/bonuses were sometimes not perfect, but there was no "promotion" per se and in retrospect it was healthier for everyone.

That sounds healthier for the org internally but I don’t think I’d ever take the job because of the risk of stunting my career growth. Harder to move up the ladder at my next job if I don’t have a decent title at my current one.

In fact, the company I'm referring to did eventually adopt SWE job levels (right as I was leaving) and I was told it was because engineers were being recruited away by companies offering a "Senior Engineer" title.

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