RED FLAG? Should Software Engineers Ask For Promotions?

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hey folks we're doing a double whammy on the drive home it's actually a quick drive um but I had two quicker sort of conversations based on comments to go through so this one also comes from YouTube uh like the previous video I just filmed you might not have watched that one but um this one is regarding the video I put out about um sort of the hardest career lesson to learn and it was essentially about uh an opportunity that was presented to someone and there was a sort of a missed opportunity because they had different expectations they thought that by demonstrating the you know by demonstrating what they thought was meeting an exceeding expectations that automatically they would be considered for a position when in reality what was laid out for them was to um was that they need to apply and then they ultimately

didn't get the role right and it's very unfortunate um it was actually I when I sent the video over to the person ahead of time before I posted it live um I told them like that was a really hard video for me to record because like based on what they wrote I'm like man like there there's so much potential here and I feel really bad and just seeing them go from you know trying to trying to step it up and then basically getting to this totally demoralized point I'm like oh like that that was just hard for me to read and then hard for me to make a video on so um really appreciate them sending that in but there's some follow-up comments and someone was essentially asking like I'm I'm assuming they're asking for my opinion on this maybe just for you know General

people in the comments but like what should the expectation be of employees asking about promotions right they were saying that from there their perspective they would think if I were an engineering manager like I don't think I would be bothered by employees asking about getting promoted right and kind of like ideally as engineering managers we should be trying to you know move people in that direction so I wanted to kind of like talk through my perspective on this um I would say especially for early in career folks this is a pretty like touchy taboo subject to talk about people don't know how to approach it it feels really uncomfortable so I think it's a really good one to chat through um a reminder if you want your questions answered leave them in the comments and uh if you want to be kept Anonymous then you

can send a message to Dev leader which is my main YouTube channel it's my my main social media handle just send me a message I'll keep you Anonymous and happy to try my best to answer your questions so number one the m main lesson from the other video and I'll just repeat it here is that like you need to be in the driver seat of your career and the reality is like I would not encourage anyone to sit back and wait for promotions okay sitting back and waiting for promotions doesn't mean that you won't ever get them you might actually have a great manager who is actively trying to do this but I would say like I would call call that luck unfortunately we call that luck so instead of just relying on luck and hoping you have a good manager that's actively trying to

do this for you um you can be proactive and I think that you should be trying to talk to your manager when you feel that you're ready for promotion um or at least trying to get clarity on expectations for promotion right I think that this is a healthy conversation to have I think that like I said in the beginning it's uncomfortable for people full transparency even as a manager like it can be a little uncomfortable for me in some situations that doesn't mean that I think it's a bad thing to do but like topics around like someone saying I'm ready for promotion or topics around saying like I deserve a raise these are sure they're uncomfortable they're uncomfortable because they're not common doesn't mean it's bad bad it's just that it's not regular conversation so we don't practice this a lot as a manager and

as an employee right like it's just not something that you're doing all the time or maybe you are maybe every week you're having a one-on one with your manager saying I deserve to get paid more I deserve a promotion maybe you are very comfortable at doing this um oh boy someone just drove through a lot of water um but yeah I think it's normal for this to be UNC comfortable but that doesn't mean that it's bad so I think how I would recommend approaching this and again all of these videos these are my opinion there's I'm not saying it's the only way or the only right way you may disagree with this have a different strategy that's cool but my recommendation here is that um first of all if you don't understand the expectations around getting promoted start with that conversation and you should actively

do that in my opinion there should be no point where you're just waiting trying to guess at what's required from your manager's perspective regarding promotion I have told employees even after meeting with them and going through it I said look if we leave this conversation and you're digesting some of this stuff and you're still like I'm not really sure or I have questions about this I don't really understand what I should focus on I have told them like send me a message we'll get another call going like it's literally my responsibility to make sure that you and I are on the same page and understand this and I mean it so I want people to make sure they understand okay so the expectations should be clear if you don't have this with your manager please work on this because without the clarity here you're basically

it's a recipe for disappointment you might get to a point where you think you're ready you might think you're focusing on the right stuff and then performance rewards and stuff come around no promotion no bonus no whatever you happen to have at your organization and it's just nothing right so I think minimum actively try to get that Clarity okay next thing is I would say if you're having these conversations with your manager and you feel like you're ready and you've been asking for feedback which maybe I should have mentioned as well like try to be getting feedback if you feel like you're doing all these things and you're like based on the feedback I've been getting based on if you have like a a rubric or something that uh is laid out for your role on what to focus on you're like dude I'm killing

it I'm doing all this stuff I'm based on what I'm seeing and hearing from my manager I'm exce expectations like I would say bring up the conversation and say I think I'm ready for this right but I think that there's a couple things to consider here is that what probably isn't helpful is like every week going to have a conversation with your manager that's like no I'm ready I'm ready like I deserve it give it to me like demanding promotions is probably not a great strategy um because the thing to consider here is like in general your manager needs to be able to put you up for promotion they need to be able to represent you and defend their stance on putting you up for promotion right your manager supposed to be your ally in this situation they go up to bat for you so

if you're already in a position where you're like you feel like every week you're trying to convince your manager and like no no you got to do this for me you got to do this for me it might just be the wrong approach because if they don't feel confident I think you need to go back to the drawing board and get aligned expectations why don't they feel confident right you can't just say like no no I'm ready no no I'm ready like therefore give it to me and then expect that it happens but I do think that it's good and healthy to be able to raise awareness to it and say like Express I believe that I'm ready and then have a conversation with them about it right it shouldn't be about demanding it you know hey based on the feedback and everything that I've

been seeing I think that I think I'm ready for promotion I wanted to talk about this see what your perspective is on it and then basically try to do that exercise of aligning expectations a lot of the time in these conversations a manager will not sit there and guarantee you a promotion I would actually be a little bit skeptical if a manager does do that and the reason why is because it's not often the case that a manager says I'm promoting this person and then they snap their fingers and it just happens the reason that's not the case is because there's you usually a couple of levels of approval for this stuff right at a minimum like where're let's say where I am at Microsoft at a minimum like it needs to get approved through uh like through my uh group engineering manager um I

mean my my boss who he is also a group engineering manager but so there's a couple of levels of management directly above me that also need to approve HR needs to approve Finance needs to approve depending on the level the CVP needs to approve like there's there's just levels of approval that it has to go through but the minimum that needs to happen the absolute minimum is that I have to go put my employee up for promotion so in my opinion it's extremely important that you work with your manager on getting that alignment so again from my perspective as an engineering manager my goal is not to like try and gatekeep promotions from people right and not try to dangle a promotion in front of them and say you just got to do this and then maybe I'll give you the promotion it's like no

I my goal is to help you grow in your career if you're trying to work towards the next level let's talk about what those expectations are there's literally expectations for organiz ation drafted let's go through those have a conversation about where I see you're at I want to hear where you think you're at on those criteria and let's just get on the same page now from there given that we're on the same page let's make sure that you're working on these areas that need attention needing attention doesn't mean that you're doing it bad and you got to do it better needing attention just might mean that we need to see more of it you might already already be doing it and I need to see consistency there but that's a conversation we have and the reason we do that is because if I don't have

confidence that I could go have a conversation and say I'm putting Billy up for promotion to go from level one to level two and I feel confident about that and here's why if I can't do that I can't put you up for promotion Billy because I'm not ready to defend your promotion so I need to work with my employees so for me if someone came to me and said Nick I feel like I'm ready for promotion to me that's a great conversation starter personally right it doesn't doesn't mean that that becomes an easy conversation in some situations it might feel easier because I'm like actually yeah like I was thinking about this person for promotion in some conversations it might be trickier because I'm like H it wasn't really I wasn't really thinking that okay but you know what that's going to mean we're going

to sit down and have a conversation to align our expectations I want to hear from their perspective the reasons why they think that that's the case right I want to talk to them about what are the things that you're observing where you're like this is why I'm knocking out of the park this is why I'm operating at that next level already here's the evidence and you know why I want to hear that because that will become evidence that I try to use when I put them up for promotion it doesn't mean that it's going to happen right away doesn't mean that I automatically agree with it and say oh you know what you're right I guess I missed it but there's always going to be opportunities where I can say yep like that was a maybe a blind spot for me or yep that's a

good point this is reassuring the things that I was thinking of already it's a conversation and I think it is beneficial to speak up and try to raise awareness if you feel like you're ready for promotion I do strongly feel uh feel that way about it now again if you're like every week trying to say like what about now what about now it's just probably not helpful it's probably not changing anything at that point right so I think it's good to do the other question around this was kind of like and I'm getting close to home so I'm try to wrap up this thought right but it's kind of like should employees be expected to be doing this or like how much of it comes from the manager and I said it at the beginning right I think that if you have a good manager

they're actively trying to do this they're trying to but I wouldn't rely on it I simply would wouldn't rely on it I don't think it's a strategy that's going to lead you to um I don't know to being happy it might it might but I just think that you have this opportunity to be a little bit more um I don't even want to say in control I want to say I think it's a strategy that can help you have a more clear understanding because the most in my opinion the most frustrating part about not getting promoted and stuff like that is like when you have the expectation that you that you are ready right you've been sitting there going I am ready it's definitely coming it's definitely coming I've been getting good feedback it's going to happen this time and then it doesn't happen and

you're like well what the hell but if along the way you could get that Clarity because you're talking about it and especially if you feel like you're ready and you can have that Clarity with your manager and they might say look like I understand what you're saying but but I've not seen enough consistency right you've demonstrated this thing one time and I actually don't know if that's consistent behavior um I don't know if that means that if you can sustain this I don't like there could be any reason and again if you're not if you don't understand where your manager is coming from on that ask them questions but um you just have this opportunity to be building more clear expectations with your manager and I I think you should you should do that simply put you should be doing that um yeah I just

I would not rely on a manager um doing that for you now this kind of comes back to the the previous video right the lesson from that was was even just more apparent I guess there was there was feedback that this person was doing well and operating at a certain level in this particular case they opened up a role they told people to apply this person admittedly said oh I didn't think I was ready so I didn't apply but then kind of went and said like but everyone said that they thought that I would be ready everyone said that I have been exceeding like why didn't they just why didn't they do that for me just don't expect that they will right it's like it's it's such a hard lesson and I I still feel bad like you know trying to to talk about that

but it's like just don't rely on it I would love a world where we could just assume that that's going to be the case and it's always going to work out and it's just it's it's just not reality I've lit I have literally found myself in a situation twice now okay just to share this where I have had my manager support right where my manager I've had two different managers be like I have confidence that I think you're ready I will put you up for promotion and then I don't get it okay so I had to have conversations with them the entire time about getting alignment right so I'm being proactive working with them on that I even had their support and even with their support I didn't get it so even when you have these things it's not a guarantee so that's my reminder

to you that like you take that stuff out and then you're also just kind of hoping it's just not a it's not a recipe for success in my opinion so um to this person's point now that I'm actually parked let's see if there's anything else um sometimes you might not get promoted unless you ask for it in some cases yes like if the manager doesn't think you expect a promotion or even deserve it he or she might be inclined to give it to someone else who has been consistently asking so that could I mean that could be a thing that comes up but at the end of the day um the way that when I'm in my entire career which if you're not familiar with my videos at this point in time it's been almost 13 years as an engineer in manager and um I

would say that like I have to have this conversation about every employee on my team on a regular basis and in terms of like oh maybe I'll just give a promotion to someone else it's not it's never been like that for me um the only time where I've been unable to do promotions is like off cycle promotions and that's because of budget constraints but but it's not like I was like oh maybe maybe not this person cuz they weren't asking nope if I have sufficient evidence to go up to bat for them I'm putting them up for promotion I will let finance and HR or my my group engineering manager tell me can't do it based on budget right I'll let that be the deciding factor not um not just because someone wasn't asking but that's me I'm not every manager to this person's question

this is from i486 DX 66 they were asking this right and certainly might be the case for some managers where they're like this person was making more noise about it we'll give it to them I don't really think that's a good strategy is it possible sure um but I do think that you need to you're your biggest supporter so remember you got to be in the driver's seat don't expect handouts even if you're absolutely killing it just don't make it a a thing you're you're hoping for Hope is not a strategy see you next time