Navigating the Three Humps of Promotion: A Gamer’s Guide to Leveling Up in the Corporate World (1 of 3)

‘Promotion’ is a journey along the path of personal growth.

Depending on where you work and what stage that company is in, the journey that is promotion, can be smooth or bumpy. I want to chat about my take on promotions. Here’s the thing: unless you’re in a tiny startup, promotions usually comes in three stages. I like to picture them as three big hills or, as I call them, the “Three humps of promotion”. They’re a given, part of the ride.

1. The Self-Belief Checkpoint:

Ask yourself, “Do I believe I’m ready?”. Before you even think of the next level, it’s crucial to fairly assess and believe in your own abilities. It’s like that initial stage in a game where you’ve got to trust your skills before diving into the boss battle.

One thing to remember here is that that women tend to often underestimate their abilities for readiness to next level and their contribution overall. So you should do a bias check on self for that.

“Mentor is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.” — John Crosby.

Allies & Tools in this phase — In any decent company you should be able to have at least two folks who are

• From bottom of their heart they want to help you grow. These are not the people who are doing this to check their own “mentorship” checkbox.
• They are willing to spend time and energy with you. The time to be spent may not be lot. May be 1 hour every two weeks, 30m for interaction with you and 30m to read/assess and help you do your things. That is 1.5% of their bandwidth. Less than this and your mentor is probably chasing a checkbox and not an objective.
• They are capable of helping you. This could either be A. Someone who is better than you on a competency B. Someone at L+2 (L is your level). Just make sure either ways, they should be better at what you want to learn, or you are wasting your time and other’s time.

Its not easy or automatic let alone straightforward, to have two good mentors. Having good mentors can make the difference between you learning from your own mistakes over a long period versus you avoiding pitfalls. There is lot more to chat and share about mentorship, but may be about that in a different blog, if folks are interested.

Post college, do not stop reading/listening and learning technology and management philosophy. It is most ironic that we get to know what books we should be reading but have least amount of time to spend on learning, as you grow in your career. Focused learning is as essential during your regular job as it is when you are preparing for interviews. In a competitive landscape, a book you have read or a side project you did, could position you better than others. In face, one of my favourite interview question is to check on book/blog/tech one has come across recently. If you can’t do any of it, I will have to give a fair warning, then it is going to be very tough for you to survive and thrive at good companies.

2. The Manager’s Trust Checkpoint:

Once you’re confident in your ability to perform at the next level and have been doing so for some time, the next important step is ensure your manager sees eye-to-eye with you on this.

Manager is simultaneously your ally and a gatekeeper to the next level. A promotion is near-impossible if your manager isn’t convinced of your readiness, and this is not as obvious to everyone as you may think. Therefore, it’s important to get a clear endorsement from your manager.

A manager is also tasked with confirming scope availability at the next level. This matters lot more, if you are aiming for Staff engineer or Director.

“Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” — Ken Blanchard

Allies & Tools at this stage — Your colleagues also play a key role here. They’re not just your teammates; they’re allies who will influence your manager’s view of your work. They help shed light on the projects you’re handling and the quality of your work. They provide the context, challenges and technical bar to your manager for evaluating your contribution.

FWIW, this is merely an acknowledgement of a step and the ‘how-to’ on this is another chapter for another day.

3. The Company’s Recognition/Acknowledgement Checkpoint:

A promotion committee is made of folks, whom the company trusts to know the expected competency and impact. These are from the same pool who have mentored you and given feedback to your manager. While technically it is possible for them to mentor you and give feedback, it is practically difficult for them to remain unbiased, so often your mentors and endorsers are excluded from the committees.

The promotion committee decides on your promotion by essentially trying to answer few questions

1. Are you demonstrating skills and competencies at the next level?
2. Are you creating impact appropriate for the next level?

From company to to company, there are lot of nuances. Even in the same company, the technicalities can change over the year. Uber, e.g., went from ‘Requires all the skills at next level’ to ‘Requires most critical skills at next level’ in last few years. The duration used for demonstrating next level operation also varies.

Allies & Tools at this level — Peer Support — Your colleagues play a crucial role here by providing feedback to the committee about your work. Their objective evaluations act like referees, ensuring the assessment is fair and based on your actual contributions.

Unpopular opinion: It is ok to be rejected in promotion process. If you have never been rejected in a promotion process, then you have applied for promotion, perhaps too conservatively and lost few opportunities.

This stage, produces either ‘Go ahead with promo’ or ‘specific feedback on skills/impact required’. In the latter case, you work on the feedback and the go back through step 1In some extreme scenarios, managers could get feedback on putting up a candidate up for promotion, who is far from ready. Every manager tries to avoid it, desperately, as it is a black mark on the manager due to his misalignment with the company expectations.

Progressing through this checkpoint is a cyclical process of showcasing your work, receiving feedback, and improving. It’s about aligning your efforts with the company’s strategic direction and proving your leadership capabilities. In short, to get past this stage, you need to demonstrate your impact on the company, show alignment with its goals, and continuously refine your skills based on feedback.

In conclusion, the journey to promotion is much like progressing through a game. There are challenges, allies, and feedback mechanisms at every stage. By understanding the role of each checkpoint and leveraging the right allies, one can navigate the three humps of promotion with strategy and finesse. So, gear up, believe in your skills, and work on improving it, and enjoy the journey.