Anatomy of a promotion - Part 1
Happy birthday!
Mad World (Tears for Fears) - Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday….
Just like children wait for their birthdays, employees wait for their promotions. Everybody loves validation in their work lives, and nothing makes it all worth it for employees more than a promotion. Employees consistently rank growth opportunities in their top three reasons for choosing to stay or leaving a company, so creating an environment that allows employees to move up is paramount for any manager. In this post, I will dig into all the steps needed to increase your chances of getting your employee(s) promoted successfully.
Before we dig into the path to a successful promotion, let's quickly look at the high-level promotion triggers for software development roles. Keep in mind that these are just high-level guidelines. Every company has its nuances, so consult with your HR person before using these triggers. If your company doesn't have well-defined promotion triggers, feel free to propose these to your HR person.
Before the journey
It takes roughly a year (at the minimum) to collect enough evidence to put forth a solid promotion packet for any promotion, so I recommend starting any promotion process at least a year before your targeted date. The more senior the promotion, the longer it takes to collect evidence. Director and VP-level promotions take years.
The first thing to do is to set expectations with the employee that you are going to put them up for promotion. Tell them what timeframe you are targeting, the criteria for going to the next level, the evidence that is available so far, and the evidence that is yet to be collected. Lastly, let them know that promotions are never a done deal. Tell them that you will try your best, but after a certain point, things are out of your control.
As part of the employee's individual development plan, document all the projects the employee needs to deliver and the respective timelines. You have to make sure the projects you are picking are calibrated correctly to the level the employee is targeting. A very common mistake that new managers make is not calibrating those projects correctly. They think the projects are calibrated correctly for the role the employee is targeting, but the case falls apart in the promotion reviews when their peers/managers opine on it. The best way to make sure you are calibrating correctly is to get early feedback from the decision-maker (usually your boss) and your peers.
The Journey
There is a decent chance that you are unable to collect the evidence within the timeframe you had in mind. Projects get canceled all the time. You might get a new manager. Your manager might get a new manager. The company might get sold. You get the idea. It is important to set these expectations upfront with your employee.
There is also the chance that the employee might get tunnel vision during this phase. They might get so laser-focused on getting their promotion that they might lose sight of the larger goal of the team and the company. In a past life, when me and my peers were deciding to promote a software engineer to a senior software engineer, one of the employee's stakeholders gave feedback that the engineer refused to accommodate their requests because it wouldn't get them promoted. That single piece of feedback cratered the engineer's promotion and delayed it by a year.
When you sense that the employee is beginning to hold onto the promotion like a dog with a bone, you have to intervene and get them to drop that bone. I recommend reinforcing that promotions are never a done deal. One of my favorite managers used to say, "There is no point worrying about something that you can't control". It is true. Our brains are in a happier state when they get to complete tasks instead of worrying about tasks they could never complete.
Course Correction
Most employees are able to reorient their mindset after a quick talk. However, at some point in your career, you will encounter employees who threaten to leave if they don't get promoted. It is never a good idea to give in. In my career, I have never given in to an employee's threats of leaving. If the employee's promotion is getting delayed for a real reason, you will be setting the employee up for failure by promoting them prematurely. What is worse? A dejected employee whose promotion got delayed? Or, an employee whose promotion happiness only lasted for a short time because they couldn't meet the expectations of the new role and they are now on a PIP?
Having said that, occasionally, I have taken chances on people and promoted them without sufficient data. The only times I have done that is when I see the special spark in the person. Individuals, you can tell that they will be successful just by observing how they behave. They have extreme ownership; they are the first to raise their hands for work no one else wants to do, they are the first to jump in to help their teammates, they put in the time when needed, and most importantly, they never ask for much. So yes, if you feel like you should take a chance on someone, go for it, but never under the stress of veiled or real threats.
Visibility
I hate to say this, but if you want to get someone promoted, you have to find opportunities to put them in front of other leaders and stakeholders, and sometimes you have to force the employee to do it. In most companies, promotions are a group decision. Your manager will ask for your peer's opinion on what they think about the promotion regardless of how strong your promotion document (template coming next week!) is. The senior the promotion, the stronger will be the requirement of visibility.
To be clear, being visible doesn't mean being popular. It means there is evidence of the engineer engaging in community service. Consider the situation of a senior engineer who is about to be put up for a staff engineer promotion. One of the requirements of the staff role is that they design solutions for complex problems that span multiple teams. This means the engineer can lead complex discussions/debates that have representatives from multiple teams and somehow convince them to align in a unified path forward. When the moment presents itself, don't just be a passive observer in the conversation. Make sure you attend those meetings and take notes. Additionally, make sure some of your peer managers also attend those meetings so that when the time comes to discuss the promotion, your peers can support your case because they have witnessed the employee in action. I can't emphasize how important this is for all senior+ promotions. You have to create situations where your peer managers can see the employee in action because if you don't, you are guaranteed to hear a variation of this line in the promotion review, "Hmm, I have never heard them say anything in any common meetings."
Last thought on visibility. If the engineer is introverted, all of the above becomes an order of magnitude harder. Leading conversations, holding the room's attention, and navigating disagreements are hard for anybody, but for the introvert, it is almost an insurmountable task. This is why I prefer the written medium over the spoken medium. Document over decks. Written documents remove the need for presentations and, IMO, remove a lot of pressure from introverted engineers so that they can focus on sharpening other crucial leadership skills like negotiation and conflict resolution.
Thunderdome
So you have collected all the evidence, did your best to convince your peers, and written a well thought-out promotion document (more on this in the next post). You think it is the end of the journey. It isn't. There is one more gauntlet to complete. It is time for the final boss fight. It is time to enter the Thunderdome, where your manager and your peers will decide the fate of your promotion case.
In most companies, the organization leaders pull all the people managers in a room, usually for the entire day, and ask them to vote on promotions. Typically, the flow of the group is:
Collectively understand the evidence
Individual manager vote
Every manager who voted no explains why, and there is a discussion around it
The org leader and HR make the final decision.
Step 3 is the most perilous stage, where your promotion can go south very quickly. Here are some tenants to keep in mind while you are justifying your case in step 3
Keep in mind that most senior+ promotions will not have a unanimous 'Yes', so be ready for a few 'No's
Keep in mind that some senior+ promotions will take multiple tries, spread across multiple performance cycles.
If a peer votes no, don't hate them, and don't make a mental note to block their promotion when the time comes.
When defending your case, stick with the facts and avoid being hyperbolic.
Feel free to call on other peers in the room who might have evidence to counter a 'No' vote.
If someone calls out an area of improvement, either point to evidence that counters that or accept the feedback
If you think the employee might take drastic steps if their promotion doesn't go through, be transparent about it, but don't use it as an argument to justify the promotion
Some organization leaders make the decisions in the room, and I am one of them. However, in other organizations, the decision is made behind closed doors by the organization leader and their HR business partner after the group review. Once the functional and HR leaders align, then it goes in front of the finance department, which has to approve it. Usually, finance approves most promotions, but if the company is financially stressed, there is a chance they might deny it.
As your promotion case makes it through the rest of the departments (finance, HR, exec, etc), feel free to let the employee know what the status is. Obviously, never say "it is done" until finance approves it. Then you can celebrate with the employee and take a personal victory lap. Delivering promotions to employees is my happy place, and I look forward to those moments every year. It is the only clear signal indicating I am doing something right.
And that is it! Coming up in the next post is part 2 of this post, where I deconstruct the specifics of how to put a convincing promotion packet together.
Next week’s post will be focused on the promotion document itself and how to write a compelling promotion case.
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