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Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got

2026-01-0215:56585269andrew.grahamyooll.com

My CTO leaned back in our 1-on-1 and said something that sounded almost threatening: "You want to get promoted? Try to take my position." I must have looked confused because he quickly added, "I don't…

My CTO leaned back in our 1-on-1 and said something that sounded almost threatening: "You want to get promoted? Try to take my position."

I must have looked confused because he quickly added, "I don't mean literally." Though I still wonder sometimes...

What he meant was simpler and more powerful: start doing the job before you have the title. Take on more responsibility before you're officially given it.

This advice has stuck with me through years of career growth, and later when I became a manager myself, I saw exactly why it works.

What "Taking the Position" Actually Looks Like

The most memorable moment when someone tried to take my position as an engineering manager happened with a more junior engineer on the team. They came to me and said: "I have a proposal on how to lower the number of incidents on this service. The RFC is written up here and I think it'll take me 4 weeks to execute."

I couldn't have been happier.

Here's what made this powerful: they had clearly identified an issue I'd been thinking about, come up with a solution, written the proposal, and estimated the cost. This wasn't in their wheelhouse of expertise. But the mere fact that they had thought about this issue showed me they were expanding their vision beyond what was right in front of them to the wider team's problems.

This engineer was doing exactly what my CTO had told me to do, they were trying to take my position. They were thinking about the problems I thought about. They were taking ownership of team-level issues, not just their individual tasks. They came with a solution, not just a complaint.

That's what taking the position looks like. Not waiting to be asked. Not just flagging the problem. Doing the thinking, the planning, and coming ready with a path forward.

Why Sustained Performance Is What Counts

Here's the thing most people miss: promotions don't fall off the tree and land in your lap. You've got to show that you're capable of handling the responsibility for a sustained period of time.

And I mean sustained.

From my time as a manager, here's what I learned: I didn't care that you showed senior-level judgment on one project. I cared that you showed it consistently in your day-to-day behavior for the next six months. Research backs this up. Managers typically pre-select promotion candidates 3-6 months before formal reviews, which means they're pattern-matching during exactly this window. One-off wins are great, but they don't demonstrate you can operate at that level reliably.

Managers are pattern-matching. They're asking: "Can I count on this person to perform at this level when I'm not watching? When the exciting project is over? When things get messy?"

Six months of consistent behavior answers that question. One impressive moment doesn't.

The Responsibility-First Mindset

This advice flips the typical approach to career growth. Most people wait to be given more responsibility before they start taking it on. They wait for permission, for the title, for explicit direction.

But that's backward.

If you want to be promoted, you need to demonstrate that you can already handle the role you're trying to grow into. Not occasionally. Consistently. The title follows the behavior, not the other way around.

So if you want to get promoted: try to take your manager's position. Start thinking about the problems they think about. Make the proposals they would make. Expand your vision to the team's problems, not just your individual tasks.

Do it for six months, not six days.

That's how you get promoted.


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Comments

  • By GMoromisato 2026-01-0520:559 reply

    In my view, the meta-advice is to understand the goals and constraints of your boss (and their boss), and work towards those goals (while adhering to the constraints).

    With that perspective, we can derive some rules of thumb:

    1. Promotions are not a reward for past performance. Instead, they are a bet that you will contribute more towards those goals with a promotion than without one.

    2. As the OP says, if you are demonstrating performance at your boss's level, that's evidence/proof that a promotion is warranted. Your boss's goals get implemented (by you), freeing them to work on their boss's goals (and maybe get their own promotion).

    3. The more time you spend with your boss, the better you will understand their goals, and symmetrically, the better they will understand your strengths. That means leaving a job after a year or two is not always optimal. It also means following a good boss to another company is often a good move.

    4. There will be cases where the goals of your boss (and their boss) diverge from your own goals. They often want to cut costs, but you want a salary increase. There are never easy answers to this dilemma, but seeing their perspective is useful so you can find a win-win scenario. E.g., if you come up with a way to save money in other ways, such as automating an external cost, then your increased salary will be worth it.

    5. In some cases, of course, there is no way to reconcile your boss's goals with your own. Realizing that is useful so you can find a different company/boss that is more aligned.

    • By makeitdouble 2026-01-0522:541 reply

      Smaller details for your bigger picture:

      > 1. Promotions are not a reward for past performance. Instead, they are a bet that you will contribute more towards those goals with a promotion than without one.

      It's both.

      You reasonably can't keep someone in the same position for 5 years when their market value has long gone past that point and they're expecting more. Even if you're not sure they won't be Peter principled out in the better paying position.

      The better way if to have an internal pay scale that allows for more specialization without more responsibility, but that's IMHO rare and requires managers that can handle that.

      > demonstrating performance at your boss's level

      To note, it often results in advices close to "do X job for a while and we'll let you have it", which looks like a no risk move for the company but is not without downsides. I've seen people being half managers for a full year before becoming one, and boy does it kill morale.

      It signals to employees they'll be literally working about their pay grade "for free" for an undefined amount of time, and it's an even worse proposition when they're effectively doing two jobs at the same time (they're still expected to excel in their current position while proving they can do the other position as well)

      It's a more delicate balance than it might look at first.

      • By GMoromisato 2026-01-0523:132 reply

        These are great clarifications.

        And I agree that, taken to an extreme, this is abusive towards employees. But I think most (good) companies handle this pretty well.

        I've seen a couple of patterns:

        1. Your boss trusts that your instinct are aligned with theirs, and gives you more latitude. Maybe they allow you to design architecture your way rather than requiring detailed review. Maybe they delegate reviewing other people's code to you.

        2. You understand enough about your boss's goals/constraints that you can represent them. E.g., they might trust you to represent them at a cross-functional meeting.

        Either way, your name will come to their mind when promotions are available.

    • By rendaw 2026-01-065:023 reply

      I really don't get this

      > if you are demonstrating performance at your boss's level, that's evidence/proof that a promotion is warranted

      If you're an engineering IC, and your boss is a manager with 4 other ICs, your boss's goals are twofold: get at least 5 ICs worth of results from the team, and managing people.

      So to do what you and TFA suggest literally you can either:

      - Do 5 ICs worth of work

      - Start managing people at the same level on your team, on your own initiative

      I've seen coworkers try to manage their peers, aiming for a promotion. To say the least it harms team unity.

      I only managed to do the 2nd once when I was thrown into a project with an absentee manager and doubly-booked half-committed members who were actually happy for someone to organize the work. Those sorts of situations are rare. Or maybe that's the unstated qualification.

      And: Do 5x the amount of work, well...

      Maybe I'm not thinking outside the box enough here, but I need some examples of how this is generally achievable. Maybe this was specifically _not_ about the IC-manager divide, and more like managers and manager-managers?

      What I'd more generally expect is for a manager to explicitly put you in charge of a small, short term project with one or two other people and see how it goes: can everyone contribute, did you achieve results, were you transparent, how did you interact with the other members, etc.

      • By GMoromisato 2026-01-067:012 reply

        This is a good question. I compressed too much: instead of "performance at your boss's level" I really meant, "helping to achieve your boss's goals".

        If you're an engineering IC in a team of 5, what are your boss's goals? It's usually things like: hit your deadlines, avoid production bug catastrophes, and maybe add features that make the sales people happy.

        How can your boss achieve those goals? I have a few ideas:

        a) Processes: Introduce or refine processes for the team to ensure high-quality code or to gain efficiencies.

        b) Mentoring: Help members of the team to function at their highest level.

        c) Clearing Obstacles: Coordinate with other teams so they don't slow you down. E.g., make sure teams you depend on are on schedule, and if not, adapt and adjust.

        But this is just an example. I think the easiest thing to do is ask your boss what their goals are. What does success look like to them? Once you know that, you might be able to come up with ways of helping that they might not have thought of.

        • By asQuirreL 2026-01-069:481 reply

          This sounds like advice for how to be promoted to a specific level -- the first point where awareness of things beyond yourself is required (somewhere around the Senior or Staff level for ICs, depending on your company).

          Generally everyone in a team should be working towards some shared goal, there's no level at which you can be a chaos agent and not serve some higher purpose. The difference at this level transition is that you realise that for yourself -- someone doesn't need to remind you of the goal and nudge you back on course. That same realisation is not going to cut it at higher levels.

          For me the general version of this advice is not something you can just tell the person who's being promoted, it's collective advice, for them, their manager, their tech lead: everyone needs to agree that this person needs to be given more rope, they need to do something useful with that (i.e. not hang themselves with it), the people around them need to watch out for when they start tying a noose and help them untie it (already regretting this analogy), and that's how you get promoted.

          The rope takes different forms for different levels. I'll use the level scale I'm familiar with, starting with a newly graduated engineer at L3:

          - L3 -> L4. You help decide how to build the feature.

          - L4 -> L5. You help decide what features are worth building, and are trusted to maintain them.

          - L5 -> L6. You help shape the work and ongoing maintenance of ~10 people's work (what products are worth building and how), over a time horizon of 6 months to a year.

          - L6 -> L7. ~50 people's work, 1-2 years.

          - L7 -> L8. ~200 people's work, 2-5 years.

          - L8 -> L9. Things start to get fuzzy. The pattern suggests that you have a hand in ~1000 people's work, which is possible to do in the moment, but rare. There's two ways I can think of: you're either a world expert in your field, or you have set the technical strategy well for your organisation as it grew to this size.

          This is just based on my experience, working largely on infrastructure teams both in big tech and in start ups as both an IC and a manager (currently an IC).

          • By GMoromisato 2026-01-0617:02

            Yes--excellent points.

            I think at the higher levels (L8+) the job switches to creating a culture that can accomplish goals.

        • By rendaw 2026-01-067:251 reply

          I think those are good examples. I think part of the confusion is that most of those are typical responsibilities of e.g. senior level IC work, so "performance at your boss's level" looks more or less the same as "performance at your current IC level".

          Which is good advice! Do your job well!

          • By blktiger 2026-01-0615:26

            I'd say it's about doing things at the next level to show you're ready for that level. So for moving from a Sr to a Staff position might involve doing more mentoring of the team, showing that you are using your knowledge to improve the efficiency of both your team and other teams, etc.

      • By f1shy 2026-01-0612:301 reply

        > Start managing people at the same level on your team, on your own initiative

        Anecdotically, a coworken in my group started, on his own initiative, to “play manager” in out team, because he wanted to “help us all”. Of course he just wanted to ascend the ladder. That backfired instantly and spectacularly. I would never act with any authority if it was not very clearly delegated by my team, or my superior; and even then I would walk like in thin ice for the first 6 months

        • By GMoromisato 2026-01-0617:05

          Agreed--that's a recipe for failure.

          If you can't gain/keep the respect of your peers, you will not get promoted either (at least not at any company I would work for).

    • By gloryjulio 2026-01-0521:151 reply

      > 1. Promotions are not a reward for past performance. Instead, they are a bet that you will contribute more towards those goals with a promotion than without one.

      Actually, you operate on the next level for certain amount of the time. You work with your manager to file for your promotion case. That's how the typical big corps work with promotions.

      So technically, it is using your past experience to prove that you are operating at the next level

      • By ryandrake 2026-01-0522:249 reply

        > Actually, you operate on the next level for certain amount of the time. You work with your manager to file for your promotion case. That's how the typical big corps work with promotions.

        This has always struck me as a pretty juicy deal going for the corporation. They get N years of "next level" work out of you while still being able to pay those N years in "previous level" salary. Good deal for them.

        How ridiculous the opposite sounds: You pay me at the next level for 3 years, and only then I'll know you're serious and will start working at that level. You'd get laughed out of the room. But the company has this exact deal in reverse.

        • By jkubicek 2026-01-060:063 reply

          > > Actually, you operate on the next level for certain amount of the time. You work with your manager to file for your promotion case. That's how the typical big corps work with promotions.

          > This has always struck me as a pretty juicy deal going for the corporation. They get N years of "next level" work out of you while still being able to pay those N years in "previous level" salary. Good deal for them.

          My current company used to work this way, but they moved to a "needs-based" promo process. You can be promoted to L5 if your manager can justify the need for an L5.

          Which ends up making promotions significantly harder to come by. It's near impossible to justify the need for an L5 role when you already have L4s doing the work. No matter how far outside their level competencies a person works, that work becomes L4 work... because an L4 is successfully performing it.

          It's a deeply silly and frustrating system.

          • By Xfx7028 2026-01-069:352 reply

            I'm in this exact situation described in the two comments above. I explained to my manager that the project I have been working on has developed a lot since the last two years and if he would hire a replacement he would be looking at a senior person, not a junior. He agrees but he gets rejected when he made the case to his boss. My performance reviews have been above expectations. His boss claimed that it would not be fair to other people that stayed in the position for a similar amount of time before getting a promotion, essentially ignoring my exceptional performance.

            Do you guys have any advice for this situation?

            • By elevatortrim 2026-01-0610:00

              This depends a bit on your company’s structure.

              My company, for e.g. is fairly flat, and my boss is more or less aware of everyone’s contributions in my team, he often works with them directly.

              I also work with my report’s reports directly and am fairly aware of their work.

              Despite this, some engineers, to my surprise, act as we have a strict hierarchy and try to reach to me through their managers.

              From the sounds of your description, there are a few possibilities:

              1. Your boss’s boss is aware of your work. She is also aware of others’ and she does not think that yours particularly stand out and she is willing to risk your departure. In this case, you would need to really look at this objectively. Are you really exceptional? Why does not she think so if that’s the case? Is there someone else who are also great (or giving that impression) that you are not aware?

              2. She does not know you very well. If so, why is this the case? Does she not know anyone, or are you keeping your work to yourself? I’ve definitely been in this situation, despite architecting our whole core systems, years later I found nobody other than my fellow engineers knew. Was a hard-earned lesson for me, you need to start speaking about your work outside of your 1-1s, but not in a promotional way. By frequently offering your hard-earned wisdom where it is helpful.

              3. She is not interested in knowing anyone. She will manage her team at a high level and she either won’t promote anyone until she is forced to (e.g. you are leaving otherwise), or when she is given a budget and asked for it, which she will then ask for recommendations, your chances than unlikely to be proportional to your work but be circumstantial. If this is the case, you should start interviewing.

            • By rapidaneurism 2026-01-0616:44

              Interview for another job.

              Changing jobs every 2 years is the best way to increase your career long earnings.

              People who do not move, signal that their market value is lower than the current compensation.

              For extra money move right after a pay rise (so that you can negotiate higher salary)

          • By throwaway2037 2026-01-068:35

            This sounds like a recipe for the very best leaving. Do you see that pattern?

          • By RobRivera 2026-01-063:24

            Its almost as if the definitions and expectations around titles are arbitrary and a song and dance around the value you bring/the current market rates

        • By akdas 2026-01-0523:48

          One thing that I've seen implemented to prevent that is to have the pay bands for level N and N+1 overlap. So in the time that you're doing "next level" work, you're expecting to be at the top of your current pay band, and then the promotion doesn't automatically give you a big pay raise, but it unlocks a pay band that you can go up in.

          This works if performing at the top of your current level equates to performing at the bottom of the next level. That said, there's a problem where sometimes a "promotion" is really a new role, meaning to perform at the next level, you have to kind of not perform well at the current level.

        • By 972811 2026-01-061:14

          It's all about risk/reward tradeoffs. Once you get past the junior->senior level, each promotion is hiring you for a completely different job. As an individual, there are only a few ways to get that job: 1. Trial run at your current company (could be wasting your time, but also you have domain knowledge and relationships to help) 2. Join a smaller company and hope it grows (could rapidly accelerate growth due to needs, but could also go very poorly if the company stagnates) 3. Try to lateral to another company with a promotion (pretty difficult in general)

          It's not really that juicy for the corp. If they hire (promote) you without experience, they are hiring someone without experience for a position and then have to go and hire again to replace someone else. Vs. just hiring someone with experience

        • By Magmalgebra 2026-01-061:35

          > This has always struck me as a pretty juicy deal going for the corporation.

          It's a good deal if you deserve the promo. Giving someone the opportunity to take on projects at the next level and having them not deliver can be enormously expensive. The higher the level, the more expensive it is.

        • By rkangel 2026-01-0611:21

          Possibly. It's the only way it actually works though, because of the Peter Priciple.

          Imagine the other way - you have peopel dong a role, and the people who do the best job at that role get promoted to the next one. Some of them will be good and the new role, some of them won't. The ones who are good will carry on getting promoted. The ones who aren't will get stuck in that role. The problem is that everyone rises to a point at which they can't do the job, and every role is filled by someone who has been promoted one step too far.

          In a healthy structure, it should be a halfway house - you shouldn't have to be doing the whole job that you're trying to get promoted to, you should be doing enough bits and pieces of it that you demonstrate that you CAN do it. That way the company has information that they're not promoting you to a position of incompetence.

        • By 9rx 2026-01-066:13

          I suppose it balances in the end, though. If you could make more money elsewhere you'd go elsewhere, so the whole reason you are willing to accept being underpaid through the transitionary phase is because you realize that you will be overpaid afterwards.

        • By singleshot_ 2026-01-060:21

          > You pay me at the next level for 3 years, and only then I'll know you're serious and will start working at that level.

          Did you just describe an academic scholarship?

        • By pc86 2026-01-064:08

          How exactly do you suggest it should work, then? A timer starts and when it runs out you get promoted and everyone just hopes you didn't just get moved up above your level of competence?

        • By gloryjulio 2026-01-0523:111 reply

          That's true. I am out of the promotion game grind now. Personally, I have reached my ceiling and the time is better spent else where.

    • By begueradj 2026-01-063:353 reply

      > if you are demonstrating performance at your boss's level, that's evidence/proof that a promotion is warranted.

      It can not be farther from the truth.

      The best way to stay in the bottom is to work hard, to focus on work so that others have time to focus on advertising themselves, take credit of your good work and backstab you for everything else, befriend and lick the shoes strategically -even develop bed skills, for some- while you isolate yourself by sweating and believing everyone will understand or care about how you optimized that for loop.

      • By GMoromisato 2026-01-067:101 reply

        Cynicism is a seductive drug. It makes you feel good because you don't have to do anything--the game is rigged, so why bother trying? But like all drugs it is ultimately self-sabotaging.

        Careers are like love: you have to risk heartbreak or you'll never experience joy.

      • By dinkleberg 2026-01-063:561 reply

        The keyword in what they wrote is "demonstrating". You do still need to advertise what you've done.

        • By hcfman 2026-01-0610:55

          So basically you need to do a lot of bla bla bla bla ?>

      • By close04 2026-01-0610:28

        I don't think there's a one size fits all here. If you don't go out of your comfort zone and "do more" you may never get a promotion because you're seen as average. But it's also true that if you work hard and constantly deliver you may still never get the promotion because you're seen as critical where you are.

        You might be disappointed either way. Like any recipe, there are many ingredients needed to pull it off. Delivering results, solving your boss' or boss' boss problems, doing it visibly, having support from above, doing it at the right time, etc. all contribute.

    • By raverbashing 2026-01-0521:071 reply

      1 is correct. You can't expect the person to get better when promoted, rather you move them to the job they are already (almost) doing

      • By pants2 2026-01-0521:27

        Ideally with increased autonomy and decision-making ability that makes them more effective.

    • By LiquidSky 2026-01-0616:03

      This is premised on promotions and other work rewards having any kind of rational basis or connection to the work.

      It could simply be that spending time with your boss makes them know and like you more, and people tend to reward people they know and like, making up some post hoc rationalization about performance or whatever to justify it.

      No one wants to think of themselves like this, though, so they would never admit, even to themselves, that this is what's going on, but I suspect for most people it's the actual reality.

    • By cubefox 2026-01-066:17

      > 1. Promotions are not a reward for past performance. Instead, they are a bet that you will contribute more towards those goals with a promotion than without one.

      > 2. As the OP says, if you are demonstrating performance at your boss's level, that's evidence/proof that a promotion is warranted.

      That's not evidence for 1. At least you haven't explained a reason why it would be.

    • By agumonkey 2026-01-0523:17

      You have some mistakes stories to avoid ?

    • By alfiedotwtf 2026-01-062:53

      > if you come up with a way to save money in other ways, such as automating an external cost, then your increased salary will be worth it

      lol

  • By amflare 2026-01-0519:469 reply

    Taking on extra responsibility is all well and good until someone figures out that they can just get you to do more work for the same amount of money. At that point your only option is to move on, because if you stop performing at the "expected" level due to lack of reciprocation, suddenly you have "performance issues".

    • By michaelt 2026-01-0520:482 reply

      The second secret to getting promoted is working at a company that's growing.

      If you're at a 50 employee company that grows to 250 employees there will be many empty team leader positions. And what you lack in hands-on management experience you make up for in knowledge of the business, its products/processes, and being a reliable known quantity. That extra responsibility will turn into more money fast.

      On the other hand, if the company's headcount is largely stable and the employee turnover low? Well, there might not be an empty position until someone a level above you resigns, retires or gets fired. And when that happens - you're probably not the only ambitious person at your level. In this case, the payoff from extra effort is much less certain.

      • By mywittyname 2026-01-0521:421 reply

        If you're at a larger company, then you'll probably have to line up another to get promoted. Having one foot out the door is often the ammo that managers need to get HR and leadership to approve a promotion.

        Of course, we've been told to never accept a counter offer at your job.

        • By rivetfasten 2026-01-0522:083 reply

          > Of course, we've been told to never accept a counter offer at your job.

          Do you have a example article? I haven't encountered the advice, but I'm curious if the reasoning matches my guess.

          • By michaelt 2026-01-0522:56

            You can find a bunch of articles by googling "never accept counter-offer" but they don't provide much in the way of hard data, it's mostly anecdotes.

            Some articles say your relationship with your employer is like your relationship with your partner - any indication of looking elsewhere is disloyalty, and will inevitably lead to a break-up down the line if not now. Or it'll put you first in line for lay-offs. Other articles say your employer has a moral duty to pay a 'fair' amount, and if you can get 20% more elsewhere, that shows you should resent your current employer, and leave on principle. Or that threatening to quit and not following through makes you "the boy who cried wolf" and shows a lack of integrity. Or that the fact you were interviewing in the first place shows you weren't satisfied and fulfilled at your current job.

            A lot of the articles are written by recruiters. They don't want people to take the counter-offer because it means they miss out on their 20% commission.

            Personally I once accepted a counter-offer and it went just fine - in fact, the job offer would have needed an hour-long commute, whereas my job at the time had a 20 minute commute, so I got the extra money without the extra commute. It didn't limit my career or get me laid off or anything.

          • By wombat-man 2026-01-0522:391 reply

            This was talked about in The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, iirc, but from the other side. It advises to not offer a raise to keep an employee planning to leave. This is because the implication is that you were underpaying them before or that you're willing to overpay them now for threatening to quit. This encourages employees to follow suit instead of working towards promo. So pay what you're willing to and don't play that kind of game.

            The book/article goes in more depth. I thought it was still online for free but I can't seem to find it.

            • By jonny_eh 2026-01-0523:341 reply

              Sounds to me like it's the employer that should dislike counter-offers, not the employee. This advice is also made through an "employer is always right" lens. Is it really so bad to send a signal to an employee that they were underpaid?

          • By neilv 2026-01-066:56

            One anecdata: The one time I accepted a counter-offer (but not for more money), I regretted it.

            (I was at place that had an existential problem, and unhappily fighting it. Then, coincidentally, a different company, which had previously made me a tempting offer, checked back in. They made an offer to double my TC, which included a big title jump, to fit their pay grades. I wanted to be loyal to my team, so I went to the appropriate exec at my employer. I said I had an unsolicited offer that I had to decide on immediately, but I would stay if we could solve the problem. Was assured exec understood, and we could tackle the problem. I also asked for the company to do right by a couple other employees, while I had the exec's ear and the moment. Existential problem got worse, and couldn't be solved, for political reasons. Everyone was miserable, and I was out the boost to lifestyle and resume decorations.)

            The more usual reasons I know not to mess with counter-offers are that: if the employer wasn't treating you fairly before, that's a problem; you might be flagged as disloyal; they might pay to keep you for temporary convenience, but get rid of you when more convenient for them.

      • By refurb 2026-01-060:47

        > The second secret to getting promoted is working at a company that's growing

        I would say this is the #1 most important factor.

        If a company isn’t growing, you’re relying on attrition to move up.

        90% of the people I know who moved up to senior positions rapidly all worked at fast growing companies.

    • By cephei 2026-01-0520:147 reply

      In my experience, I've seen engineers try to take on more work to get promoted, but the key issue is that they were doing more work at their own level instead of focusing on work that would be their responsibility if they promoted. If an IC takes on more and more IC work instead of management responsibilities, it's harder to promote them.

      • By JoshTriplett 2026-01-0521:21

        > If an IC takes on more and more IC work instead of management responsibilities, it's harder to promote them.

        This is one reason it's critically important for a company to have paths for ICs to take on larger responsibilities that aren't necessarily management responsibilities. Not everyone wants to be a manager, and not everyone is good at being a manager. Some people want to become increasingly senior engineers. (They'll still, ultimately, be responsible for things that involve other people, but that doesn't mean they want to be a people-manager.)

      • By asdfman123 2026-01-0522:14

        "No bastard ever got promoted by doing a lot of work for the company. He got promoted by getting someone else to do a lot of work for the company."

        - General George S. Patton, probably

      • By theptip 2026-01-0520:38

        Great point. And I think this is why I love the framing in the OP.

        “Do more” is a failure mode and path to burnout. “Do what I’m doing and you’re not doing” is a cue that an ambitious engineer can reflect on constantly.

      • By hibikir 2026-01-0520:26

        That's also pointing to a big risk for certain jumps, as everything done in the list for, say, a cross team position means less work on your team. So a manager that isn't all that friendly can use an attempt at promotion as a great excuse for a PIP: I've seen that done around me at least a couple of times.

      • By beoberha 2026-01-0521:10

        Yep, as a manager, I am explaining this conundrum often. You can be a rockstar SDE 2 or senior, but not be ready for a promotion because you aren’t leading enough.

      • By gowld 2026-01-0521:48

        "promotion" is just a word. Either management can pay for performance, or employ can perform for pay, and cut back on work hours.

      • By ozim 2026-01-0521:052 reply

        If they do that, that's exactly why you don't want to promote them because it is clear they don't understand that doing x+5 work on your own is not as good as x*5 when you become multiplier by helping others.

        • By wiseowise 2026-01-0611:59

          x+5 is greater than x*5, if x=1. But great thinking, just make sure you're transparent with your team members so you neither get x+5, nor x*5.

        • By TeMPOraL 2026-01-068:19

          Except the only way to do x*5 work is by your team hiring extra 5 people for you to manage... or, somewhat uniquely to our industry, through automating your own work.

          Also, everyone else hears the same memes about "being a force multiplier" too. When everyone is trying to be a multiplier for the team by helping everyone else on it, the result isn't exponential productivity growth - it's drowning in exponential noise.

          Like some other commenters correctly observed, the most significant factor is actually whether the company you're in is stable headcount-wise, or growing fast. In a stable company, promos are a contested resource, which makes the requirements arbitrary - you're graded on an ordinal scale, not a nominal one. In a fast-growing company, promos will happen to you, through no effort on your own - you can coast upwards on seniority alone.

          In neither situation, consistently performing at the level above you is a differentiating factor.

    • By reg_dunlop 2026-01-0520:54

      Exactly.

      Where's the guarantee for recognition of future growth....if they don't recognize past growth?

      The biggest gripe I have about articles such as this is that it assumes a static perspective of "now, into the future" and it doesn't account for "all the time before now".

      If I'm having a conversation akin to the one that opens the blog post, then presumably I've been at the company for a while. Conversations like that don't just happen between CTO and engineer unless there's some time vested in the company for both.

      A CTO saying "take my job" as a non-sequitur is sus, IMHO. Now if it's said in the context of "here's a raise, and if you want another one....try to take my job", well now there's some decent context for the ask and a reason to believe that future growth will be compensated.

      The best prediction of future performance is past behavior. That goes for mgmt as well as pee-on.

    • By weinzierl 2026-01-0520:021 reply

      This, but it's not only about the additional work but often about additional responsibility.

      Taking responsibility for decisions that actually fall within your manager's area of responsibility often puts them in a very comfortable position. At least if they trust you and don't question your loyalty, which is exactly what you also try to reassure them if you want a promotion.

      However the net effect is that it's a reliable way to get stuck on that rung of the career ladder indefinitely.

      • By hcfman 2026-01-0611:02

        Really strange. I don't see the extra responsibility by those high up in the chain. I just don't see those guys being held accountable.

        Instead, I see a lot of talk down to the bottom of the chain about "Taking ownership".

    • By pizzathyme 2026-01-0520:17

      Ideally this friction should be viewed as a normal part of career growth. You will have expanded your expertise and are now capable of harder problems and roles, with more compensation in return.

      The typical moves are: [1] Negotiate for more title, compensation at your current role (good outcome) [2] Leave for a better role (a good outcome) [3] Stay, no change, doing more work for the same money (not recommended)

    • By kamaal 2026-01-064:32

      >>Taking on extra responsibility is all well and good until someone figures out that they can just get you to do more work for the same amount of money.

      Wait a minute. Why are you accepting more work, responsibility without increase in compensation? Promotion de facto means getting paid more.

      Otherwise its just some one updating a row in the employee database with fancy text. How does it matter what designation you are called with?

      I had a similar situation few years before COVID where a company offered a fancy designation albeit for 50% lesser the pay. All said and done, when I did all the calculations, even with me rapidly changing companies with newly acquired designation, and building from there. It would take more than a decade to merely arrive to the salary I was then. And that would still mean more than a decade of wasted raises, bonuses and RSU vesting at the then current job. By the time that fork got profitable, I'd be due for retirement.

      Promotion == Pay/Compensation Raise.

    • By mikeryan 2026-01-0614:01

      Without a doubt there are toxic work environments and bosses that think the way you’ve stated.

      That said my point of view as a manager was to try to hire people who could take my job someday. Those were the people that would make me look good by having a great team. I don’t need to steal their thunder because the higher you go in a healthy organization the more it’s about having people that can execute your strategy then about your individual contributions.

      The best analogy for this I see is in the NFL when new, young head coaches seem to be afraid to hire experienced coordinators who have been fired as head coaches because they’re afraid of hiring their replacement if they fail. The thing is those ex head coaches were undoubtedly successful in their previous coordinator roles which is why they got a head coach gig to begin with and are likely the best option for making the new head coach successful.

      Long story short it’s up to you to determine which type of leader you’re working for and and take ownership of moving on when in a toxic situation as opposed to a healthy one.

    • By snowwrestler 2026-01-0615:59

      It’s absolutely true that you need to be willing to move on if your current employer doesn’t reward you for what you do.

      That doesn’t negate the value of working above your title. Even if you need to leave, doing better work makes your resume and interviews stronger.

  • By crazygringo 2026-01-0521:379 reply

    While this is true... it's also letting yourself be massively taken advantage of, and underpaid.

    Yes, the best way to get promoted is to do work above your level. The problem is, you're not getting paid what you deserve for that. If you're always doing this, you're always being underpaid by a full level.

    Which is why much better advice is to try to get promoted by switching companies and jumping a level in the process.

    Managers certainly want to take advantage of you by getting you to overperform without being overpaid. But employees should do everything they can not to fall for it. Which usually requires getting companies to compete over you.

    • By Dave_Rosenthal 2026-01-0522:459 reply

      As a boss-man myself, I’ve seen this “don’t let them take advantage of you” sentiment expressed in many discussions about comp and promotions, but I can’t really say I understand it. Am I just out of touch?

      As I read it, the article is simply trying to help people understand what kind of work is valuable to a company and therefore what they should focus on to make themselves valuable. I presume that making yourself valuable pays dividends, including promotions! Somehow the idea of going to work and not trying your best because “you’re not getting paid … for that” just feels so cynical and divorced from how I’ve seen successful people grow and make big bucks in tech.

      (And this is all a bit separate, of course, than the debate about whether staying at a company or job hopping is better for career trajectory.)

      • By roadside_picnic 2026-01-061:271 reply

        > I presume that making yourself valuable pays dividends, including promotions!

        This has not been my experience at all. I've had multiple positions where I took on multiple challenges and responsibilities outside my role, reshaped the team and took the lead on getting things shipped, made sure my manager was more successful, and spent a lot of energy making all this happens... for nothing.

        > and divorced from how I’ve seen successful people grow and make big bucks in tech.

        Almost all of the people I've seen grow successfully never do any of this "take on extra responsibility" stuff. The vast majority were early hires that got along well with leadership in a fast growing company. Most of the promotions I've gotten felt almost arbitrary, and largely happened from being at the right place at the right time.

        To be honest, I remain a hard worker who takes on extra responsibilities, simply because I enjoy it. I like solving problems and shipping things, it makes work fun. But I don't expect any recognition for it (even on annual reviews). The biggest reward for me is helping other people be successful and building cool things. Anyone working hard for a promotion or any recognition from the company is very likely wasting their time.

        • By Magmalgebra 2026-01-061:48

          > that got along well with leadership in a fast growing company

          I may be reading too much into your post but I'll say that this sentiment is a common pattern I see in many competent senior folks who think they deserve promotions into roles above senior. Getting along with leadership is a huge asset for for this type of leadership role. It means that you stay aligned and push in the same direction together.

          If you're not going to get along well with your leadership you need to be much much better than everyone around you - which is a significantly higher bar to clear. And getting along well is a skill. It's usually not the skill people want to learn but it's hugely valuable to be able to be chummy with a difficult exec.

      • By crazygringo 2026-01-0523:302 reply

        > Somehow the idea of going to work and not trying your best

        You make a great point -- let me further explain so I'm not misunderstood.

        If the person is putting in the same 40 hrs/wk (or whatever is standard) but just "doing their best", then there's no problem.

        But in my experience, your manager is expecting you to do all of your assigned role (e.g. write code), but then also do a bunch of stuff on top -- e.g. leading and taking ownership of new initiatives that is extra work. Usually something like 10-20 hours' worth per week. And so now people are working evenings and weekends to get that promotion, spending less time with their family. And a lot of them still don't get the promotion. For years, or even ever. This is all free labor for the company. They get away paying for a team of 4 instead of a team of 5.

        That's what I'm pushing back on. In practice, it's rarely doing your existing work but better -- it's doing a bunch of extra work that takes more time. Because nobody ever says "hey show that you can take on these new responsibilities, and so do less of your original responsibilities".

        Contrast this to actually being promoted, where some of your previous responsibilities are now actually delegated to others, because your job is now focused more on higher-level design and/or management.

        • By stavros 2026-01-0623:04

          I don't think that's how it works. Otherwise, a level 3 engineer would be working 40 hours a week but 4 engineer would be working 60 hours a week, which isn't the case.

          These additional things a senior does that a junior doesn't aren't "write more code", they're "coordinate with people outside your team more", "be more self-directed", "be more reliable", etc. Things which don't take more time, but which juniors don't do.

        • By Magmalgebra 2026-01-061:541 reply

          > But in my experience, your manager is expecting you to do all of your assigned role (e.g. write code), but then also do a bunch of stuff on top -- e.g. leading and taking ownership of new initiatives that is extra work.

          Aside from AWS, who's famously bad at this, my experience is that this is usually because people want a faster career push.

          Imagine Jim, 8 years into his career. Jim is pretty good and his work takes him 30-40 hours a week. If he worked another 5 years in the same role it'd probably drop to 20 and be chill.

          Jim wants to get promoted. If he waited the 5 years he could do it working 40 hours a week. But he wants it now, and since he's not as good as he will be he needs to work 60. What does Jim do? He works the 60.

          There's nothing wrong with this choice, I made it, I'm happy with my choice. I might make it again in the future, or not.

          • By tmoertel 2026-01-064:111 reply

            > There's nothing wrong with this choice [to work extra hours to get promoted].

            But if there are limited slots for promotion, and that's generally always the case, the resulting competition among deserving engineers makes the extra hours more or less mandatory. Say that Amy is a better engineer than Jim and gets a third more done per hour. If Jim puts in 60 hours instead of the expected 40, then Amy isn't going to beat him for a slot unless she also starts working extra hours.

            In the end, promotion becomes more about grinding than being effective. That's not great for company culture or retention of top talent.

            • By pc86 2026-01-064:241 reply

              That doesn't make the promotion more about grinding because the company doesn't care about how much work you get done in a set unit of time compared to other employees in the same set unit of time. The company cares about how much you get done, period.

              If the only differentiating factor between Amy and Jim is quantity of work done (this is never the case in real life), most companies will prefer a Jim that works 60 hours to an Amy that works 40 if Jim is producing 5% more.

      • By anal_reactor 2026-01-061:111 reply

        The problem is that we're simultaneously talking about healthy and rotten companies. In a healthy company your manager tells you "if you want a promotion, this and this needs to happen" and then you get a promotion and a pay raise. Meanwhile in my company:

        - I was given a project "please convince half of the company to drop everything and do work for our team"

        - I told my manager "I don't know what you're expecting from me" and he said "I don't care"

        - A coworker completed his project, but then was told that the promotion requirements changed

        - A coworker was promoted, said that it was a big mistake because pay rose 10% but responsibilities 200%

        The thing is, online discourse has little reason to discuss healthy companies. Sharing tips and tricks how to survive in a dysfunctional organization is much more interesting.

        • By wiseowise 2026-01-0612:111 reply

          > please convince half of the company to drop everything and do work for our team

          And don't forget to do that on IC level, without official shot caller title.

          • By anal_reactor 2026-01-0612:291 reply

            Bro I was trying to get promoted to senior software developer.

            • By wiseowise 2026-01-0612:46

              Hope you're in a better company now. Best of luck.

      • By jofzar 2026-01-0523:15

        > Somehow the idea of going to work and not trying your best because “you’re not getting paid … for that” just feels so cynical and divorced from how I’ve seen successful people grow and make big bucks in tech

        The question is always how long you are "working" at the higher level.

        I have worked at jobs where I was working 2 levels higher then I was for close to 3 years before my new manager came in and fixed that shit (got two promotions in 2 years).

        As an individual contributor you are diluting your IC's value of the same people level if you are working at a higher level for free, the expectations is then that everyone else at your level does it and then it becomes the new normal, it's the "A rising tide lifts all boats" but in a negative connotation.

      • By pixelatedindex 2026-01-060:15

        In my experience, the issue is that performing at the next level is not a guarantee for promotion. So when you do work at the next level, they can just say “it’s not sustained enough” or whatever reason and then you’re stuck — can’t really produce less so you end up looking for a way out because all that work was kind of for nothing.

        I look for opportunities outside my job requirements to learn and grow but it gets really tiring and exhausting when you’re not rewarded for it. Basically there is a lot of upside for the employer but for the employee it’s a bit of a crapshoot

      • By wiseowise 2026-01-0612:04

        > Am I just out of touch?

        You are.

        > Somehow the idea of going to work and not trying your best because “you’re not getting paid … for that” just feels so cynical and divorced from how I’ve seen successful people grow and make big bucks in tech.

        Why don't you take a pay cut then? I mean, money is not everything, right? You can always pay your mortgage in integrity, work ethic or another buzzword.

        Though last year I went to Hawaii and they refused my "great job, man" tokens, greedy assholes!

      • By azuanrb 2026-01-060:51

        You are not out of touch. You may simply have spent time at great companies.

        The OP’s advice is solid, but it assumes your manager will actively help promote you or work toward that outcome. In some companies, or with some managers, that support does not exist. There may be no incentive for them to do so. This does not necessarily come from ill intent, but rather from different organizational expectations.

      • By buzzardbait 2026-01-0611:04

        Different companies can have vastly different work cultures, even if they're in the same location. So in a sense we're all a bit "out of touch" with each other.

        Most days I go to work, I try my best, because if it turns out I don't get paid what I'm worth, I will F off somewhere else and take all this experience with me. And every time I've done that, I've had a significant pay rise.

      • By hcfman 2026-01-0612:14

        Yes

    • By stillworks 2026-01-068:05

      This makes sense and here is slightly different perspective to this.

      The company I was at had this haloed culture of promotions and I saw people sat on a certain IC level for over 5 years chasing the carrot. Some of them were close to a decade at the same level.

      Now, this company had several sub-orgs and it was possible to switch positions to a different team or an entirely different sub-org altogether. And guess what ? No up-leveling and no salary hikes because the overall company doesn't allow the sub-orgs to compete with each other.

      Fair enough. Makes sense. If they allowed it, it would be chaotic.

      But for some reason, their is a culture of making employees compete with each other ! To the point that the apparent lowest performer will be asked to leave the company ! (There are other ramifications to this "system" but this is not the discussion for those)

      The lesson I learnt was to chose your battles wisely and be prepared for interviews every single day... because in a way it indeed felt like everyday I was interviewing/competing for the job I already had... why not dial it up to eleven ?

      Once you feel prepared, then actually simply start interviewing. This year I am targetting at least six (once every two months) solid interviews. The more multi-stage-loops the better because that gives me the chance to politely drop out of the process at any stage. The more leetcode hards the better because leetcode hards are set in a specific way and the interviewer has to be super smart to follow up with something novel.

      This way, I think (correct me if I am wrong) I am implicitly up-skilling and getting better at my job AND in a state of preparedness to walk away if I felt I needed to.

      Managers be managing and all that $h1t... they have their jobs to do, I have my life to deal with as well. I will control what I can control.

    • By jimbokun 2026-01-0521:451 reply

      Do the work one level up for a while and add it to your resume when searching for that higher level job at another company. Or maybe your current company will surprise you with a promotion in the meantime.

      • By crazygringo 2026-01-0521:512 reply

        Or don't? Because the other company may hire you at the higher level anyways, that's the point. Because you're getting multiple companies to compete for the experience you already have. It's your task to demonstrate in interviews that you have the skills for that higher level. Which is a huge shortcut.

        And "maybe your current company will surprise you" just sounds like being taken advantage of to me. Because the reality is they probably won't. Not at anywhere near the same speed, usually.

        • By jimbokun 2026-01-0522:151 reply

          Companies usually want to see evidence you’ve done the kind of work required in the job you’re applying for.

          • By crazygringo 2026-01-0523:59

            They want to see evidence you can do the job. Very often that's mainly tested in extensive interviews around your knowledge and skills. They don't have any kind of objective access to your current job anyways, and know very well that fancy-sounding achievements are often unreliable. Interviews give you the opportunity to demonstrate you have the skills without having to spend a year or two doing them in unpaid extra work.

        • By spiderice 2026-01-064:203 reply

          You seem way too concerned with "nickle-and-diming" your employer. Which is just as sad as an employer who nickle-and-dimes their employees.

          • By crazygringo 2026-01-064:44

            When I say to not let yourself get taken advantage of by your employer, by working an extra 10-20 hrs/wk for free... you read that as "nickel-and-diming your employer"? And you think it's sad?

          • By jamesnorden 2026-01-0614:11

            Found the manager.

          • By wiseowise 2026-01-0612:14

            How is it sad? CEO of your run of the mill bigtech swims in money like Scrooge McDuck and you simp for them?

    • By joshuamorton 2026-01-062:14

      > If you're always doing this, you're always being underpaid by a full level.

      This doesn't actually follow, for a variety of reasons, including that jobs have compensation ranges and in a lot of cases the bottom of one is pretty close to, or even below, the top of the previous one.

      One of the big reasons that changing companies was good from a compensation perspective was 4 year initial offers. Upleveled job-switches do happen, but from what I've seen they don't usually happen much faster than internal promotions, and often they happen slower!

    • By kamaal 2026-01-065:13

      >>Which is why much better advice is to try to get promoted by switching companies and jumping a level in the process.

      This is why most companies don't offer a promotion as a part of hiring process, and are mostly hiring at currently levels, but at a pay raise.

      In some cases where a promotion is available, they often pay below your current compensation, which defeats the whole point of the process.

    • By neumann 2026-01-0523:16

      This is definitely something to be aware of - especially with larger companies that aren't growing fast and this culture begins to be baked in. You see so many colleagues going the extra mile past their role requirements to earn that rare promotion, essentially jockeying to be in the running. All hands are about 'calling out' great performers and thanking them. Thank them by paying them more please.

      As soon as they get the promotion, the work piles on even more, and they won't be given the amount they would if they switched companies.

    • By buzzardbait 2026-01-0610:50

      Good counterpoint. Throughout my rather long career I've known a few overachievers. The majority of them did not get promoted, and the ones who did get promoted were actually up-titled -- new title, miniscule pay rise.

      Then there are those who do the bare minimum, have frequent unplanned absences and then have the gall to ask to be promoted to a senior level simply because they've been employed at a junior level for 2 years. (I heard this from a particularly gossipy manager. People usually never disclose these things.)

      One thing is universally true. If you develop a reputation for being the person that regularly gets things done, somebody somewhere will notice. And that will improve your career prospects in the long run.

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