The first step is creating enough trust and openness in the relationship to get past this communication impasse.

Promotion ladders are one (of many) tools for expressing what the company desires of its employees. For employees seeking advancement, they also work as a tool for discovering an employee's motivation. If promotion isn't the motivation - express what is the motivation. Figuring out that someone loves the puzzle of debugging, or takes pride in being the expert, or is a 9-5 journeyman who wants a stable, competitive salary for their contribution can be the key to having a fruitful conversation.

Once both sides are honest about motivation and satisfaction (the manager obviously also needs/wants something from the employee...) then there's space for adult-to-adult conversations about how and if those motivations line up.

In my experience, managers rarely turn away skilled, drama-free, reliable contributors. But we know our employees aren't totally truthful/open with us about these sensitive topics - so we don't take "I'm fine... leave me alone" at face value.

I've tried to bring up these kind of big picture frustrations with managers before, but they're always focused on surviving the next 3-6 months.

Nothing to retain employees, nothing to acquire new ones, nothing to retain the DNA of the original company.

Ultimately, they want the whole company running by the same policies and procedures. They don't want to maintain carve-outs for subunits that used to be separate companies.

As soon as the delayed bonus to the execs is due (usually 1–3 years), everyone quits in troves and it’s downhill from there.

On my case the average was around three years between acquisition and atriction leading to first wave of leaves.

- I take pride on what I do, I really care a lot about my career, but my main motivation for working 9-5 is my paycheck. I want more money but not more responsibilities (sounds crazy, I know, but the outcome I produce allows me to ask for this). No company out there is going to give me a free salary raise, hence I switch jobs.

Can confirm this works in our current employment market in the US for Software Engineers. In fact, I have less responsibilities because I don't know anything about the tech or product yet and got a 30% pay increase (granted I was close to underpaid).

Obviously YMMV.

There’s many reasons why FAANGS dominate, but one reason is their ability to attract and retain talent.

Vague job titles like "senior" or "junior" can be useful in limited circumstances, but if a company can promote you within the same title, it's a bit of a smell.

Some people also believe that their work speak for themselves and they shouldn't have to explicit ask for a raise.

Sure. but closed mouths don't get fed. That's how we end up in the opposite situation that brought about this topic. Or worse, the oft-common "promotion" of a happy IC to management role who frankly isn't a good manager, despite being an amazing IC.

IMO, it's the manager's responsibility to advocate on behalf of the employee, especially if they want to retain them.

There's also the matter that a raise doesn't need a promotion. Don't promote people upwards unless they are willing and already working at this level. Give them a simple raise instead.

This is a critical point. I've been a manager at companies where the primary, and sometimes only way, to get someone a raise is to promote them because of strict salary bands defined by level. This creates a perverse incentive to promote too early.

Salary bands are usually in place to -- ostensibly -- make sure salaries are fair. Fair salaries are a good thing. That being said, there HAS to be a mechanism to reward top performers with additional cash that doesn't require promotion otherwise it can feel like "teaching to the test."

Every place I worked bonuses are decided according to a strict formula based on the performance of an entire departments and even the company as a whole. There is no way to reward an individual or even a project group with a bonus unless the whole larger office also hit their targets.

I don't disagree, but I don't think there's anything simple about the process at all.

1. this obviously works against the company's interests, if they assume the employee is satisfied. short term business sense says they want to get away with paying as little as possible for labor, whereas employees want to be paid as much as possible. It's an eternal tug of war. And to be honest, one the tech sector has relative advantage over compared to other industries.

2. Even if we get over this short term block, figuring out how to give "merit based" raises can get very tricky, very fast. Especially if you leave the onus to not the developer, but to the manager's perception of the developer to determine.

This not only has bias on how much they/the company values a project (e.g. would working on a "simple" adtech feature be worth more than the labor overhauling a failing product to fail less? The ad product makes the company more money after all). But on their bias as a person. Would Manager give Bob a bigger raise because he goes to Karaoke on Thursday with the company, over John who has to get back to his family after work? Worse yet, would Manager implictly give Janet not a different raise than Bob due to subconcious sexism and not actually doing more work (be it preferential towards or against Janet)?

It's a whole mess, which is why companies try to objectify the whole thing. At least there, there is no room bias outside of who can pitch themselves better (if we assume equal work done).

3. Even if we arrange all of the above, raises aren't typically something a direct manager has easy access oo. It involves several lines of commands to appeal to and approval, beholden to a bunch of budget issues beyond a typical manager's control. Even if they truly want to compensate properly, the company itself may simply decide that they'd rather take chances hiring someone new when/if they need to maintain a potential void, over potentially compensating someone who was

I think the 3rd point is an interesting quandry since it goes against the usual mantra of "People leave managers, not companies".

What you are essentially saying is that employees should beg not to be devalued, which might make sense in a contractor-client relationship, but W2 employment comes with such a tilted balance of power (especially with non-competes and clauses that bar doing work for other companies on the side) that there just isn't that much to gain from trying to negotiate. Employees are better off changing jobs every few years so they can completely shed any baggage from their last position and get a much fatter paycheck. (industry variations notwithstanding)

This isn't to say that I think that people are being sinister. It's just behavior that the system incentivizes.

I used to think that too but at the end of the day if you don't ask you don't get. Doesn't matter how you wish things were.

To be fair, I took their matching counteroffer, but that would not have happened without me leaving in the first place.

First step: ask for a raise, even a substantial one. You mightn't get it, but you might, and it's a lot less hassle than changing jobs

The hassle is mostly prepping for the interviews. If I can't cut out that step, I am basically being saved the effort of cleaning up my desk and going to a new one.

I've gotten 10-15% raises before without a competing offer or any other leverage simply because I could show that I was a certain "percentage of market rate" when I was hired, but the market rate had increased ~teen% since then. So it wasn't as much me asking for raise, it was me asking to have my compensation keep pace with the market/inflation.

Also ask them if their company is hiring and has reasonable interviewing practices. Not everyone makes candidates jump through hoops.

1. People who are legitimately being taken advantage of can more quickly realize it and either work to correct it or leave.

2. Top earners should be able to justify their outsized compensation to others, including peers.

3. Some people just legitimately don't know you can negotiate things like non-discretionary bonuses, extra PTO, etc.

4. Maybe your company pays everyone below-market, not just you, and at least knowing this will make it easier to decide if it's worth the lower pay (for QOL/WLB or whatever) or if you want to leave.

Now, it's tough to say whether that can be extrapolated out to knowledge workers, but it is a useful datapoint non-the-less.

It doesn't (necessarily) mean you're underpaid currently, it's totally possible your boss recognizes your contributions, wants you to be happy, and has the budget to give you what you want or close to it.

One day the DBA casually submits a query to HR asking "what is my package if I quit?" The HR director immediately runs to the CFO and tells him about the question posed by the DBA. The CFO flips his shit and is quoted as screaming something about wanting him fired immediately. We just had a change in management and the new CIO wasn't having it. He just ignored the CFO. It didn't end there. Over the next six months the CFO plodded on and eventually got the DBA fired...though the DBA was not trying to smooth anything over. He went to HR a second time to ask about his package. LOL.

That's why I never bothered asking my company if I could permanently WFH, just went along with everything until I found a new job.

In my experience - good managers tend to get promoted quickly, while average/below average line managers tend to stagnate. In this environment, it's likely most line managers aren't the greatest managers and the ones interacting directly with ICs have a lot of skills to develop in the manager role.

The reality of most people is that they go to the job for a paycheck and put up with the (bad) management as a cost of that. In this environment, the most effective path towards higher pay is switching jobs, instead of risking navigating the inclinations of typically bad management.

Focusing on switching jobs when you already have a stable job puts you in a win-win situation.

Not really. wanting less money and more responsibilities is what would be crazy.

"I want to be recognized and compensated proportionally to the value I create on your behalf. Furthermore, I suspect that the tasks/goals you choose for me are wasting opportunities for me to learn and for you to grow. Hence, I am bearing the long-term risks of your investment-decisions in my time, and you are reaping the short-term benefits.

"Because you seem to be unable to recognize the value I produce, and because you are squandering the opportunity of my time, I do not believe you are suitable for your job. It is possible there exists a job definition for which you are 'killing it', but it is not apparent from my perspective.

"So it is impossible for us to have an open honest conversation."

Tangent: That comment showed me, after 40+ years of adult working, that any individual person is filling multiple roles, each defined by other peoples' perspectives and needs. Indeed, that individual may not even be aware that they are in those roles, much less that those roles may be crucial to those other people.

Note that I almost edited "multiple roles" to "multiple work roles," but this probably applies to most social relationships.

Huh.

but who calculates this "value"? And what is it relative to? That's partially why stocks exist, to try and answer that question.

That is how we end up with our high turnover culture today.

To understand, explain and illuminate how value is created should be one of the first basic tasks for managers. Part of the purpose is to eliminate as much disagreement with and among "reports".

Imagine someone coming to you and saying it.

- Hey, how's life? What do you think about this project?

- Well, it's shitty, to be honest. Didn't expect it to be this boring. And this on-call... I'm looking for a job that would pay 50% more for 50% less work.

- Yeah, that's the way it is in this company. The owner is a greedy crook, and the fish rots from the head, you know. We're told to lie to employees that there's no budget for pay rises, while the profits have doubled. It's all bs. But I can refer you to a few places that pay what you want. I'm thinking to leave too, btw.

Most to the time one just needs to give HR the resignation letter and that's it.

If one has enough vacation days to fill up the notice period, they don't even need to show in the office again, if they feel like it.

Naturally everyone will want to know why one is leaving, including the boss, but one isn't required to hold such conversations.

"This work is good enough for me for now, but in the future it might not be anymore, in which case I'll want to take it into my own hands to find something new. But since for the moment I like the work, I'm not necessarily thinking about that possibility in the future."

If we aren't taking people at face value I don't know why we should assume the second comment is the truth. "I'm ready for something new" sounds like the "It's not you, it's me" of reasons for leaving a company. It often doesn't benefit an employee to give a real reason they are leaving and many times those reasons have nothing to do with how their employer handled career progression.

For example, if a engineer works at a large company (i.e. one in which a single engineer or manager has no real power to push for organizational change) there is little reason to voice their opposition to the overall direction of the company during performance reviews. It also doesn't make sense for that person to burn bridges by unnecessarily criticizing that direction on the way out the door.

How do you propose doing that given that a manager -- by their very job description -- does not have your best interests at heart and will happily use those interests against you if doing so answers "yes" to the central question: "But Is It Good For The COMPANY?"

However, often that something new is just the same type of work.

E.g. imagine that the tech organization is an orchestra. All you play is the same small set of Bach concertos. Your lead violinist likes it just fine, until she leaves because she is ready for something "new". Turns out to be some place where they play the same dozen Vivaldi concertos. Or not even that, but just a different selection of Bach.

E.g. an embedded developer leaves "for something new", where something new is working on a bluetooth driver, exactly like now, but on a different SoC, with a different BT chip, and two kernel versions higher.

"Drama" is a way to express personal emotions, and probably wishes to change things to better, which I really hope my manager cares about.

1. that I trust her/him

2. that I believe he can actually push the change that would help me through the company

2 has been a problem far far more often.

Just to give insight into why some ICs don't respond to this question. I asked my manager for promotion, he kept stringing me along. One of the reasons for said string-along was that the kind of stuff I want to work on is not big enough. Why couldn't he tell me this 6 months ago? I have no clue.

But I have learned to never trust managers with this experience. Managers will have to work hard to earn my trust.

Some of the situations where no real flex exists are:

- promotion wish where there is no place. For example, someone 1 level below the CTO wishing to be promoted to CTO will not be able to get their wish unless the current CTO leaves. If they don't, promotion to the desired rank will not be possible without changing companies.

- salary demands that can't be met from the budget. Most middle managers do not have significant say over how much budget for raises they are allotted for the year. If one persons raise demand is bigger than the total then not all of it can be met.

- As in the GP post, the things the employee wishes to work on do not fit in the wider strategy of the company and/or will not provide value commensurate with the salary received. In this case, depending on how insistent both sides are, sometimes no compromise is possible.

Sometimes the answer is just to give them a raise. Sometimes it's "you're already at the top of your pay band, sorry."

The key is to (1) make this arrangement explicit and regularly check in, and (2) find non-promotion ways of rewarding and recognizing good work. This will be dependent on the person, and isn't as clear cut as the promotions track.

I think it's great to just be happy with what you're doing, and focus on other things in life.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29939161-radical-candor

I did exactly this in my early career and it worked great in small organizations. Mid to late career, I worked for a tech megacorp and was essentially forced to ladder climb because it was up or out. Eventually, hit a grade level that was oversaturated and got offered a package to leave on the 13th round of layoffs in my time there. My seagull manager at the time had no idea of how much organizational tribal knowledge they lost, but everyone my grade or lower who worked with me did.

I postulate that the size of the larger organization is inverse to the applicability of the "guru" strategy.

I truly don't think it's that challenging to allow for an alternative path. But as a low level manager at a big corp there's only so much you can do, I get it.

Fortunately, I'm right now in a place where that doesn't happen, but at the same time there's not that much room for growth either. Fortunately, there's all sorts of personal and OSS projects for that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

i'm sure this is a typo, but IDK what was intended.

senior manager?

"[...] a management style wherein a manager only interacts with employees when they deem a problem has arisen. The perception is that such a management style involves hasty decisions about things of which they have little understanding, resulting in a messy situation with which others must deal."

1. Are happy in their current title, company, responsibilities, etc.

2. Don't want to get a big raise

3. Just want to "do their job and go home"

I'm thinking of exactly two. There may be one or two I'm forgetting. Coincidentally they were also two of the least skilled developers I've worked with, I think in part because they had very little interest in growing professionally.

There are plenty of important, fulfilling, well-compensated careers in which you don't need to grow, learn, and expand. Software development is not one of them.

Two of the five IC's I manage are prolific open source contributors on a project mentioned here often. By any measure these two IC's are outstanding engineers and mentors, but also have zero interest in "growing" or having more responsibility.

But you can absolutely have folks who meet criteria 1 and 3 who are very skilled. Programming self selects for introverts, so it shouldn't be a surprise that not everyone wants to be a manager. And at some point in your career, you realize that taking on more responsibilities without the subsequent promotion results in more work and more stress for little benefit.

> There are plenty of important, fulfilling, well-compensated careers in which you don't need to grow, learn, and expand. Software development is not one of them.

This may have been true 5-10 years ago. But I think most devs now realize that constantly churning your tools in search of the newest shiny thing is a great way to add unnecessary work and stress to a project. It is entirely possible to get experience with 1-2 tech stacks and make a career out of it.

As a manager, I've found it invaluable over the years :-)

I've almost been fired for saying something like this (that my goal was to perform well in my current role). They wanted to get rid of me because I didn't meet their standards for "ambition". Now I had already been filling a role above my grade for 2 years and they weren't promoting me. I'm not going to continue trying to be promoted without hope, so of course I'm just going to try being successful in my actual role.

At some point it will create a generation of entrepreneurs who will realize "if I have to do all this, for someone else, and it's about the same if I do it for myself, why do I work for them?" Assuming competition is actually possible, it becomes a valid question. As an employee you shouldn't be expected to work like a business owner, not unless you have significant stake (are a partial owner) as well.

This thought has already crossed my mind. I mean, I am far from being the hypothetical perfect employee who is simultaneously an expert on all existing technologies, can successfuly manage teams of developers, talks to customers, notices opportunities on the market for new products, and whatever else... but I thought that if I ever became that kind of guy, I would have to be really stupid to continue working at the same company in return for, dunno, maybe 30% raise, but probably also extra overtime and being on the phone 24/7... when the alternative would be to start my own company. Especially if I also knew other people with the same skills whom I could trust, e.g. my former colleagues.

So I have two explanations, not sure which one is correct, maybe it's a bit of both...

A) There actually are people who reach this level of perfect all-knowing and all-capable employee, who nonetheless do not start their own companies. Maybe they lack the capital: either they are not paid well and they do not notice the opportunity to change jobs, or they have insane spending habits. Or maybe the lack the courage, or ambition, or just have a huge blind spot no one told them about. This might be one person in a thousand, but the idea is that if you find one such employee, it's like winning at lottery -- you let the guy run your business but keep putting all the money in your pockets, and you kinda retire except not officially because you do not want the guy to notice that he is now running the entire business alone. Does this actually happen in real life?

B) Of course, such perfection is unachievable. It is just presented to you as a realistic goal that "obviously everyone else does", so that you feel like an impostor, and don't ask for a raise.

Very true. I feel like competition is not possible in many ventures. The big players can crush you with stuff like loss leaders or just economy of scale.

To answer the actual question of why work for them instead of going at it on your own -- starting and building a business is hard. Even if you are capable of doing everything, and have the ambitions, it's still hard. Getting a job is relatively a lot easier, say what you will about tech interviews (btw, I do agree that tech interviews suck and are needlessly difficult). From that perspective, working for someone else is the easier way out, with a stable salary.

Other than that I agree with you, in most companies now you do have to play that culture game even if you're pretty happy with where you are now.

Sounds like an opportunity to automate. And maybe use some GPL-3. Have a lazy dev like me set the system up to do all the BS work for me and automatically apply for a promotion when the minimum time in job is met.

Find a better job, that place sucks.

Basically, all my options suck and this one happens to suck the least. It's a sad reality, but life is full of suffering and overall my life has less suffering than many others in the world.

So far 2 of 3 departments have directly violated HR policies in one or more areas, usually related to performance management or setting requirements that conflict with HR policy.

The third department is fairly new to me. I haven't noticed anything like policy violations yet. Unfortunately, there's very little opportunity. Context switching, expectations to be full stack in multiple stacks, and managers playing musical chairs with which team owns which system has been tough.

Basically, I'm told I'm off track because I'm slow. They agree that I'm slow because of the constant context switching which also doesn't allow me to build expertise. They also said that there's nothing they can do about the context switching. So I take this to mean that I should switch to a team with less context switching so that I can build the expertise and get faster. The problem is they won't let me go now. We have 4 open positions on the team. Some of them have been open for over 2 months and they can't fill them (not really a surprise based on the type of work). When our tech lead leaves in the next week or two, that will make me the most experienced and highest grade dev on the team - I've only been in this team for about 1.5 years (normally a lot of time, but not for juggling stacks and systems - like half the systems I knew for the first part if my stint are now owned by other teams) and I'm only a midlevel. There's only two other devs - a junior who has been here for a year fresh out of college (performs well though) and a contractor whose term is up in about 2 months (and can't be extended).

So I'm literally being told by my boss that the team environment is not conducive to my growth as a dev or for my career development, but that I'm not allowed to go to another team because our team is in crisis. That I'm too valuable to lose, but that I'm deserving of a less than average rating.

Good that you noticed the paradox! It is surprisingly easy to believe each half of that sentence separately, without noticing how they contradict each other. You simply believe one part in one context (trying to leave), and the other part in another context (asking for a raise or better working conditions).

Here is the pattern explained: https://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html

And your manager is unable to put you in a position to succeed.

So, it may be time to take a step down, or when the next set of layoffs come, you might be in a bad place when you least expect it and when jobs are the most difficult to find.

This is the best time in the last 10 years that I've seen in getting new jobs.

You know what you do with legacy/niche tech that isn't interesting to most employers? You can _leave it off your resume_. (Which is not to say you shouldn't include your experience with ECM platforms - there are multiple extremely large, well-paying tech companies in that ___domain, or in domains where that kind of experience is valuable to them!)

Do you know literally any mainstream language? Java, C#, C++, Python, Javascript, Ruby, Go? Congratulations, that's enough to both get you interviewed and also a prerequisite to being able to pass those interviews.

Here's how you see something better: you go to LinkedIn > Jobs > Search: "Senior Software Engineer", Location: "Remote". Every single result will pay more than what you're currently earning, sometimes by integer multiples. Some of them won't even rely on Leetcode-like questions for their interviews, though you should still absolutely spend ~50-100 hours practicing (though 20 hours is probably enough to get a handle on the most critical stuff, i.e. common string/array manipulations, tree traversal, etc). If you think it's not worth spending 50 hours to increase your lifetime income by millions of dollars, that's obviously your call, but it'd be the depression talking, not a sober evaluation of the trade-offs, or whether you can even find 50 hours somewhere (you can; if you didn't have some slack somewhere, then some random happenstance would've knocked your feet out from under you over the last year or two, and since that hasn't happened that means you have non-zero buffer).

If you want I will personally help you tailor your resume to be attractive to recruiters and hiring managers while being completely honest about your experience and competencies. Feel free to email me: [email protected].

They are there to progress their career, as well as every body else. So, if your promotion, or having you moving to a different team gets in the way, rest assure they will make everything in their power to fight it.

Simply put, I don't pay any attention to the things discussed with my manager around my career. I attend my 1-1 because I have to. I honestly don't get any value out of it.

I have enough experience to know how to progress my career.

There are only two things that keep me working for a given company:

- working on interesting projects, making an impact

- being payed well enough

Great managers do exist, but you have to make sure that you are held accountable as much as they do you.

1:1 time is as much as their job as it is yours to develop a story and convictions in what you need.

(I'm a director-level with 4 managers under me and 30 engineers total under them, and I've been managing for ~10 years now.)

Theoretically, 1:1s are YOUR time (not your manager's) to talk about whatever you think is important. If you're going into 1:1s with nothing to say, then it's wasted time and you might as well not have 1:1s. But this is basically 30-60 minutes of dedicated attention from your manager! This is your chance to bring up any topic that you think is worth talking to them about! Yoou have their undivided attention! What's pissing you off about work? What gets you excited? What are your goals?

I always walk into a 1:1 with someone with an agenda in place, but for a report of mine, I let them go first. If they don't have anything to say, then I'll ask questions on their behalf. If they are a high performer, then these questions are often things like "are you happy working on this project?" or "what interests you the most about this project?" or "I've been thinking about this other project that you might enjoy working on."

If they are lower performers, then I'll reframe the conversation around how to improve. "It feels like you're struggling with X. Why do you think that is and how can I help?" or "I've noticed you've been committing code less frequently than normal. Is everything okay?" It only becomes a problem if it drags on with no improvement, but this is the first line of defense for us to level up those low performers.

For me, a 1:1 is my chance to get to know my employee better, and it's their chance to leverage my skill set, influence, and authority. Are you blocked my some other team? I can help! Are you bored with your projects? I can help! Do you hate this other engineer? I can help!

But if they walk into the 1:1 and say "I don't have anything to talk about" and then don't want to play ball with my questions, then there's not a whole lot I can do to help out.

I firmly believe that you don't get what you don't ask for, so if you aren't utilizing your 1:1 time with your boss, then your situation is unlikely to improve.

My 1:1s with my boss often extend closer to the 60 minute mark weekly. These aren't status updates. If my manager doesn't know what I'm doing on a weekly basis, then either I'm not communicating well or they aren't doing their jobs. This is not a status update meeting. I go into my 1:1s with topics designed to solve problems. "I've got this engineer who is struggling. What advice do you have?" or "I"m frustrated by the slowness of IT to ship laptops to new hires. How can we fix this?" or "In five years, I want your job. How do I get there?" and so on.

I've been fortunate in that every boss I've had for the last 10 years has played ball when I say those things. And my most recent boss told the entire org when I left that I was one of his best reports, because I knew what I wanted and I communicated it clearly. He didn't have to guess about whether I was happy or what my goals were -- I knew what they were, and he was able to help me the most out of everyone.

This is your chance to level up with your boss's help. If they won't help, then find a new boss. Easier said than done, but having a boss that has your back is invaluable, and the 1:1 is the place to form that relationship.

I hope you find a new manager that cares about your career progression, your productivity, and perhaps most importantly, your happiness. There are managers like that out there. I wish you the best of luck going forward.

I was just trying to be honest and share my experience from small/medium/corporate companies. Maybe I was not lucky enough, but in my experience good managers are not the common case. Company politics and product/customer priorities often win over people requests for change.

That is why, if I am not happy in doing what I do, I simply move on and get another job. That is just way easier.

If my manager had asked me this yesterday I might've said that my gf left and I was recently diagnosed bipolar, which is the truth, but he didn't. He just took me off the engineering team.

Bringing medical information (bipolar diagnosis) changes things a little bit. It's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can protect you a little bit through process. It's harder to fire you if you have a medical problem than it is if you have a performance problem. On the other hand, it can lead to being sidelined on other projects if you are deemed unreliable.

Personally, I'd probably speak up and say something to my boss about it and try and establish some empathy and trust, but if you don't trust your manager or don't trust your company to do the right thing, I can understand staying quiet.

Best of luck.

Yikes, there is a lot more to 1:1s than just talking career progression.

> The Peter Principle states that a person who is competent at their job will earn a promotion to a position that requires different skills. ... If the person is competent in the new role, they will be promoted again and will continue to be promoted until reaching a level at which they are incompetent.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle)

This is exacerbated by the "up or out" culture in many organizations.

Just because someone is great at their job doesn't mean their job should change, as is traditionally expected by promotions. You can recognise and reward their contributions and find ways for them to grow further _within_ that role, or in ways that extend that role without fundamentally altering it.

this is true, though i would say there are two things here. first, you're probably below the bar when you first start doing this work and so you're getting to train in an environment where it's not necessarily your job to do it. second, if you are meeting the role (and that role is desirable which is true for all software devs these days) then the the company should have a strong urge to get you promoted so you don't jump ship and take the job elsewhere.

The person that's replacing me, is basically the me of two years ago. So that's going to end well...

I have learnt a lot in the last couple of years and I reckon my own 'level of incompetence' is somewhat higher as a result.

I like to combat this by giving my team goals to accomplish or lead some task on their own. Even if they are individual contributors they can still network internally to put their problem solving skills on display. An example would be if they took the initiative to have a discussion with HR/Sales/operations/anyone external about some pain points and how my team could help. Then spearhead the solution.

Note: I manage financial analyst so it’s a bit different but they have an inclination to become siloed with headphones on all the time similar to developers so it could apply.

Your team stays static or functionally shrinks (by adding one or more non-specific knowledge managers/PM to the team instead of individual contributors) even while the company experiences hyper growth both internally and externally.

You work your butt off while people get promoted around you. Your team is starved and starts to show cracks.

Your work get subbed out bit by bit as you tread water until the last bit, that specific knowledge is power grabbed away and put on a 2 stream agile program and it's not your job anymore...

And that's when the "manager speak" begins about "change".

Secondly - Make sure they see a copy of their review in which you praise their abilities within the team. That will help to reassure them that there are no penalties for not wanting to 'progress'. Slightly OT since it isn't IT related but I once asked a PC (police Constable, aka a British 'Bobby') why they had remained a PC for 25 years (I was curious). Their answer was - Mo' Money, Mo' Problems. In other words they preferred the day to day life and didn't want more Paperwork, more BS and ass-kissing (sadly a prerequisite for ladder climbing) and they really did not want the hassles of managing others. I did a mental re-take and thought fair enough. I am slightly ashamed that my initial ‘hunch’ was because they lacked the skills or abilities to gain a promotion (my bad and I was glad I asked rather than silently assuming/judging).

One thing to think about doing is exploring their responsibilities – Think about their specialities / preferences / interests. If they are a ‘people person’ consider making offering them the role of helping to onboard newcomers on the team. If they have an analytical mind, consider delegating some of the cost centre analysis work to them. Ensure any unofficial roles are noted positively in their next review so that they can see in black and white their value to the team.

They should investigate where that assumption came from, and, given there is data which conflicts with it, what should be done next?

The stakes are high: forcing a bad culture onto employees will drive some of them away from the company, and force others to be unhappy, or to take on roles they aren't suited for and won't perform well in.

A strong company culture would support both people who want to move up the org chart, and those who don't, without prejudice. The good news is that if leadership can get over the (clearly incorrect) belief that every good employee always wants a promotion, they can make a huge improvement in culture, retention, and productivity.

Also let us know how things go

For example, how many people sit down and decide to become overweight and out of shape? Yet many of us arrive there by default. It is a similar process playing out in employment. Why many people avoid learning and growing. Not that they decided to atrophy, but more that they haven't tried to avoid it.

It's difficult to produce change in others, or to get them to see the rut. If you are self motivated, it's like speaking a different language. We expect the desire to improve to be intrinsic, and that if they have the desire that they will act in a way to produce results. But both are false assumptions. There are those with no intrinsic desire, and those who have the desire, but not the habits/discipline to take effective action.

My best results has been to push them down the path. Set the goals and routines for them. Get them moving fast enough that learning/growing in a specific area becomes part of the routine.

Where as others might prefer learning about mathematics.

Not wanting to be promoted to manager or lead doesn't mean not learning.

Depends where you are and what level. I think you owe it to junior engineers to help guide them. It may be that someone 1 year in the workforce is a highly productive engineer and doesn't need growth, but I can't say that is the norm. They may be mostly productive but some experience must be learned, so I would say you should push them to get out of their comfort zone.

Some companies do up or out until a certain level, usually around senior engineer. I don't really agree with that completely as I think a codified system like that lacks humanity, but it makes sense more or less.

100 percent agree on the 6 month targets... feels like groundhog day, adds tons of stress, does not benefit employees.

You need to constantly challenge yourself. If you don't want to advance either you need to change your attitude and jump into something that seems hard, or you need to find a new path that you will enjoy.

I don't want to go into management, so I'm trying to figure out how I can be the technical person in the company that is paid more than the CEO. I'll probably never get there, but it is a challenge that keeps me looking to see how I can be better.

SO being the only mainframe programmer left can actually be in your favor, it often turns into short and high income tasks. Many companies are running systems which are 40 years old, large banks, costco, medium businesses and the list goes on. The cost of updating this stuff is insanely expensive and if it ain't broken why fix it.

Learning how to manage your time, network, insurance, etc. In addition, you're competing for an ever shrinking pool of work which naturally limits the amount of work available and thus competitive participants.

Also, I've worked with customers that have a ton of this "not broke software". The reality is that these systems present major bottlenecks in providing modern experiences around the data they manage. People spend a lot of time working around the limitations of these systems under the guise that its too expensive to replace.

There is a difference in attitude even though from the outside they look the same, the prospects are very different.

Old tech is a double-edged sword. Like any other obscure tech, there's less competition, but for fewer overall jobs.

Get me a red stapler, please.

Increase their compensation as their output increases. Be fair, don't penalize them for not fighting to climb the ladder.

Check in on their happiness regularly. Ask them very directly about their satisfaction at work. This is the conversation you force, not the topic of "why do you not want to progress." You can be really upfront with them – "you don't seem to have really concrete career goals, but you're a valued member of the team – does this work for you? Confirming that it works for us."

This is the easy stuff, spend your time on the bright but overconfident 23 year old who's complaining that they're not an engineering manager yet or the great engineer who's going through a divorce.

I really wish this was accepted more. FAANG's whole "up or out" career progression rat race has done so much harm to the industry -_-

Heres' what I do. I look at the team's roadmap. What's coming up? It's unlikely the technology involved will be completely static over the months and years. To achieve the roadmap, someone will have to go off and learn about X or spike something in NewTech Y.

If that time to learn / spike things is part of the job (which it should be) then it seems like the career and roadmap planning dovetail, AND it all happens in 40 hours where people can have lives, spend time with their families, etc.

Also, loyalty is one of those double-edged swords that is just great... until it isn't. And when it suddenly isn't, it's a divorce-level event. I saw my employer walk a 20-year employee out of the company with essentially no notice. Seeing that, as a fellow employee, murdered any sense of what I thought loyalty meant to this company.

One bad example can destroy the entire mystique around 'loyalty'.

Get paid for the job you do. If you're aiming to move up the ladder, do a better job than what you're paid to do and let them know your interests and intentions, even to the point that you give them a timeline. But don't expect any more than they promise, and be prepared to burn them if and when they break their promise.

Loyalty is rusty guardrail.

The role that gets the money does the job

I had a career before software and I knew many people twice my age whom I was “better” than at our jobs, and no one ever thought to fire that person because they weren’t ambitious enough. It’s accepted in many industries that many people won’t get promoted this decade, nor will they be let go. That isn’t always good but I think on the whole it’s more good than bad.

Agree with everyone else here talking about the importance of communication up front. I'd add that it is the manager's responsibility to establish the culture of high quality communication. It's something that takes practice and deliberate effort, and the goal of clear and honest communication must be explicitly communicated.

Once we're on the same page about how a team member wants to contribute, then I simply support that by giving consistent, regular raises and staying in touch about how it's going. We're aiming for marathon employment with balance.

Apparently you've stumbled into a stable situation, and your instinct is to screw it up and inject instability into it?

Enjoy this boon that has come to you, and ride it as long and as hard as you can. There is no better situation to be in than with a competent group who knows what they are doing and experiences little churn.

It sounds like the person is part of a larger organisation and is happy with how things are, but is required to provide career progression planning, and is unsure of what to report up the management chain.

I wouldn't take the person's post as "trying to screw it up and inject instability into it".

I would tell the manager of the manager that things are really good right now, dont fuck it up by making a happy team write nonsense career progression plans.

But because you need a piece of paper, would slap together a team plan and timeline for each of the team on their current glidepath - promotion / salary / retirement and candidates for replacement / managers if team grows / potential head of projects etc.

But things do change. The company will change and the job will change. Someday neither one may be there in which case the worker needs to change.

Progression at work may or may not prepare for that.

I am not looking for a promotion at work in the foreseeable future but my situation is stable and gives me the foundation to pursue side projects which are outright radical.

It sucks and we all hate it but really the only way to keep most employees engaged is to not let them become still. "I'm fine where I'm at, leave me alone" pretty quickly turns into "I'm ready for something new, just not here".

Find goals that motivate them, things they can chase after. Keep them moving and growing. It's the only way.

Don't work harder than your desired title suggests. In fact, be slightly less productive than your peers with the same title without sacrificing quality.

Always go home on time and don't do any kind of overtime unless it's an emergency.

Make occasional appearances at group lunches and social events, just enough to seem like part of the team but not be too well liked or notable.

Be friendly, but don't buddy up with management.

Always be looking for different positions elsewhere or other companies you would want to reach out to in case you need to abandon ship.

Have fuck-you money saved up.

If you contribute code on GitHub, be anonymous about it.

Consider contract work so you can choose the kind of work you want to do (and create a business and hire yourself under your chosen title/role in case you need to go back to a W2 job).

Be vague, slow to respond, and not overly enthusiastic when management makes you do "reflections" and "self-assessments" that ask you where you want to advance in your career or "where you see yourself in 5 years".

When management walks by your desk, act relaxed and don't look like you are stressed or working very hard; even if your work is poor, management likes the perception of an employee that "works hard" for them.

Don't do things to make them think of you in particular if a peer higher in the hierarchy leaves. If there is an emergency, let seniors handle most of it unless you are the only one available to help.

Only participate in meetings when necessary and don't talk for the sake of talking.

Care about the users/customers of the service you are building, but don't care about the company itself more than you need to or emotionally invest yourself; every company is capable of firing you at the drop of a hat and they will not keep in touch unless they absolutely need to and are willing to drop the advancement bullshit to make you happy.

If a promotion is offered to you, thoroughly inquire about the responsibilities for the position, make note of the new responsibilities that you really don't like in particular and speak to your manager about making some exceptions because you "have strengths in some areas but weaker in these others"; use corporate buzz words during your one-on-one to talk about the promotion.

Again, always have your eye out for other roles and keep an exit strategy in your back pocket.

Working hard isn't a virtue in and of itself, and growth to no end isn't sustainable. There is nothing wrong with finding your place and performing adequately within it. I believe that my generation (Millennials) and later have been especially indoctrinated into the fantasy of the "dream job", the need to always be hustling and advancing, and working for paternalistic companies that "care" about the growth of their employees. It creates lots of shame for those who don't have the will to do what it takes to land the corner office. Most of our grandparents made their living doing things that weren't particularly prestigious and didn't live with that constant lack of satisfaction or sense of shame that they won't live up to their parents success. If you are contributing something to society in whatever amount and you are living the life you want to live, nobody really has the authority to tell you that you shouldn't be satisfied with that.

For an actual unpopular opinion, if you want to stagnate and work applying the same repetitive skillset over and over again, work for a company where stagnation is not only fine but more than welcome. Those include government jobs, non-profit organizations, and very large companies that have little to no risk of competition, such as telecom, large banks, or various zombie tech companies that have not managed to produce any significant innovations in more than 2-3 decades... like IBM or Oracle.

Most other companies in the tech field simply do not have room for stagnation and a company that has stagnating workers will find itself highly vulnerable to disruption by a company that prefers to hire people who have a genuine interest in constantly keeping their skills up to date.

It also causes major productivity issues for a company that has stagnating employees because it inhibits the ability of experts from distributing their knowledge. The majority of the value from senior most experts does not come from their direct output but rather from the distribution of their knowledge and expertise to people less skilled. All of that potential gets lost if there's a substantial group of people who simply want to stay put in their skillset.

These (wanting to progress to completely different duties vs improving your skills in your current role) are orthogonal though. I don't mind learning a new language every week or whatever it might be. What's being discussed isn't someone who isn't willing to learn new skills. It's about not completely wanting to change career paths (e.g. Engineering into management).

Kinda buried the lede there a bit, didn't we?

Also, I didn't list all those micro-strategies off as if I practice all of them. Honestly, yes, I do some of those things, and it depends on how a company turns out for me after I take on a new position. Some of them I've learned from what I've heard from colleagues; an older gentleman once told me that leaning back or slouching in your chair while working can make it seem like you're slacking, and I didn't believe him until I tried to see how long periods of either looking relaxed or ultra-focused affected how I would get treated by bosses and what sort of work they'd give me. Other examples were simply learned accidentally because I'm not the greatest employee in the world, yet I'm at least somewhat self reflective.

But I don't think it's wrong for people to do those things so they can manage to do their job, not do more than they bargained for, make their money, go home, and never end up with a management role they hate. It's moral because, firstly, no one is being swindled, and secondly the companies themselves game their employees all the time to get the most out of them while paying the least amount they can. If it's the company's desire to advance an employee in the hierarchy, and not that of the employee, there should be room for negotiation or termination in an honest way, but instead the imposition of advancement as a norm as well as frequently having employees answer surveys about their "progress" is a psychological tactic to get more out of employees while spending the least amount of money. A lost employee means months of recruiting, which is costly, and a new hire will usually require more pay than a current employee whom they only need to bump the salary of by a few percent.

It sucks, really, but I don't know of a really practical alternative for those whose satisfaction doesn't need improvement other than to play the game within the system we all inevitably must deal with. If humans were completely honest creatures, this wouldn't be an issue in the first place. We'd just tell our employers "no way", and then them employer reasonably has the choice to accept it, negotiate, or terminate. It's not that this isn't already possible, but there's a reason why many recommend against such honesty. Management with ego may feel betrayed that you decided not to make their company your life and to aspire to join their club someday, and a common thing to do when they believe they've gotten all they could out of an employee is to start looking for your replacement until they are ready to fire you, all the while not being upfront about it. Don't get me wrong, some companies are great, but many consider complete honesty not worth the risk.

If that doesn't seem right to you, hey, that's cool. I'd love to hear if someone thinks my perspective is immoral.

well, the obvious factoid I feel most of this topic is missing is simply talking with your direct point of contact. If you're at a smaller company and they want to make you a lead for some new project, then sure. Maybe that's a cue to use your fuck-you funds for a bit. Those companies by default have an implicit expectations that someone is gonna be wearing multiple hats. It's not for everyone, especially those who want to lay low.

But other companies have IC paths specifically to avoid this issue. Those tend to be good companies since they are the (sadly) few that understand that not all workers make good managers. So yes, be honest. And if you realize management isn't... well, that's why you have fuck you money.

I see no reason to pre-emptively close off and start scanning the job market without at least asking for a raise, or insisting to not be made a lead, or whatever issue you have. Unless of course, the people you work with/under are simply incompatible with you or outright hostile.

Just like video games have many layers, jockeying for promotion is another layer to the game of work. Since I’m essentially forced to play it all day long I may as well check out all the features.

They were, without exception, great to work with, or have work for me.

We can't, after all, all be the boss, or the senior whatever.

Where possible, I'd try and focus on skills development within their current roles.. directly applicable skills where possible - if not, I'd look for indirectly applicable ( look at the training other teams in the business do.. cross skilling, or even just having a better understanding of other roles in the business is rarely a bad thing )

Smaller companies and consulting firms are the ones who follow the "up or out" mentality.

If someone says they don't want to progress, they are saying that the carrot won't work for them, and when someone in management leaves they won't be able to help, so sooner or later they will be replaced with someone who does (at least say that) they want to progress.

If there are no opportunities to learn and grow, you're going to get bored and leave. And most people will not let you know ahead of time, they will just leave. Even if they tell you, by the time they realize they're bored, you've already done them a disservice by not helping them earlier.

For someone who is happy, I think setting targets is overkill. They don't need to aggressively climb the ladder, but you do want to brainstorm with them opportunities to learn things they want to learn. Note this doesn't have to match with what the company "thinks" they should learn but it does have to intersect with actual business needs. Keep it lightweight but always have something they can work towards.

If they don't seem to be working towards it, debug what's stopping them.

1. Don't know how to start? Too hard? Help them get started. Break it down into easier goals/steps.

2. Current work is too much? Lighten their load or change the goal to help them learn how to do the current work better. Be more efficient, prioritize better, etc.

3. They aren't interested? Find a different goal that they actually want to achieve.

4. Temporary setback? Check in later.

You can't convince people who are comfortable where they are to climb, and every company needs those people (e.g. the guy who maintains the crazy Makefiles that no one else likes to deal with, but who doesn't care to revamp the build system even though its sorely needed). However, if you lay out the path for advancement, then everyone can either choose to go down it, or not. If folks decide to not go down it, or get jealous seeing other people advance down it, you can tell them that if they do the same stuff, they'll advance too.

Be careful how you adapt this to each individual as well. There are a lot of words spilled here about how developers with families are penalized because they can't "crush it" late into the early morning on weekends. The hard part will be managing to make things fair across developers of all backgrounds, as you need to make sure you entice valuable employees of all types to stick around.

And unless companies adjust salaries to keep up with market without arm twisting or requiring employees to run on a hamster wheel to "level up" and "prove they can do the job", the easier choice is to leave.

Imo yes, totally. But you can always try to be a bit better in what you're doing, especially in software development...the craft has a lot of room to grow. But if someone is happy being a dev or whatever else that should be totally cool, maybe even celebrated.

If your work involves higher table discussions / strategy, bring one / some of them into that sphere on the odd occaion. Rather than abstract the next level(s) up away from them, delegate some of that down which simultaneously exposes them to growth and progression.

> manage people's career planning (including yourself)

Ask for the same above you of the layer above.

Otherwise, talk to them like human beings not as subordinates, take a genuine interest, and you will probably know the answer to those questions that they themselves dont even know.

You could ask "what do you like about what you are currently doing?", or "is there anything you think that could make you happier?" (this question can have unintended consequences, as "more money" is a likely answer).

https://wardleypedia.org/mediawiki/index.php/Pioneers_settle...

Guide them into one of those roles?

So your choices are learn to enjoy where you are, or have an endless chase to find a company that listens to technical people at a strategic level.

If we're talking about growth as individual contributor, above comment is on the mark. There are still ways to grow as an engineer. Broader knowledge, deeper knowledge, reflecting on how to improve things, how to better connect the work to customers and the business, etc.

But, as their manager, you can help them tease it apart potentially even advocating for changes to the IC/technical track within the company?

The only thing I'd add is if you're good at something, teach it.