I’ve heard from lawyers that juries decide cases based on their emotions and only use the detailed courtroom evidence to rationalize their verdict. The same thing applies when you are looking to get promoted: first you need to win emotionally, and then supply the proof. In this case, the emotion you must win on is trust.
Winning trust1 might mean many different things: volunteering for bigger projects; creating more visibility for the work you already do; taking on fewer projects but getting them done better; communicating progress better; etc. That’s why so much canned advice about getting promoted can be helpful in some situations and not others. For example, you might hear “stay out of office politics” while someone else might tell you “make sure your work is visible”. These pieces of advice are a bit contradictory, so which do you follow? You follow the one that leads to more trust.
For example, if you’ve quietly done great work but no one knows who you are and what you’ve accomplished, you might be great at your job but lack the trust of those who haven’t seen you in action. In this case, focusing on visibility is probably the right advice, and you probably need to face office politics to get your work seen. On the other hand, if people see you can do great work, but you’re perceived as getting in the way of other projects, people will be suspicious instead of trusting. In this case, staying in your lane (and out of office politics) might be better advice.
I once worked at a company where the product team was responsible for planning. They would often present a mostly completed plan to engineering and ask for our feedback. What they really wanted, though, was not feedback, but rather for us to rubber stamp their plans. Knowing my team was going to be responsible for implementing much of these plans, I would often ask questions or raise objections. Because this slowed down the planning process, I got a reputation for not being a “team player”.
The more they disliked hearing feedback, the more they tried to ram their plans past me, and the more I protested and brought up objections. In the end, the solution was to improve my relationship with the product team until they trusted me enough to collaborate on the plans. Volunteering to do gruntwork needed for planning, like making spreadsheets and so on, went a long way towards winning back their graces. The gruntwork also got me involved earlier when it was easier for them to incorporate my feedback, and restored their trust that I was trying to help see things through, rather than slow them down.
Every company of more than a few employees has some sort of policy about promotions.2 The policy I see most often3 is an expectation that the employee works at the “next” level for some amount of time before being formally promoted (See Figure 1). In this model, a promotion is seen as a recognition of work you are already doing.4
This is simple enough in principle, but it depends on defining clear expectations for each level. Companies have varying quality of “career ladders” where these definitions live, but even the best ones can be unclear to people who don’t have experience with these kinds of documents. What constitutes a “large project” or “deep understanding” or what counts as a “cross-team” project? For most of us, you know it when you see it.5
| Level | Expectation |
|---|---|
| L4 | Can lead cross-team projects, handling dependencies and timelines. |
| L3 | Can manage complete medium and large projects from start to finish, getting help from teammates as needed. |
| L2 | Can tackle simple, multi-ticket projects with little ambiguity. Has a deep understanding of their team’s core technologies. |
| L1 | Can tackle simple tickets without help. Can handle complex tickets with support from the team. |
Fig 1 shows a typical, simplified career ladder for engineers. If you are a level 2 and want to be promoted to a level 3, you are often expected to work at level 3 for some amount of time (eg six months) before you actually get the promotion.
While you should read your company’s policies and do your best to meet the requirements as you understand them, nine out of ten times, if you are up for a promotion and you are trusted, you will get it. That doesn’t mean you can get a promotion you aren’t qualified for, or that you don’t need to review the rubric and follow the rules. Rather, it means that following the rubric and the rules is only used to justify a decision that’s already been made emotionally.
If you don’t get the promotion and the explanation doesn’t make sense to you, think about who does and doesn’t trust you. Figure out a way to win everyone’s trust and you’ll be a shoe-in next time.
Admittedly, sometimes it’s not that simple. Sometimes someone gets promoted because the CEO likes them. Sometimes there’s a gap and whoever’s closest to filling the gap gets promoted into it. In some orgs, people get promoted because they are popular, loyal or were early employees. Sometimes organizations think about likeability instead of trustworthiness. In worst cases, people sometimes fail up.
This can be frustrating, but take heart that promotions not based on trust often prove to be mistakes. I remember seeing someone get promoted because they had pleased the CEO right around the time an opening appeared. Eventually the mistake became office gossip when the promoted employee got drunk. While leading a meeting. An important meeting. A meeting with the company that had just acquired us.6
Other complications happen when there’s simply no promotion available, or there are no opportunities to prove yourself trustworthy on something bigger or more impactful. This sort of thing happens a lot, and is especially common in companies that aren’t growing. If developing your career is non-negotiable and you are in this situation, you could consider moving on. However, this can also be an opportunity to focus more on personal growth instead or to work on improving trust in other ways (eg doing gruntwork) that might lay the foundation for later.