Ask HN: How do I “make the switch” towards becoming a director or VP | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do I “make the switch” towards becoming a director or VP

I have been reasonably successful by some standards at a big tech company, but don't quite think I could ever become a Director or a VP, given the rate at which I am progressing --- it is linear with time, which is not sufficient; I would like to aspire better. I am wondering what kind of things I need to switch about myself and about how I do things. There is the people aspect, and then there is technical aspect. Any thoughts on both of these? Are people willing to share how they overcame similar challenges and "made the switch"?

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I don't think you "make the switch"

I think the best way to get promoted is to first be the employee that managers want to copy and paste to build a team if they could. That doesn't mean putting in hard long hours (it can include that) but it means: Be exceptional at your job, be on top of the details, developing processes that other employees start to copy, create content internally, being a go to resource for other teams.

The second big thing is that you have to make it known to your boss that you want a promotion to management.

When a promotion is available they have an incredible employee, respected by peers and others, that has been improving the overall team that wants to be a manager.

Yes, by "making the switch" I was not referring to just suddenly become director material. It is basically how I can change how I learn. What you have mentioned is useful, thanks, and I am trying my best to do all of those, but how I improve is linear at best. I see others who grow better than linear, and would like to emulate them. Ultimately my goal is not to just strive towards a Director, but to become a solid performer who strategizes/works like one.

Growth rate is an output metric. I would recommend de-emphasizing the output by revisiting infrequently and stopping comparisons with others, in favor of concentrating on the inputs. The poster you respond to has a very good set of things to look for. What’s holding you back from making progress on one of those? How fast are you building trust with individuals you work with and how can you accelerate that (think about specific relationships to make it less abstract)?

Something I noticed about how you phrased the question: you've focused on things you can control (the people and the tech), and not on the things you can't (the opportunity). You can't ignore the people and the tech, but...

Folks I know who've shot up in their career usually shot up because they capitalized on a big one-off opportunity. Their boss left and they were the obvious replacement. A brand-new startup was getting hot and needed an experienced leader with their credentials. They talked to the right person and pitched a project that ended up becoming a big hit.

These individual events are random, but hunting for them and jumping on them is not. Folks who shoot up usually have a background process that spends about 20-30% of their time seeking out information from the world around them, filtering it, and evaluating whether there could be any big opportunities there. The folks who really shoot up (Larry Page, Mark Zuckerburg, Steve Jobs, Peter Thiel, etc.) seem to spend close to 100% of their time evaluating opportunities, and delegate the people/tech stuff to others. Larry Page used to say that the hardest thing about his job was to get people to focus not on what exists, but on what should exist that doesn't yet.

You may want to start developing this background process. How much are you aware of what high-level execs in your company consider to be top priorities? Who are the most creative product & UX people in your org, and what are they working on? Are you keeping tabs on new startups in your field? When was the last time you applied for a new job? Have you had a chat with an executive recruiter any time recently?

This observation of these events being random but the search/alertness to them occurring as not random is quite insightful, and beats repeating.

My anecdotal observations about people I know and LinkedIn profiles I've seen are that the best way to do this is to stick around at one company for like 10 years and continue picking up increasingly more responsibility. Eventually you're a team lead and then eventually you're whatever the position above team lead is at the company.

C-suite is almost always an outside-hire, though.

Don't wait for someone to label you a leader.

Learn and understand the behaviors of effective leaders and implement them in your own work and relationships. So many people operate within the expectations, or what they precieve as the limitations, of their position. Stepping up and leading is about taking personal responsibility for making those decisions yourself rather than being told what to do.

No one is going to tell you to lead or if they do you aren't really one. Much of this comes from within. Having said that, a good mentor is valuable.

Lastly and most importantly, work on communication and social skills. Communication is how you operate as a leader.

A bunch of people I've worked with have done this - my old boss's boss made it to SVP of Search at Google, another boss's boss (inserted into the management chain below the former, actually) is now CPO of Slack, one of the other manager's I worked with is now CTO at DropBox, former coworkers are heads of product at Asana and IPFS, my current manager is up for director, and a college classmate has been a highly successful C-level exec that took a company from series-B to IPO.

Some common threads I've noticed:

1. Don't piss people off. Figure out what people's hot buttons are and avoid them. The exec team at Google circa 2007-2013 was notoriously combative. Who got the CEO job? Sundar, who was a very quiet, unassuming executive who presided over a string of low-profile successes and had a knack for translating Larry's visions into terms that the rest of the exec team could agree with.

2. Be consistent. Successfully delivering base hits, one after another, is often better than striking a home run and flubbing your next project.

3. ...but go after the high priority projects, and realize that priorities change. People who stick to their areas of expertise usually end up getting pigeonholed as ICs or first-level managers. People who rise through the hierarchy usually need to reinvent themselves every 1-2 years.

4. Take people with you. Folks that rise through the hierarchy usually have a core group of high performers around them that they're loyal to and who are loyal to them. Oftentimes these people are folks who don't want to bother with #3 but are very good at what they do, and then their manager provides them cover from the rest of the org so they can keep doing that.

5. Be open to opportunities outside your current employer. Of the folks I listed before, only 2 of them have risen exclusively within Google (and one of those was a high-performer at Sun before then). Everybody else needed to switch jobs. I was talking to the CTO of one of the companies I was applying to recently, and he said that he interviewed at 20 companies and this was the only one that wanted him. Your job search gets a lot less liquid the higher you get - if you're looking for a CxO job, you need to go to the company that is looking for a CxO with your particular skillset, and that may require moving to a different geographic area or considering companies that you wouldn't otherwise want to work for.

Also make sure you really want to do this. All the people I know that have rocketed up to executive levels basically live for their work. A lot of them never bothered to have a family, or if they did have a family, they downshifted their career for a while and only started accelerating again once their kids were in school. Several founder/CEOs I know have broken families - either they're divorced, or they hate their spouse and are just roommates who stay together for the kids. Most of them have friends, but they don't have the type of tight, regular dependable friendships that my friends who are in dead-end jobs have. It's probably that reason why this isn't really a path I'm going for - I had a choice between being a decent father or a decent founder, and chose the former.

Very unclear from your question, do you mean make the switch from IC, or technical track? Or do you mean from first line management? I think the former because that latter isn't "switching" into management, it's more of a promotion.

I'll answer the former question because you're posting on HN, so that's probably your meaning.

Tip #1: it isn't by merit.

Tip #2. your people skills are the most important thing. the only important thing. even in a technical director+ role. work on that.

Tip #3. get a role, somewhere, that will hone your people skills. most importantly, interacting with people that are not like yourself. run for city council. do some kind of organizing in the neighborhood. i was going to say church but those would be people like you, if you are so affiliated. join the national guard for weekend duty. remember, you don't just want some improvement here, you want rapid improvement. that calls for really applying yourself. i mean you could even start small -- get a job as an apple genius or at best buy. but be sure to graduate from that quickly.

Tip #4. talk to the managers around you. every day.

ok, now you've done all that. switch jobs to a smaller company. commit to this for 3 years. do not stay longer. after that, you must job hop every 2-3 years to get fast promotions. you have to be careful that your job hopping are more responsibility each time, otherwise it's a bad look. be absolutely focused on getting to your next job, on day 1 of your new job. that means solving as many impactful problems as you can, starting in week 1 of a new job.

i hate to say it, but make sure you collect linked-in "friends" at a prodigious rate.

People who become managers, directors and eventually VPs usually have one thing in common. They know how to get people to become better people. It's not about being the best at the specific job that they did before getting promoted...it's about how they encourage others to do their best.

Another possibility is moving to a startup...in a medium term businesses (think 10-20 years) the upper echelon is filled with people that were part of the start up phase.

It depends on the industry you’re in but in most cases, it’s also heavily dependent on building relationships across the organization and understanding the impact of decisions being made. Engineering is just a slice of the company and leaders that can link the technical to the business and align on company goals will inevitably be seen as more valuable partner.

First of all, let me put this out there: you don't want to be a manager. It's not fun and games. It's not a powerfest. It's a slog. It means more meetings, it means dealing with people's personalities and personal problems, it means less code, it means less clarity, it means more politics. It means constantly trying to compromise between business goals, tech goals, and personal goals. It means becoming responsible not just for the technical product, but the people, and not just their professional lives, but their personal happiness and health. You can't manage burnt out people.

It's a horrible job. You don't want it, and I don't recommend it. I am 1000% serious here. You should ask yourself why you want to be a Director or VP. Is it money? Is it power? Is it respect? Often you can get those things as a regular engineer and not have to deal with politics and people crap. You don't want to be a manager. Seriously.

Still here? Ok, then. With that in mind...

The first thing is I strongly believe that you don't get anything you don't ask for. If your boss is anything like me and my peers and my boss and my boss's boss and anyone else I've ever worked for, they'll take your silence as contentedness. They'll assume that because you aren't the squeaky wheel, you're doing fine.

There isn't a magic lightbulb that's going to appear and they'll say "gee, PrimordialSoup would be a fantastic Director. I'll just take them out of their current role and give them lots of responsibility!" It's actually the other way around! They'll say "PrimodialSoup is a solid engineer, and I'd like to keep them there as long as they want to be."

In other words, you have to ask for it. And I don't mean like "Can I be a director now, pretty please?"

I mean go to your boss at your next 1:1, and you say "Hey, I've been thinking about my career. Let's say in 3 years I want your job. How do I get there?" And then work with your boss to identify opportunities for growth and experience over the next several months/years.

If your boss isn't interested in helping you grow professionally, then you need to find a new boss, IMO.

The second piece of advice I have is to take on all the responsibility you can handle. If a problem comes up, volunteer to fix it. If someone's struggling, volunteer to help. Mentor as much as you can. Be visible and be vocal. That doesn't mean be a jerk and shove your opinions down peoples' throats, but the more that people can see you as a subject matter expert in your area and the more they can see you acting decisively, the more people will start to think of you as a leader. And part of being visible is being _everywhere_ as much as you can.

Keep in mind that you generally aren't promoted _into_ a role. Usually you are _doing_ the job and the promotion is simply a recognition of the _job you're already doing_.

If you don't have direct reports now, it's a little trickier. But you and your boss should be able to identify opportunities for you to stand out as a leader, to gain respect from other peers, and then after you've been leading a project for a long enough period of time, they can make it official, and the people that were unofficially working for you are now officially your direct reports.

But taking on additional responsibility means _nothing_ if your ambitions aren't clear to your manager. They need the context to be able to say, "PrimordialSoup just took on an extra project. They're really going the distance to prove that they can handle additional responsibility." If they don't know you want a promotion, then they'll just chalk it up to you being a go-getter.

So back to point #1: you need to be explicit with your boss. "I'm interested in career growth. What can we do to get me to the next level?" is a great way to start the conversation. Be clear about your expectations and timelines. Don't be unrealistic. Your manager can't promote you overnight. But they can grease the wheels and get the ball rolling, and if they're any good themselves, they'll be able to guide you and mentor you to your next steps.

And again, if they can't or won't do that, then your best bet is to find another mentor, and that usually means finding another job.

Good luck!

One amusing but insightful suggestion I read recently is: use the opportunity of your boss becoming sick and taking extended leave to gain experience operating at the next level up while acting in your boss' role.

(This popped up in a discussion relating to the influence that luck has on people's success.)

Is it common for those positions to be promoted from within or hired from other companies?

I’m happiest as an individual contributor so this is not from personal experience, just observation.

Start doing the job you want to be in. Solve the problems that the director or VP are solving. And find a mentor.

PlatoHQ is great for finding mentors.

Directors lead groups of people, VPs lead groups of directors etc... You need to find ways to lead others hopefully in a high visibility project. At any rate, lead some project and deliver.

Get an MBA become a product owner / have success that pushes the company to another level would help.

"reasonable successful" isn't going to get you promoted to VP. I'm a VP, and know many in my role. Seek out and take OWNERSHIP of the hardest most important projects for your company, completely NAIL the delivery of said projects, and you'll get promoted.

Once there, you'll wish you were an engineer again...

Companies do not willing hire managers, especially executive level. There is always a reason. For instance, they were hired from a competitor and had information, could bring over employees, etc. Other times it is personal relationships. Notice I say relationship not friendship. Many companies are doing unethical or illegal things and are not going to hire someone they think is a boy scout narc into their ranks. Many are doing criminal businesses on the side. You think I am joking or exaggerating, but this is sadly the reality. It's nice to pretend stuff doesn't go on but it does. The good thing is that you can start your own business, be the boss, and run an ethical ship.

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