Preparing for Promotions
Q: Is it enough to just work hard? A: No!
Advocate for yourself.
Why surface your accomplishments
Why
- Relying on others noticing your work is risky
- Rewards & promotions are subjective
Q: Can they trust you to take on more responsibility?
A: If they’re unaware of your impact and achievements, they cannot confidently entrust you with more challenges and more responsibilities.
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Owning your narrative is not about self-promotion, it’s not arrogance, it’s about creating clarity and trust.
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Your work has value, and it’s important that those in leadership understand and appreciate your contributions.
How
- Create and regularly update a brag document.
- Create regular communication loops with your manager.
- Understand the promotion and rewards process.
- Most importantly: if you have metrics of some kind to show the impact of that work, that would be even better.
I like to use the situation-behavior-impact format to essentially outline what happened, what my actions were, and the results of that action.
Common Hesitations
- “It feels like arrogance”.
- “These accomplishments were done as a group, it is not my own”.
- “Is this really an accomplishment?”
- “No one else seems to be doing this.”
Additional resources
- What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith
Preparation Takeways
- Ramp up and Capture Knowledge Quickly: Start delivering efficiently by understanding the codebase, company processes, and norms through shadowing and pair programming.
- Focus on Maintainable and Testable Code: Write quality code that is easy to maintain and change. Use tests to understand systems and work safely, embracing test-driven development even if it’s undervalued in your company.
- Overcome Common Blockers: Have a clear debugging process, gather information, improve estimation skills, and over-communicate to execute tasks effectively.
- Seek Help and Prepare for Growth: Be proactive in asking for help and understand the steps to position yourself for promotions.