Engineering Reorgs Are CRUSHING My Chances Of Promotion!

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Hey folks, I am just leaving the office here on Wednesday. I got to get back to do an interview at 700 p.m. tonight, which is kind of funny know the the candidates uh on the other side of the world and uh I did volunteer any time that would be okay for them. So, not complaining. It's just kind of funny cuz I haven't had to do that uh so late. But no worries. Um, I'm gonna go to experienced devs for this topic. And I've kind of talked about this before, but it's been quite some time. So, for folks that are new to the channel, instead of you digging through the hundreds of videos that are on the channel to go see like where this was covered, I figured this would just be good to like reiterate, maybe share some different perspective on, but the topic is around uh a reorganization.

So, the original poster on the experience devs subreddit was basically talking about how uh their manager is leaving, they're going somewhere else, and uh it feels like after like I think they're saying the timing is really unfortunate because it's been like roughly 3 years and their manager was the biggest advocate for them to be able to get promoted. Now, they're going to be gone. So, like what the heck should they do? um they talked about having some more conversations with their skip level, that kind of thing. But I I wanted to talk about this because um like I work at Microsoft right now, so I work in big tech, but I spent I still to this point I spent the majority of my career in a startup. It's been 5 years at Microsoft, 8 years um at a startup, but like you know my how my my views on work were shaped were from from a startup.

So still kind of have that mindset and it has not I would say personally for me it hasn't really worked super well uh in big tech when it comes to like career progression. So I wanted to to talk through it from my experience see what we can learn from that and maybe how it can be applicable uh you know for you going forward to help avoid this kind of thing and then um you know what can this person do to kind of salvage this situation. So the context that I'll give is like I said I worked at a startup for 8 years then I came to Microsoft and like titles were they just didn't really matter before like doing doing important work getting compensated for it cool like give me the responsibilities give me the interesting work compensate me for it and like uh you know respectfully kind of like move out of the way to give me the autonomy to do it.

um you know like obviously trust in me that I can get it done and like that that's really motivating and empowering for me and then I'm I'm very happy and I will do my best work. So to for me at least like to have something like oh well we'll dangle this title in front of you and you can become the next level uh like when I worked at a startup I honestly just didn't give a like call me like whatever you want like it just doesn't matter because what does matter for me is that I'm doing impactful work that's awesome and I'm being compensated for it and if you continue to grow my responsibilities and let me do more more impactful work Like I don't know. It's like a it's an awesome vicious cycle. Like I'm happy about that and the title doesn't matter.

But I found in big tech this is like a completely different experience because it it seems like absolutely everyone is like hyperfocused on title progression because that's how your career progresses in big tech right there. Like everyone's focused on it. It's just like a it's a focal point. And so that was kind of shocking for me. But when I've talked about this before, the framing that I had was like, look, like, you know, if I'm if I'm doing the work that my manager says is like the most important, you got to let me in here, buddy. Um, then I would wager like I would hope that that's the most, you know, most impactful, most visible. It's like all the right things that I should be doing. And if I just do the good work like I have done in my career, then that should sort of translate into career progression.

But it's kind of a naive thing and I think it's because like I didn't want to sort of admit it. didn't want to like play into it like the politics at work and stuff because like it's such a to me it's such a distraction from doing actual work and yes I understand that when I'm using the word politics yes you can have politics in a positive way like how you lead and influence uh whether that's individuals teams or organizations like that can be a sort of political perspective on on how you approach things but but I mean politics as in like let me artificially boost my visibility into something like overcommunicate to to stakeholders that aren't really stakeholders but they might happen to be part of the promotion process like it kind of feels like the word I want to use is two words that

come to mind like kind of greasy kind of slimy like I should just be able to do my awesome work because my manager said it's the most impactful area that's aligned with our organization and that should be good but like I said, uh, in hindsight, this is kind of a naive thing to do. And so, what has happened to me while at Microsoft over the past 5 years is that, uh, I started on a team and I had a, you know, had a great manager, great skip level manager, and I didn't have a ton of facetime with my skip level, and then my manager uh, switched teams um, pretty early on. Let me get past this guy. Cool. Um, so he switched teams pretty early on and like from again from my perspective I'm like that's okay. Like you know he's going on to do something else.

Um I feel like you know he was very supportive like he set me up for success. like from my perspective. Um, sorry, I got to switch lanes here and there's oncoming traffic and I can't see. Come on, buddy. One more. Okay. Um, so while that happened, you know, he switched to another team. I actually didn't have like I didn't have a direct manager. I was reporting to my skip level and his org's pretty big. He's pretty swamp with stuff. And again, I'm like, "Hey, I'm you know, I'm pretty independent, right? Like I know what I've been tasked with. I know the areas I need to invest in. I can communicate up to him. He's very easy to work with." In my mind, I'm like, "This is totally fine, right?" like I was basically uh at the startup I was basically at the point where they were transitioning me into a director level role and it wasn't just like a small startup by the time I left.

I started when it was like eight people. It was around 250 people or so by the time I left. So not tiny. And so really they were just framing up the role for me because I didn't have a technical director role defined yet. So that was what I was working towards just kind of waiting for that to fall into place. So like I can be quite independent and manage teams. I've been managing teams now for 13 years. At that point it would have been you know uh 10ish 9 or 10. So I'm comfortable with that. But um the next challenge is like I have a new manager that comes on and um you know like no fault of her. She's new to the team. She's learning how things go and learning the space. She's great to work with. So, I spend time with her getting on the same page.

We start working together. Um, but really kind of what happened is like there's a reset. And you always like will hear managers say like, "Oh, no, no." Like your your progression doesn't reset when you switch managers. Like we do good transitions and stuff, but like man, there was I don't know how many months of a gap there was between my manager and the the new manager, but there's a pretty significant gap. Like there's no doubt in my mind that all of my progress reset like completely and like that's just the reality of it. I'm not going to sit here and cry, but like that's what happened, right? So I kind of have to rely on my skip level manager to glue those periods of time together. And like I said, I would, you know, I I like the guy a lot. Very easy to work with.

I really respect him as a leader, but I didn't spend a lot of time working closely with him. So, point number one that I want to call attention to is like I would find ways to make sure that you are getting more facetime with your skip level manager. And like at this point in my career, I'm not trying to say like make it artificial, like do anything you can just to like put stuff in their face, but like try to find ways to make sure that you have visibility with them. They have a clear understanding of what's going on with what you're doing. Yes, you should be able to trust in in your manager to be able to bubble that up, but like uh you know, even right now, I actually work very closely on a bunch of things with my skip level manager. Not because I'm working around my manager, like my direct boss.

Uh it's not a work around him kind of situation. It's like I have collaborative efforts with my skip level. And I feel like that's been a tremendous help in terms of visibility and having sure that kind of stuff's understood. When you become more and more senior in your role, I I've talked about this in other videos. At least for me at a principal level, my promotion and trajectory is like my manager has to agree to it, of course, my skip level has to agree to it, of course, but it's it's not even in their control. They can both agree to it and it will still get denied. So, minimally, I need to make sure that he is very much on board and that means that I need to have good visibility with him. Even better is when he can advocate for me very clearly with his peers.

or at least give me feedback. If his peers are not like, you know, sort of aware of the impact I'm doing, then I need to to maybe focus on that. Make sure that if there are stakeholders in those other orgs that I can be involved. This is where it gets kind of like it's like a bit of a politics kind of thing. But that's point number one I wanted to draw attention to is like more facetime with your skin. So for me, didn't really do that in my my first team that I was on. had my new manager come on, kind of walked through this already. And then what ended up happening is that we got reordered. So I was still with my manager, but we moved to another group engineering manager. So that skip level that I was talking about no longer report up to him.

Brand new skip level manager. And we actually had one more layer of management introduced between like us and the CBP, which again, you might say, who gives a And like in my mind, we shouldn't have to give a But guess what? That's two more people. Two more people that are going to be part of my promotion process that have literally no idea anything I've done. and that becomes a problem. So, for me, I'm trying to relate back to this um you know, to this experience devs Reddit post because like I feel that right like we're talking roughly 3 years in almost the exact same at a principal level at Microsoft. My progress gets reset again which is really unfortunate. Now you know like my manager was pretty clear with me like she she said that she put me up for promotion and then it was rejected and the feedback was really that there wasn't visibility.

So like basically the the scope of impact of work I'm doing is not visible to the people that are part of that promotion process. But that means that my manager, she felt like that, you know, she had kind of bridged that gap between my previous manager and felt like I was uh deserving of it. My skip level, and I think at the time, I don't know if this would have been the new uh the new skip level manager. Perhaps it was. Um but if it was, I think they would have brought in the previous skip level to at least, you know, offer some perspective. But that's like That's two people that are trying to, you know, um, you know, represent me. But like I said, that that new skip level manager, I'm not saying that like he was bad or anything like that, but he's truly not going to be able to advocate for me effectively.

And then I said there was another layer of management that was added in between him and the CBP. This guy's got to stop tailgating me because if you touch my car, we'll have a problem. Um, so like you know when it gets up to her, there's absolutely no way that she's going to have any idea who I am. Like it's just there there literally is not enough time for her to like learn about all these people in the org to understand that kind of impact. So it's kind of like there was a lot of things that were set up in a way that was not going to lend itself well for a promotion. Now, I'm not trying to say like I don't want this to come across like a boohoo session for me. Like it's not my point. It's like there were things that uh I could have been doing and should have been doing to help align that and just like in my mind at the time I was like it shouldn't matter.

And I now that I've kind of experienced this like it really does matter. So, I already talked about more facetime with my skip level. When I had my my reorg, I should have made sure that with that new skip level manager, I was spending more time. I should have been trying to make sure there were opportunities to communicate up to our new VP so she had visibility into what I was doing. I should have had conversations with my skip level uh both that I had before regarding um you know visibility across different parts of the org, right? like I should have been doing those things so that I could understand where the gaps were in terms of visibility that might mean that I have to go take on additional projects uh like something that I can use to demonstrate across the org that I'm having

large impact and instead what was happening was I was kind of relying on my manager to be able to my my manager on my skip level to be able to provide those things to me and again not no fault of their own this is this is truly on me. But I kind of made the assumption that like it would just happen that way. Like, hey, like I said at the beginning of this, if they're telling me what to do, that should be the biggest, most important thing to focus on. Just a bad strategy. Like, I I'm saying this because I don't want to rely on that ever again going forward. I feel like I should be able to, but now I've kind of lived it and I'm like, it's just not a good strategy.

So the the next thing that I'll I'll add into here is like after this time um so we get about three and a half years in to my career at Microsoft is when I say okay I'm going to switch teams and I had this opportunity to come to the current team that I'm on. So, I applied for the position and like my current manager, you know, like I I said to both my current manager and my skip level manager, I said, "Look, like I'm very interested in this role, but I said, I have one really big concern." And I said, "I've been in this level now for three and a half years. I just had a promotion denied.

and like if I switch teams I am extremely concerned that all of my progress is going to reset again and they said like you know rest assured like we're not it's not going to be the case and like I will just tell you and I I believe that my I'll say that I would be comfortable saying this to my skip level's face because I think that sometimes he sees some of my content that I put online but like I genuinely feel like my progress was reset coming to this new team. And again, I'm not complaining. I was literally just promoted, so I have nothing to complain about, but it took 5 years in total. And I feel like if I look back on the, you know, the the year and a halfish that I've been on this team, like there was a lot of impact that was demonstrated.

And I think that like that impact was like material enough evidence to to put together for the promotion. I don't think there was a an ounce of anything else from before my time on the previous team that would even have been factored in. And that's why I'm saying my progress is reset. My manager and my skip level are absolutely awesome in terms of supporting me. Absolutely awesome. Uh my manager has always tried to make sure that he's you know challenging me, putting opportunities in front of me. Skip level is very much like uh he'll find ways to push me as well in like a in a good way. I don't mean like in an uncomfortable like you know it's uh it's too much work or whatever. Like it's it's all good. I I very much respect both of them for it because it helps me grow and it gives me opportunities.

This is the kind of thing I said I I would love to be able to rely on that and I truthfully have had really good opportunities over the past year and a half for impact, but I I I feel like I can say with a high degree of confidence that when they were putting my promotion case together, there was nothing from before I was on this team. There didn't need to be because I was able to demonstrate that impact. But like it's almost like all that other work kind of just evaporated. That's how it feels at least. So all of this to say like in this person's situation, I think it's it's very unfortunate because I would say odds are the it's going to feel like your progress resets. And I would love to tell you otherwise, but I don't really see that being the case.

Um, so I think there's a lot of stuff you can do like preventatively before you get into this type of situation. And you know, the first uh example I gave was like, you know, more facetime with your skip level manager. Um, next thing is kind of like identifying opportunities across an org. Depends on your level too, by the way. like for for someone at my level, I want to make sure that I'm working with my skip to understand visibility and impact across the org because if it's not being met, I have work to do, right? I don't want to rely on my direct manager being the only person that can advocate for me. I need other like people at the at my skip levels level in the org to be able to say, "Hell yeah, Nick's doing awesome stuff. I see it. It's impacting us. This is great.

I need that. And if I'm not doing work like that, then I have to find those opportunities. I have to go look for them. I have to create them. It's it's sort of like an expectation or else I'm sitting waiting for such opportunities and shouldn't be surprised when I don't get them. So, I would recommend that if you're someone sort of at my level. If you are more junior then like I think that you can still um you know raise the visibility with your skip you run the risk like I already shared one example from my career story at Microsoft where I had a new manager and a new skip which is unfortunate but I think the preventative measures that I'm suggesting are like skip level and then across the org for impact. Um, that might mean too if you're not doing like, you know, big sweeping impactful changes across the org, what about like teams that you're partnering with?

You know, if you're a mid or senior level engineer and you're doing some work with a partner team to help build uh features or functionality for them, like get that feedback from that manager. Like basically what I'm saying is have more have more people in a leadership like a formal leadership role have visibility and feedback for you in in the work areas that you're responsible for. Right? There's it's not a single point of failure anymore. That's probably the easiest way to put it. Right? Try to reduce the single point of failure which is just your manager because if they leave it's not going to feel great. So, that's the sort of the the ranty version of like why I recommend doing all of that as a preventative measure. Again, all of what I just said is like just a couple disclaimers, right? I don't love that.

I don't love a lot of the things I just said because I'm like I I would love to just focus on building good software and in my case like managing people so that they can be awesome like anything else just feels like it's a distraction personally. So a lot of the things I'm saying about getting that visibility and stuff like that feels kind of personally. I just don't like having to focus on it. The other thing I just want to add the disclaimer is like I'm not not complaining about anything even though I realize as I'm talking through it if it sounds like a complaint that's not my it's not my intention. I'm trying to be transparent about the different parts in my career so that you can see like how how things changed and progressed and where those like transitions happen and you can understand them.

Right. Obviously at different points in time that felt frustrating, but like it is what it is, you know. I like I said, I had a really good first manager. I had a great skip level manager in the beginning. My new manager that came on, we got along really well. I then had a new skiple manager after that who was very friendly and helpful. That was all on my previous team. It's fine. Then on my new team, I have an awesome manager. I have an awesome skip level manager. So, it's not like I'm I'm not here to complain about people or anything like that. Not the case. Just giving you visibility into how those steps happen. Now, for this person who wrote the Reddit post, like, okay, you're in this position. Manager's gone. What do right? Like, all of that, you know, uh sort of defensive work I was telling you to do to not have a single point of failure, guess what?

Single point of failure. They're gone. So, what can we do? Um, I think that what I would try to do retroactively is what they've already suggested, which is like start having conversations with the skip, right? Like make sure that you can start bringing visibility up to them. It kind of sucks cuz it's retroactive, but then you can start picking up these pieces going forward where you're keeping them in sync with the work that you're doing. Um, you know, you got you got to find the right way to uplevel that because they might not care about all the details because they got a lot of other going on, but at least letting them know about the, you know, the the impact, the result of the work can be very helpful. Uh, I would, uh, I would personally, like I'm just thinking about myself being on the other end of this.

I would I would try to see if you can find ways around like looking for like skip level 101 ones if you don't have them already. Um I I know that if someone came to me and they said, "Hey, like and I'm not I'm not managing managers, but um if I had anyone come to me that was like, you know, newly on my team or reporting up through me and if they said, "Hey, like I want to make sure that I can have, you know, a little bit more uh, you know, oneonone time or opportunities just so I can bring more visibility and make sure that like I don't know, like like if they have concerns around that um because of a transition losing progress personally because I've been through it, I would very much be uh open to having more conversations, right?

Like, so I'm saying if I if I was in a like a a gem position, so a group engineering manager position, if I had managers that reported up to me and someone was like, "Hey, Nick, like you know, I know that you're not my direct manager, but like could I schedule periodic one-on- ones with you kind of thing because I have this concern or could we do a couple of ad hoc conversations because I have this concern?" I would say absolutely yes. I I literally told someone the other day at work. I said uh we were talking about promotions and stuff sort of in general and I had kind of talked about some of these pieces that we're talking through right now. Person behind me is swerving all over the road like it's crazy. It's the same person that was tailgating me. Um, but in this conversation, we were touching on some of these things around like promotion timing, visibility, that kind of stuff.

And I had said to them that like having gone through like some transitions like where manager change or you know reorg and that kind of stuff I said I I'm now feeling like hyper aware for people that I manage and I want them to know like I don't know how to make it more clear but I want them to know that like if there's a team change and they're coming to report up to me I want them to know that I'm doing everything in my power to make sure that their progress does not feel like it's reset to them. Like I I really don't want that to happen to people because it it feels very unfair and it's very uh demotivating, right?

So that means if I got to do extra work, that means I got to follow up with the previous manager, really understand things, dig into like at Microsoft, we have these things called connects, which are uh twice a year kind of checkpoints where you write down your accomplishments, uh things that you could do better, goals coming up. Like I got to dig into those. I got to understand them because I don't want to be like, oh, like you didn't do that work under me doesn't exist, right? like that's a that's a shitty spot to be in. So, um yeah, I just wanted to share with you that like I had this conversation with someone and just wanted to to be very clear like I I feel like I I don't ever want to be the reason that happens to someone because it's a pretty lousy feeling.

So, uh, what else can people do? Um, again, like retroactively is very hard. I think talked about this in other videos. I'm trying to do this a little bit more proactively with individuals on my team, but like if you're running projects, if you're leading different projects, um, think about uh overcommunicating things. So yes, you might have like a I don't know like a daily standup or a weekly standup or a sync meeting whatever and you might be saying okay cool like the the stakeholders that are involved and care about it are there there's status right but like something that you can do beyond that is like do email newsletters or if your organization has a newsletter like write an entry for that. do something to communicate more broadly. And that could be just email to the stakeholders, that could be email to a broader organization, it could be a combination, but like I'm trying to make sure that we do more of that in my teams.

In fact, we have like one of our first newsletters going out. I been talking with one of our my PMs specifically for one of my feature crews and I said, "Hey, like we got to start doing this. There's plenty of examples of doing it across our org. Like we need to do it, right? And very much on board. So, we're we're putting that together. Um we give people the opportunity where they can write about their work and stuff too. Um I'm kind of on the fence like I don't want to over like I don't want to burden people if they're like, "Oh man, like you're going to make me write this stupid newsletter too and do all all of the normal work I'm doing. Like it's just too much." Like I'm happy to go write it. Um I do content creation outside of work. So I'm like if I got to write it, I'll write it.

I don't give a But like I want them to have that opportunity. They're like, "Hell yeah, I want to tell my story about this work." Great. Like please do. And that way we can share that with the team. We can share that with people outside of our team and our organization. And that way there's just just more opportunity for visibility. And to me that feels like a good balance of not being like I used the words slimy and greasy earlier that to me feels like let us share you know what we're working on our accomplishments the impact that we're having to the org and not hm let's go you know cherrypick individuals to go kind of like make sure we get some facetime just like make sure it's almost like It's not malicious, but it's like it just feels kind of greasy, right? Like, hey, I know you're part of the promotion uh committee that has to consider me, so like just wanted to tell you about all this awesome stuff I'm doing.

Like, that feels feels a little weird. So, I think that's a good balance, but we're trying to do more of that. And I'm I'm recommending to people even uh maybe it's not a project that's like you know four months long or something, but if there's other partner teams that are being affected by it, like we should be communicating that out, right? Communicate it between our teams. We can do a a summary blurb that goes in a broader newsletter. Hell yeah. But these are all opportunities to to communicate and have visibility. Um, again, like I said earlier, do I love that that's, you know, something that we might need to lean into more of? Like, I don't love that cuz I don't love the idea of having to do extra outside of like, you know, good software engineering just for promotion visibility. Like, the motivation feels wrong to me.

But I think that those are all helpful things. Maybe the reality is I'm I'm I'm very much geared towards working at smaller companies so I can focus on what I feel like is the most impactful stuff. I don't know, but it's tricky. So, I think that's the advice I'd give to that person. Um, and I unfortunately realized that most of it's advice for like preventative measures. Um, I shared in one of the other videos like I did almost exactly 5 years into Microsoft. I did just get promoted. So, uh, if you're not familiar with like levels and stuff at Microsoft, so I was hired in at a level 65 principal engineering manager. I'm now level 66. It took took five years. Um I am, you know, I it's it's weird. Like I'm proud of the work I' I've done. I'm obviously I'm very happy to be promoted.

Like it would kind of feel ridiculous to not be happy about that. If I reflect on the last five years of my career, I feel like that is the That is the slowest amount of career progression that I have ever experienced. And I think that part I think that part bothers me like a lot. Um, it's weird and that's why like when I was trying to walk through like all of uh, you know, the different experiences over the past few years, I'm not I'm not pointing fingers at anyone, nothing like that, right? Not my intention. If anyone hears what I'm saying and they think otherwise, like that's why I keep having this disclaimer to be like, you are just making up what you want to hear. But um I if I reflect on it, it's like I I'm not progressing at the at the rate that I would like.

So it's kind of a funny feeling because I'm happy to be promoted, but I also feel like disappointed in myself. And I and like I have felt disappointed in myself. I realized that um you know like even at Microsoft like many people don't get to principle and this is the you know the next level within principle. I get it. Um but like I'm not I'm like uh I I guess disappointed is the only word that kind of comes to mind. Not in the achievement. I'm disappointed in like the trajectory of it all. It's troubling to me. Um maybe that is the expectation I should have. Um but it's like I'm kind of I'm not really used to that. So it's weird. Maybe this is the whole idea of like getting caught up in titles and career progression and stuff because it's like if I look back are there lots of you know career experiences and things I've learned over the past 5 years.

Sure. Have I had impactful work like you know I work in office 365 which is uh platform and set of services that are used by you know millions and millions of people. Like I've done impactful work. I've worked in big complex systems. So it's not that there's like I'm not disappointed like oh I haven't done anything but um I guess the way that I would frame this is like I've in any aspect of my life before before work too like I have been what I would call like a fast flyer right like I I will work my ass off at and try to be the very best that I can. And this is the the first time that I feel like I've been trying to be the very best that I can and it's not um it's not lining up with my expectations of that, I guess.

Um I like I don't want to blame myself, but at the same time, like I literally cannot blame anyone else for it. I don't know if I can blame the environment, but I feel like it's not fair to not take responsibility as well. So, um I guess that's why I'm like I guess I have to, you know, I have to take responsibility. When I say blame myself, I mean take responsibility for the progression. So, anyway, that's my thoughts on that. Um, hope that was helpful. I hope there's some insight kind of buried or scattered throughout that. Um, but yeah, I'll leave it there. So, uh, if you have questions you want answer, just leave them below in the comments. You go to codemute.com and submit questions anonymously. Uh, if you add more details that way, then I have a easier time trying to give you a better answer.

And then there's a couple other YouTube channels you might be interested in. So, if you want to learn how to program in C or working with AI tools for programming, head on over to Dev Leader. That's my main YouTube channel. You can check out Devleader Path to Tech where I do resume reviews. Uh you can watch any of those videos to see how to submit a resume for a free review. And then there is the Devleer podcast where I interview other software engineers. you can hear about their career journeys which I think is super important so that you know there are different ways to kind of be successful in your career and it's not going to look the same as everyone else all the time. So, like I think that's uh my biggest takeaway from doing that podcast. And then there's a live stream on that same channel, Dev Leader Podcast, every Monday at 7:00 p.m.

Pacific. We do talk about, you know, the from the week the most popular um sorry guys in the middle of the road. The most popular code commute video. Uh I write a newsletter article on it and then we do the live stream on it and chat through it. But you can of course come with any questions you want. and it's an AMA format. So, happy to cover all of your questions as best I can. I'm just a guy trying to share my experiences to help you out. So, hope that helps in some way. Take care.