What did you do to get promoted to more senior software engineering roles? Jump to points: 01:30 Help Others Succeed 03:12 Admit What You Don't Know 04:51 Take On More Responsibility 06:20 Deliver On Your Promises 07:53 Focus On Business Value 09:38 Improve Communication Skills 11:11 Take Responsibility For Your Actions
I think "taking ownership" is another great habit to have, if you want to stand out. I've noticed that, inevitably, there are tasks that no one wants to do, but that need to get done. No one volunteers for them. Instead, everyone just wants for the task to be assigned to someone. If instead, one decides to take ownership with some attitude and momentum, I think it would impress.
00:05 - You change companies. Pure and simple. You're considered junior or mid-level at a company, you move to another one, BOOM, you're a senior developer.
I would argue being a senior developer is more than a title. It’s being able to do the things I discuss in the video. Sure you can hop to get the title, but as I said here I’m talking about the person you become to actually be recognized as doing the work of someone who’s experienced. If I’m leading a team of people who don’t care about these things but just a title, I can only expect them to be code monkeys. Which is up to everyone to decide and there’s no judgement from me. However I try to be honest here and when on a challenging project I want to work with people who collaborate well, not just sling code. YMMV
lol...absolutely true....and more funny is that your previous company is ready to hire you back after few months as a senior developer...so while you were not good enough to be promoted even after contributing for several years, now you are suddenly good enough to be a senior developer within few months of working in another company...harsh truth is that hiring, promotion etc in software industry is totally nonsense....promotion is all about connections in upper management
@@cccc2740 I agree. You can discuss about the issue with your boss and explain that you're sure you can find better paying position in another company if you cannot get a promotion here and still many companies fail to promote you. I think it's sad actually but the HR department often has more power in the company that the people that actually create stuff that the company sells. And if HR department blocks your promotion it really doesn't matter how good you're in your job. If I were the owner of any software company, I'd make sure this wouldn't happen there.
Yeah, funny thing how it works ☺. RUclips has been recommending this channel for weeks now, but I don't know, something about the name rubbed me wrong. Glad I decided to give it chance. He really speaks from experience and I'm enjoying his content as well. Wish he would continue making videos though.
I'm a software engineering manager and I totally agree with this video. I moved into my role because I wanted to start focusing on developing and training a team, and I can tell you that I'm constantly evaluating my team for promotion in title. The biggest things I look for (and help me argue for a promotion for someone) are for someone to be responsible, reliable, competent, and continually getting better. You also need to be a team player, able to defer things for later, yield to others, and to consider other points of view.
Thanks for sharing what you look for. I think it can really help people to see what a manager such as yourself looks for in people. I especially like the point about considering other points of view. I used to think earlier in my career this meant giving up influence but it was the opposite. When people saw that I respect them enough to hear them out and bat around options - they were much more receptive to my ideas.
I don't have a life :). I have given way too much of myself to the companies I have been working for. I am somewhat talented but the simple fact that most people are not doing more than the absolute minimum gives me some advantages. I have been promoted every time I have asked for it, and it has always been backed by the idea of my promotion providing additional value to the business I work for. If you are really good at what you are doing, putting you in a role above other people who "should listening to you" makes sense from a business perspective, and my promotions have always been triggered by me providing more value in a different role. With salary increases, it's different. I have received salary increases as part of promotions, I have also received a decent amount of salary increase when I have indicated that I am planning on leaving the company.
+Fredrik Rudberg thanks for sharing this testimony. I think this will really help some people. You’ve got a lot of real world advice here that’s good for people to hear. 👍
Being able to speak through things with non-technical people was one of the key reasons I was promoted from senior to lead developer. Communication is very important, and being able to translate highly technical jargon to something a business minded VP can understand will earn you major respect.
I definitely agree here. The longer I've been working in software development, the more sure I'm that the actual work of a good software engineer is to work as interpreter between normal human beings and computers. Your task is to communicate the requirements of the humans to the software and then explain the technical limitations or requirements from the machine to the humans. If you're good at this, you can give the response/requirements of the machine without actually writing any code or running any tests. That allows you to listen for the requirements that the end users really need and then offer possible solutions with a quite good estimate how expensive each solution is to implement in reality. You can basically promise anything if you don't need to mind about resource use, budget or time schedule. Just invent AGI and run the required software on that. For more realistic projects being able to clearly explain that with the end user requirements X and Y there are possible solutions A and B where A will be faster to implement but will cost more in use because of licensing reasons or because it requires constant 100x more computing time in production. Your role as a software engineer should be about offering those possibilities but it's not your task to select which one makes most sense for the business.
For the communication part I think you missed an important aspect. Being able to speak technichal or non-technical is like the first "baby step". The real goal is to be able to read a room or a person, see where they are on that spectrum of technical to non-technical, and then communicate ideas at that level. If you can gauge that properly and adjust your language, acronyms, technical jargon, business buzzwords etc. accordingly, you can make really good connections and win people over. I have found this one of the most important skills for promotion or visibility because it lets you best communicate and ultimately "sell" your work/ideas/contributions.
The method I've seen as the most effective way (at least in my country), is to meet with the manager and say "I've just got a new job".... Joking aside, my lead usually say "you have to be a 'senior' before you can get promoted to that role'. It's a bit difficult, as the idea of "senior developer" is not usually set in stone (and it's different from one team to another).
In Germany, you can only be a senior developer, if you have it written on a paper. You can write it on your CV yourself, doesn't matter. It just has to be on paper. If you then don't perform as a senior, there is something wrong with the project, because your paper stated, you are a senior, and the paper is always true. :D
That's definitely a way to get that pay increase the company said they couldn't afford when they thought there was no risk of you looking elsewhere. Here it depends on the company. At a previous employer getting promoted and the best increases was all about toeing the line and kissing up to the managers. Understanding the team members and the group dynamics, getting team members who hated each other to work together without fighting, those things didn't count for anything. Neither did taking on extra responsibility.
To be honest, Your channel is Gold! Just discovered it today. It's totally something different than what people are putting on RUclips.. Please keep up you great work! Thanks a lot!
There's also (honest) self-promotion. People need to know what you're doing and the business value you're delivering. There are a limited number of promotions so give your manager the ammunition they need in those meetings to move your name to the top of the list. Working on a good relationship with the other managers will also help your case - it'll be harder to argue against your promotion if they like you. And avoid as much as possible screwing up - a missed deadline can be the deciding factor against you when everything else is equal, and it may far outweigh a few extra points you may have had. Politics? Yes. It sucks. But it's reality.
Your channel is awesome, it was never clear to me what things were actually considered for seniority promotions (junior to intermediate , intermediate to Senior, etc). I guess it really depends on the company or institution but I'm sure the ideas you pin pointed here are generally the most valued ones in getting a promotion or recognition. I like that people are also mentioning that leaving the company or just asking for the promotion (backing it up with how does their work actually help the business grow) also works. Although one shouldn't have to leave a company to get a raise or promotion and the people responsible for them should be checking every once in a while who can potentially get it ... but I guess this is how things go in the real world. Congrats for the channel again ! :)
You're welcome! Great to hear this stuff is useful to you. I hope it really helps! My career could have been a lot easier if someone just told me this stuff from the beginning LOL.
You pretty much nailed it. The initial opportunities come from being perceived as very good at the technical aspects of your job, but the promotions come from proving that you can lead others and deliver real business value.
@@deang5622 I phrased that poorly. I meant you are promoted based on your ability to lead people and (apart from leading) based on your ability to write code that is valuable, not necessarily code that demosntrates technical proficiency.
You're probably one of the only actually informative channels out there discussing software development. Too many tech gurus nowadays trying to grift imo.
Your channel is just pure gold. Every single thing you mention in your videos I relate so much and my target is one day to create a channel like yours and spread my knowledge and passion! I started as a mid-level developer in my fintech company 5 years ago, been half the age of everyone else and I am now their technical lead and I have to say every point you mentioned is spot on and 100% accurate. Keep up the good work! 😎
This channel is solid gold. Too bad I came across this only after getting laid off. As a new grad, I joined a company last year. I was working on a project when 2 senior engineers supervising this project went on vacation. We had a rotation system for on-call duty. I had to take up on-call duty because other seniors were busy with more critical projects. As a result, my project lagged behind. Basically, no amount of updating people in stand-ups that the project might fall behind helped. Finally, it became a black mark on me. It affected my performance rating. So when COVID arrived I was the first one to be laid off.
I hope you’re able to find work again soon. Leaving a new grad to hit deadlines without support is ridiculous. Your next opportunity could be way better!
These advices are gold! Thanks for sharing this! I have been a programmer for 10 years and never being promoted. Being a female programmer and non-native english speaker I noticed people have a hard time trusting you, so you had to work double to prove you are as competent as the rest. However I think being a plain engineer have advantages since you get to spend all your time programming, the fun bit! Plus you can always promote yourself, just moving to a different company
Every developer should be subscribed to this channel. I kept trying to think of new things I might add to the conversation but it's like you took the words out of my mouth with each of your points.
*Let's get real here:* A lot of the time, whether you get promoted or not depends on people who _rarely, if ever_ actually interact with you in any meaningful way - if at all. It also depends on your manager's ability (or lack thereof) to properly articulate to someone else why you ought to be promoted in the first place, and if the manager fails to do that in a convincing way that persuades people who rarely, if ever, interact with you (e.g. including HR), then you're pretty dead in the water at that point, regardless of your ability to get things done. Recently, at my current employer, I was asked to work on a project to solve a problem, so I started to work on it. I've been working on it for 3-4 months or so (it's a non-trivial one). However, it wasn't until yesterday that I found out that, apparently, there were 2 previous failed attempts to solve the same problem by other employees in another team. So, a good question here could be: Did they ask me to take a shot at it because they believe I might be more likely to make it work, or am I being setup for failure to get thrown under the proverbial bus later down the road (e.g. performance evaluation)?... Unfortunately, I've seen both cases play out during my career (including former employers), so my cynicism on the latter alternative is not completely unwarranted/unjustified - especially with how backstabbing the people in the HR profession tend to be in many (not all, but many) cases...
Hi I am junior developer and been working for 5 months after teaching myself coding for two years. I felt like most people were smart than the first three sprint but now I am getting there . I am taking my weekend and after work to get things to work thanks so much.
That’s so great to hear, it makes me really happy to know people like you might not need to make some of the stupid mistakes I have! I hope your career goes great. I’m sure you’ll have an easier time working with people with the attitude you have.
A product manager would let you go to a tradeshow with them? or talk to a customer? Damn, that sounds like a dream. I want to work at that kind of company. For a developer who studied Business Administration, my "distance" (lack of communication) to the customer/end-user has been my biggest frustration.
If you actually want to get promoted instead of being respected, the most important thing is to discuss about it with the people that are going to decide about your promotion. Tell them what you wish and ask them what they think you would need to demonstrate to make it happen. In some cases it might turn out that the company HR will prevent your promotion because of some little detail. And if you cannot change that detail, no matter what else you do, there's no hope for promotion regardless of your performance level. I totally agree that all the points in this video make you a better software engineer and are practically requirements for a good software architect role but doing all that may still end up just working more without getting paid as an architect/lead/senior if you fail to fulfill some hidden requirement that your boss is looking for. Also, make sure to discuss about the decision making in general. How much power do you and other people in your team actually have over the priority of the changes, design, schedule, UI or UX decisions? Some teams have a boss that really wants to micromanage everything, some teams fail to have clear knowledge about who gets to decide what and it will end up in a big mess over time. Are you looking for a better pay or more power in decision making or both?
The only way to get promoted is to quit your job and apply for another one with a "bigger" title. I've not been promoted in 25 years, I've not seen anyone be promoted in 25 years. The only time I was offered a path to promotion was when I was told that to "grow in the company" I'd have to take up training to become project manager. Which training was then never offered because as a programmer I wasn't on the list of positions in the company that were eligible to receive management training (yes, and that was by the same person in the same conversation). And that directly is my experience in getting any training offered by my employers. There are ALWAYS meetings where you're asked what you'd want in training and experience to increase your worth to the company, with suggested training to do so by the HR person or manager across the table, but that training will never ever be offered. Taking on other responsibilities will usually be fought tooth and nail by the rest of the team (if not the entire company). People think you're "trying to steal my job" more often than not. Or they're going to tell you to stop doing things you have no expertise in because it's costing the company money. All this may have to do with the environment here where it's bad for companies to keep employees for more than 2 years because of legal reasons, so helping you grow in your skills and experience is never going to help the company but will help competitors. Far better to prevent an employee from growing and just replace him with someone cheaper after 2 years.
After 35+ years as an IT developer, what you won't see in the video, is the actual number one way to get the promotion and money your skills have earned you. If you're not getting the promotions you deserve, take a job somewhere else . Don't just threaten to leave, change companies ASAP. If you are unwilling to leave, or just can't for whatever reason, then apply for the job you want on a different team at the same company. If you can't/won't even do that, then be content as you realize that you are fighting a system designed to pay you as little as they think they can get away with. Middle managers are not given the power to promote. They are given a budget to run their department, and that pool of money must get doled out amongst all team members,. If your teammates are all "good enough", even if you are "superior", you're not going to be promoted or given a larger raise than anyone else if your manager doesn't have the budget for it. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you will stop wondering why you are not being advanced. It's not you, it's them. And your manager is not necessarily evil, their hands are tied too.
Some things I did were: - Focus on solving problems, avoid creating them. The company already has many problems, if you add more you're not contributing to the company. - Provide value to the company, if you can help someone do it, and most importantly if you can help the clients without it actually being part of your tasks, even better. - Learning how to learn is an important skill, especially in the tech industry. However, don't feel afraid of saying "I don't know how to do that, but I can look into it", again, provide solutions, not problems. - Ask, be curious, learn from others, be proactive.
I have a graphic design degree, however I self-taught how to build websites using php, javascript, mysql, css, html by experimenting and learning how things work (started this at age 13), whenever I join a company they hire me mostly for the programming skills, last job I had before starting my own business required me to take over paid campaigns, again, self-taught how to do it and in 4 years went from jr. programmer to director of digital marketing in the agency :)
Great summary, especially the proactive part. For too long I waited around for 'permission' to build proof of concepts for new ideas I wanted to bring into the codebase. Now I go ahead and explore anything which interests me, and present it back to the team.
Here's an idea: do a podcast and make clips available on RUclips, then slice interesting parts of one podcast into a number of shorter clips in separate videos
I see Honest Self Promotion in the comments, I can't agree more, or the more "accurate" word used by management is Visibility. It's perception and trust on top of artifacts of one's work. Its' not easy to describe comprehensively, in Chinese, it's described as "Qi", which is the Energy, it is the power and influence, that one can command a room, run a meeting, convince others, and earn the trust of others so that they listen to you and follow you.
If companies weren't BS, I'd agree. But as companies work, the way to get a promotion is to make sure what you do is valuable and visible. Discard take shit tasks and shout louder than the others.
1.If you join a growing company, then you can get promoted quite easily. 2. If there are few available promotions only then you need to bootlick manager. 3. If you get an offer letter with a higher package. 4. If you stay in limelight by participating in company wide activities then you can time to time threaten the manager and get promotions. 5. If suddenly there is a critical need and you get an offer with same package or little higher.
I’ve been promoted 4 different times over my career at companies, and been given opportunities for growth with no additional responsibilities but more freedom even more times. While you are absolutely right that if a title and more money is all you want hopping jobs will get you it initially - I find it’s easier to learn how to be effective in a new role when you have history at the company than coming into a new company having never done it.
I love this channel! Do you have any videos on dealing with difficult developers? I have a huge ego and can be hard to work with. What can my co-workers do to prevent being pummeled by me? HA, you just answered my question!
I’ve got an older one about confronting difficult developers but this is a broad topic I could do several videos on. I’ve been the difficult one too: ruclips.net/video/BKYui7B6DI4/видео.html
As in many other jobs out there, 'expert level' is waay down the list of requirements - in truth, they'd rather have these people on the shop floor for a number of reasons (clue: do you rate your managers technical skills highly?). Licking ass and being loud with the usual "How can we improve productivity" answers tends to get you there, speaking from years of experience. Promoting someone because they're exceptional with their job is, sadly/criminally, extremely rare...everywhere!
Being a software engineer is probably one of the worst choices of guilds if you want to make a career. At most, you would end up as "senior software engineer" or maybe the euphemism "software architect". But that's it.
I have a lot of friction with other managers and business analysts. Not sure how to fix it. But it always feels like I am shooting myself in the foot and never promoted. I try to stay professional, work environment is super hard to deal with sometimes.
Watching this channel gets one promoted I hope. I see now how tremendously different projects are and why choosing the best one(s) is important. Who you work with and what you do could be so vastly different from one job to the next. At the end of the day, do you get satisfied seeing the code changes you and others are writing?
I've never been interested in promotions. I hate the facade of superiority a title creates. I've always only really cared about the product, my teammates, and the quality of my code. How'd that work out for me? It was always pretty much assumed that I'm a senior developer or higher (aside from my first actual experience in the industry of course). Titles are just motivation mechanisms that employers use to make their employees feel like they're going somewhere in life with their career in hopes that they'll be productive in the way they need them to be.
I can’t say I disagree with the futility of titles in a lot of situations. In the “broken world” in which most companies operate, unfortunately it’s a necessary concern sometimes depending on your goals. But I don’t talk about whether getting promoted is important or not in this video, that’s a complicated topic with a very situational context itself. Great feedback thank you.
@@HealthyDev I appreciate the reply! Hope I didn't come off as pessimistic either there. I've just found it more simple to not worry about titles and just focus on my perception of what actually matters. You make great content btw! I enjoy you laying out the conclusions you've come to based on your experiences.
Or you could just... apply for a senior role at a different company and quit. Promotion isn't based on your output but on what the company itself needs. If the company doesn't need one, they wouldn't create a role for that. On the flip side there are other companies that value what you have. Don't sit there waiting on someone to grant you a title, go out there and get it yourself.
On your 3rd point "Taking more responsibility"...how can one manage this without falling into the "one man army" mentality others may develop with you? I tend to try to do different types of work to solve and create value, but it gets really annoying when people start depending on you for everything which feels like a complete burn out for me
That's definitely a tough call. Yeah it's easy to overstep that, I guess it requires wisdom and discernment (which I don't always have!). I talked about one time recently when I started feeling myself getting sucked into that and had to make a change in another video, "I Quit My Software Project to Get Healthy!": ruclips.net/video/h04f8Fjdvv0/видео.html If you haven't seen that one yet, maybe there's something there of help. I also talked about delegation and my challenges with it in "Lead Software Developers Better By Letting Go!": ruclips.net/video/Fp5oQyNV_ws/видео.html
@@HealthyDev hey! thanks for the reference videos! That 2nd video is great... my issue is that it's not even as a lead... it's as a member of the team that I have these issues! Even the lead depends on me to give them guidance...for these projects...
@@odenkaz for sure. Glad you can get some value out of it even if you're not "officially" a lead. Yeah a lot of these issues stem from the fact that many software teams are still setup with a "command and control" structure when it's really collaborative knowledge work. That disconnect seems to create all kinds of dysfunctions for us as we try to cope with it the best we can...
Cut the brake-line on your bosses Prius and as he leaves the office for the day, leave a note on his desk that says, "If I don't make it home today, please consider XXX for my position, he's worked very hard and he's corporate material. -Thanks, Jeff".
It's all about experience and i'm so glad someone with your knowledge and experience decided to help other people in these points of views. I've been in the industry professionally for about 3 3.5 year. I'm 20 years old. Some of these tips of yours I had faced so far and many of them are things I have to pay more attention cause It's easy to underestimate or forget them. By the way not all of them work well for all companies, specially new startups with lower engineers..
Thanks for sharing your feedback. I definitely agree that this information is not universal. As I share in my “5 Biggest Lies” video, situations at companies are really different. With that being said, I still think these are good skills to consider developing that may not guarantee a promotion, but will make you more effective and probably easier to work with. Thanks again for your support!
That is correct. And once these become your second nature. You can be a better and more reliable employee in better and larger companies. Btw I've already watched your video about 5 biggest lies and it was really great and helpful. Thanks 👌🏽👍
I feel ya. Our industry practically worships knowledge but is incredibly devoid of wisdom IMHO. One of the things that helped me is answering like I suggested in the video: “I don’t know, but I’ll find out”. It combines honesty with taking initiative. If they don’t want me to find out, they get the opportunity then and there. YMMV
4:46 I can't for the life of me figure out what you mean. To get the job in the first place you need to claim to be an expert at everything and pretend to know even when you don't. Saying I don't know mean that you are automatically eliminated in any job interview and working with customers is essentially the same thing. Just like a job interview if you say I don't know then a customer just like a boss will say "ok then I'll find somebody who does"
I have to disagree completely with you here. Taking a job claiming to be an expert at something your not is dangerous. I'm always honest in interviews. There's no sense selling false capabilities only to disappoint them when you start.
@Tyler Steimle definitely! That even inspires more confidence than telling them that you'd find out at all. I don't always know enough to tell them at the time, but if possible that's a great approach. 👍
I owned 6 at the time of this video :) Have since sold three of them but yeah I was teaching my wife to play around that time and we just needed the ride ;)
My tip is this, integrity. Do good at your job and don't expect praises. Don't expect a promotion. Expects mistakes , and quickly fix them. And do not complaining or bullshitting. Because in development team, majority are show and no go, but you need to show actions instead. That's what make you different programmer. Lastly, for communication, explain the thing like you explain to a 5 year old. Always works.
@@HealthyDev no problem. Is just an experience. And I don't want anyone commit my mistakes I did in the past. Which is "thinking solo in project will get a better spotlight" , I did get the spotlight , but not of fame but rather of shame.
I've been at it for more than a decade at a FAANG and still haven't been promoted to senior, so I know a thing or two about failing. Above all else, deliver code quickly. Delivering code quickly should be the golden rule. It's hard to "help others" if you're behind on your own tasks, or in other words, take on THEIR tasks and get extra credit. And of course it helps prove you are reliable and can deliver on promises and are ready to take on more responsibility. Not focusing on business value is a pitfall that I've repeated personally and seen others do too. This can come in the form of "you like doing the right thing" at a perf review, and usually, this is the first piece of bread before the manager delivers the sh*t in a sh*t sandwich. One way this can happen is if you wasted time delivering "perfect" code, and violated the golden rule in the process. Genuinely helping others succeed can be a pitfall if you haven't already been recognized as a dominant dev on the team. Whatever you do, make sure you take credit. In all my years, I've met only one person (a manager), who gave their full-hearted effort to help me deliver code faster. Everyone else, interactions were more about asserting dominance, measuring each other up, and/or taking more of the credit and end of year prizes. So no matter what, make sure you are taking credit.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I’m guessing you know FAANG companies aren’t necessarily known for the best effort to recognition ratio for many people. Too much competition.
Again, gold advises. It is hard to admit you are not worthy. Well, the first step to grow it is to identify your weaknesses, work on it, improve and then FIND another job and try again. Why ? because once one company see you as not manager material, nothing in this world will change that opinion.
What did you do to get promoted to more senior software engineering roles?
Jump to points:
01:30 Help Others Succeed
03:12 Admit What You Don't Know
04:51 Take On More Responsibility
06:20 Deliver On Your Promises
07:53 Focus On Business Value
09:38 Improve Communication Skills
11:11 Take Responsibility For Your Actions
I think "taking ownership" is another great habit to have, if you want to stand out. I've noticed that, inevitably, there are tasks that no one wants to do, but that need to get done. No one volunteers for them. Instead, everyone just wants for the task to be assigned to someone. If instead, one decides to take ownership with some attitude and momentum, I think it would impress.
Great approach. Please summerize these tips like this from now on in your videos. Helps a lot when you try to review and wrap up
Thanks, I plan to add this to all my past videos in the pinned comment over time. Glad you found it useful!
Great addition, I totally agree!
Healthy Software Developer That would be awesome. I recently started listening to you on soundcloud as well 👌🏽 great job man
00:05 - You change companies. Pure and simple. You're considered junior or mid-level at a company, you move to another one, BOOM, you're a senior developer.
I would argue being a senior developer is more than a title. It’s being able to do the things I discuss in the video. Sure you can hop to get the title, but as I said here I’m talking about the person you become to actually be recognized as doing the work of someone who’s experienced. If I’m leading a team of people who don’t care about these things but just a title, I can only expect them to be code monkeys. Which is up to everyone to decide and there’s no judgement from me. However I try to be honest here and when on a challenging project I want to work with people who collaborate well, not just sling code. YMMV
lol...absolutely true....and more funny is that your previous company is ready to hire you back after few months as a senior developer...so while you were not good enough to be promoted even after contributing for several years, now you are suddenly good enough to be a senior developer within few months of working in another company...harsh truth is that hiring, promotion etc in software industry is totally nonsense....promotion is all about connections in upper management
Yeah, but you still need the soft skills to boot. If you're an asshole senior, then you're part of the problem
@@cccc2740 I agree. You can discuss about the issue with your boss and explain that you're sure you can find better paying position in another company if you cannot get a promotion here and still many companies fail to promote you.
I think it's sad actually but the HR department often has more power in the company that the people that actually create stuff that the company sells. And if HR department blocks your promotion it really doesn't matter how good you're in your job.
If I were the owner of any software company, I'd make sure this wouldn't happen there.
@@cccc2740 Promotion is about connections in upper management... Yeah that's true but not only in software development
This whole channel is pure gold.
Yeah, funny thing how it works ☺. RUclips has been recommending this channel for weeks now, but I don't know, something about the name rubbed me wrong. Glad I decided to give it chance. He really speaks from experience and I'm enjoying his content as well. Wish he would continue making videos though.
I'm a software engineering manager and I totally agree with this video. I moved into my role because I wanted to start focusing on developing and training a team, and I can tell you that I'm constantly evaluating my team for promotion in title. The biggest things I look for (and help me argue for a promotion for someone) are for someone to be responsible, reliable, competent, and continually getting better. You also need to be a team player, able to defer things for later, yield to others, and to consider other points of view.
Thanks for sharing what you look for. I think it can really help people to see what a manager such as yourself looks for in people.
I especially like the point about considering other points of view. I used to think earlier in my career this meant giving up influence but it was the opposite. When people saw that I respect them enough to hear them out and bat around options - they were much more receptive to my ideas.
I don't have a life :). I have given way too much of myself to the companies I have been working for. I am somewhat talented but the simple fact that most people are not doing more than the absolute minimum gives me some advantages. I have been promoted every time I have asked for it, and it has always been backed by the idea of my promotion providing additional value to the business I work for. If you are really good at what you are doing, putting you in a role above other people who "should listening to you" makes sense from a business perspective, and my promotions have always been triggered by me providing more value in a different role. With salary increases, it's different. I have received salary increases as part of promotions, I have also received a decent amount of salary increase when I have indicated that I am planning on leaving the company.
+Fredrik Rudberg thanks for sharing this testimony. I think this will really help some people. You’ve got a lot of real world advice here that’s good for people to hear. 👍
Being able to speak through things with non-technical people was one of the key reasons I was promoted from senior to lead developer. Communication is very important, and being able to translate highly technical jargon to something a business minded VP can understand will earn you major respect.
I definitely agree here. The longer I've been working in software development, the more sure I'm that the actual work of a good software engineer is to work as interpreter between normal human beings and computers. Your task is to communicate the requirements of the humans to the software and then explain the technical limitations or requirements from the machine to the humans. If you're good at this, you can give the response/requirements of the machine without actually writing any code or running any tests. That allows you to listen for the requirements that the end users really need and then offer possible solutions with a quite good estimate how expensive each solution is to implement in reality.
You can basically promise anything if you don't need to mind about resource use, budget or time schedule. Just invent AGI and run the required software on that. For more realistic projects being able to clearly explain that with the end user requirements X and Y there are possible solutions A and B where A will be faster to implement but will cost more in use because of licensing reasons or because it requires constant 100x more computing time in production. Your role as a software engineer should be about offering those possibilities but it's not your task to select which one makes most sense for the business.
For the communication part I think you missed an important aspect. Being able to speak technichal or non-technical is like the first "baby step". The real goal is to be able to read a room or a person, see where they are on that spectrum of technical to non-technical, and then communicate ideas at that level. If you can gauge that properly and adjust your language, acronyms, technical jargon, business buzzwords etc. accordingly, you can make really good connections and win people over. I have found this one of the most important skills for promotion or visibility because it lets you best communicate and ultimately "sell" your work/ideas/contributions.
Agreed, however in my experience there are a LOT of people who don’t even take the baby step. Good feedback. 👍
The method I've seen as the most effective way (at least in my country), is to meet with the manager and say "I've just got a new job"....
Joking aside, my lead usually say "you have to be a 'senior' before you can get promoted to that role'. It's a bit difficult, as the idea of "senior developer" is not usually set in stone (and it's different from one team to another).
Sounds like your experience is very similar to mine. Good to know others are running into the same situations! Thanks for sharing.
Is there a position that isn't junior or senior? What would it be called?
In Germany, you can only be a senior developer, if you have it written on a paper. You can write it on your CV yourself, doesn't matter. It just has to be on paper. If you then don't perform as a senior, there is something wrong with the project, because your paper stated, you are a senior, and the paper is always true. :D
That's definitely a way to get that pay increase the company said they couldn't afford when they thought there was no risk of you looking elsewhere.
Here it depends on the company. At a previous employer getting promoted and the best increases was all about toeing the line and kissing up to the managers. Understanding the team members and the group dynamics, getting team members who hated each other to work together without fighting, those things didn't count for anything. Neither did taking on extra responsibility.
@@notMattGarska "Full" or mid-level
To be honest, Your channel is Gold! Just discovered it today. It's totally something different than what people are putting on RUclips.. Please keep up you great work! Thanks a lot!
Thanks Said that’s awesome! I hope it really helps you. Welcome to the channel. 👍
There's also (honest) self-promotion. People need to know what you're doing and the business value you're delivering. There are a limited number of promotions so give your manager the ammunition they need in those meetings to move your name to the top of the list. Working on a good relationship with the other managers will also help your case - it'll be harder to argue against your promotion if they like you. And avoid as much as possible screwing up - a missed deadline can be the deciding factor against you when everything else is equal, and it may far outweigh a few extra points you may have had.
Politics? Yes. It sucks. But it's reality.
Absolutely practical and effective advice. Thanks for adding this!
Your channel is awesome, it was never clear to me what things were actually considered for seniority promotions (junior to intermediate , intermediate to Senior, etc). I guess it really depends on the company or institution but I'm sure the ideas you pin pointed here are generally the most valued ones in getting a promotion or recognition. I like that people are also mentioning that leaving the company or just asking for the promotion (backing it up with how does their work actually help the business grow) also works. Although one shouldn't have to leave a company to get a raise or promotion and the people responsible for them should be checking every once in a while who can potentially get it ... but I guess this is how things go in the real world. Congrats for the channel again ! :)
You're welcome! Great to hear this stuff is useful to you. I hope it really helps! My career could have been a lot easier if someone just told me this stuff from the beginning LOL.
You pretty much nailed it. The initial opportunities come from being perceived as very good at the technical aspects of your job, but the promotions come from proving that you can lead others and deliver real business value.
And software engineers don't deliver "real" business value?
@@deang5622 I phrased that poorly. I meant you are promoted based on your ability to lead people and (apart from leading) based on your ability to write code that is valuable, not necessarily code that demosntrates technical proficiency.
You're probably one of the only actually informative channels out there discussing software development. Too many tech gurus nowadays trying to grift imo.
Your channel is just pure gold. Every single thing you mention in your videos I relate so much and my target is one day to create a channel like yours and spread my knowledge and passion!
I started as a mid-level developer in my fintech company 5 years ago, been half the age of everyone else and I am now their technical lead and I have to say every point you mentioned is spot on and 100% accurate.
Keep up the good work! 😎
This channel is solid gold. Too bad I came across this only after getting laid off. As a new grad, I joined a company last year. I was working on a project when 2 senior engineers supervising this project went on vacation. We had a rotation system for on-call duty. I had to take up on-call duty because other seniors were busy with more critical projects. As a result, my project lagged behind. Basically, no amount of updating people in stand-ups that the project might fall behind helped. Finally, it became a black mark on me. It affected my performance rating. So when COVID arrived I was the first one to be laid off.
I hope you’re able to find work again soon. Leaving a new grad to hit deadlines without support is ridiculous. Your next opportunity could be way better!
I'm sorry to hear that. I hope things have improved since.
These advices are gold! Thanks for sharing this! I have been a programmer for 10 years and never being promoted. Being a female programmer and non-native english speaker I noticed people have a hard time trusting you, so you had to work double to prove you are as competent as the rest. However I think being a plain engineer have advantages since you get to spend all your time programming, the fun bit! Plus you can always promote yourself, just moving to a different company
Every developer should be subscribed to this channel. I kept trying to think of new things I might add to the conversation but it's like you took the words out of my mouth with each of your points.
Thanks for the kind words! I’m glad you could relate.
This video is absolutely spot on-i wish I could have known all this starting out as a programmer
*Let's get real here:* A lot of the time, whether you get promoted or not depends on people who _rarely, if ever_ actually interact with you in any meaningful way - if at all. It also depends on your manager's ability (or lack thereof) to properly articulate to someone else why you ought to be promoted in the first place, and if the manager fails to do that in a convincing way that persuades people who rarely, if ever, interact with you (e.g. including HR), then you're pretty dead in the water at that point, regardless of your ability to get things done.
Recently, at my current employer, I was asked to work on a project to solve a problem, so I started to work on it. I've been working on it for 3-4 months or so (it's a non-trivial one). However, it wasn't until yesterday that I found out that, apparently, there were 2 previous failed attempts to solve the same problem by other employees in another team. So, a good question here could be: Did they ask me to take a shot at it because they believe I might be more likely to make it work, or am I being setup for failure to get thrown under the proverbial bus later down the road (e.g. performance evaluation)?...
Unfortunately, I've seen both cases play out during my career (including former employers), so my cynicism on the latter alternative is not completely unwarranted/unjustified - especially with how backstabbing the people in the HR profession tend to be in many (not all, but many) cases...
Hi
I am junior developer and been working for 5 months after teaching myself coding for two years.
I felt like most people were smart than the first three sprint but now I am getting there .
I am taking my weekend and after work to get things to work
thanks so much.
Congratulations! Keep going. 👍
Why didn't I discover this amazing channel earlier? Or was I not ready yet to discover it?
Lol, only 2 years in I really shouldn't be looking at this yet, but damn it fills me with confidence when I am already doing most of these already.
That’s so great to hear, it makes me really happy to know people like you might not need to make some of the stupid mistakes I have!
I hope your career goes great. I’m sure you’ll have an easier time working with people with the attitude you have.
I’m of the opinion it’s never too early to learn this stuff. I wish someone told me these things when I started out!
Your channel is a gold mine. Thanks yo
A product manager would let you go to a tradeshow with them? or talk to a customer? Damn, that sounds like a dream. I want to work at that kind of company. For a developer who studied Business Administration, my "distance" (lack of communication) to the customer/end-user has been my biggest frustration.
They are just trying to save their own job. If you learn the ropes you become a competition.
If you actually want to get promoted instead of being respected, the most important thing is to discuss about it with the people that are going to decide about your promotion. Tell them what you wish and ask them what they think you would need to demonstrate to make it happen. In some cases it might turn out that the company HR will prevent your promotion because of some little detail. And if you cannot change that detail, no matter what else you do, there's no hope for promotion regardless of your performance level.
I totally agree that all the points in this video make you a better software engineer and are practically requirements for a good software architect role but doing all that may still end up just working more without getting paid as an architect/lead/senior if you fail to fulfill some hidden requirement that your boss is looking for.
Also, make sure to discuss about the decision making in general. How much power do you and other people in your team actually have over the priority of the changes, design, schedule, UI or UX decisions? Some teams have a boss that really wants to micromanage everything, some teams fail to have clear knowledge about who gets to decide what and it will end up in a big mess over time.
Are you looking for a better pay or more power in decision making or both?
You're amazing, thank you so much. What an amazing coach!!
Very easy for me to subscribe to this channel, its a gold mine. Thanks 😊
Welcome :)
The only way to get promoted is to quit your job and apply for another one with a "bigger" title.
I've not been promoted in 25 years, I've not seen anyone be promoted in 25 years.
The only time I was offered a path to promotion was when I was told that to "grow in the company" I'd have to take up training to become project manager. Which training was then never offered because as a programmer I wasn't on the list of positions in the company that were eligible to receive management training (yes, and that was by the same person in the same conversation).
And that directly is my experience in getting any training offered by my employers. There are ALWAYS meetings where you're asked what you'd want in training and experience to increase your worth to the company, with suggested training to do so by the HR person or manager across the table, but that training will never ever be offered.
Taking on other responsibilities will usually be fought tooth and nail by the rest of the team (if not the entire company). People think you're "trying to steal my job" more often than not.
Or they're going to tell you to stop doing things you have no expertise in because it's costing the company money.
All this may have to do with the environment here where it's bad for companies to keep employees for more than 2 years because of legal reasons, so helping you grow in your skills and experience is never going to help the company but will help competitors.
Far better to prevent an employee from growing and just replace him with someone cheaper after 2 years.
After 35+ years as an IT developer, what you won't see in the video, is the actual number one way to get the promotion and money your skills have earned you.
If you're not getting the promotions you deserve, take a job somewhere else . Don't just threaten to leave, change companies ASAP.
If you are unwilling to leave, or just can't for whatever reason, then apply for the job you want on a different team at the same company. If you can't/won't even do that, then be content as you realize that you are fighting a system designed to pay you as little as they think they can get away with. Middle managers are not given the power to promote. They are given a budget to run their department, and that pool of money must get doled out amongst all team members,. If your teammates are all "good enough", even if you are "superior", you're not going to be promoted or given a larger raise than anyone else if your manager doesn't have the budget for it. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you will stop wondering why you are not being advanced.
It's not you, it's them. And your manager is not necessarily evil, their hands are tied too.
Some things I did were:
- Focus on solving problems, avoid creating them. The company already has many problems, if you add more you're not contributing to the company.
- Provide value to the company, if you can help someone do it, and most importantly if you can help the clients without it actually being part of your tasks, even better.
- Learning how to learn is an important skill, especially in the tech industry. However, don't feel afraid of saying "I don't know how to do that, but I can look into it", again, provide solutions, not problems.
- Ask, be curious, learn from others, be proactive.
I have a graphic design degree, however I self-taught how to build websites using php, javascript, mysql, css, html by experimenting and learning how things work (started this at age 13), whenever I join a company they hire me mostly for the programming skills, last job I had before starting my own business required me to take over paid campaigns, again, self-taught how to do it and in 4 years went from jr. programmer to director of digital marketing in the agency :)
Great summary, especially the proactive part. For too long I waited around for 'permission' to build proof of concepts for new ideas I wanted to bring into the codebase. Now I go ahead and explore anything which interests me, and present it back to the team.
Here's an idea: do a podcast and make clips available on RUclips, then slice interesting parts of one podcast into a number of shorter clips in separate videos
This channel is really good. Thanks for your effort.
Thanks for your support. 😀
it's a great channel, but we need hard chargers in industry, hate to say it more Steve Jobs types.
I see Honest Self Promotion in the comments, I can't agree more, or the more "accurate" word used by management is Visibility. It's perception and trust on top of artifacts of one's work. Its' not easy to describe comprehensively, in Chinese, it's described as "Qi", which is the Energy, it is the power and influence, that one can command a room, run a meeting, convince others, and earn the trust of others so that they listen to you and follow you.
If companies weren't BS, I'd agree. But as companies work, the way to get a promotion is to make sure what you do is valuable and visible. Discard take shit tasks and shout louder than the others.
You’re making a good point, but I’m disappointed that it wasn’t capitalized in boldface and italics.
1.If you join a growing company, then you can get promoted quite easily.
2. If there are few available promotions only then you need to bootlick manager.
3. If you get an offer letter with a higher package.
4. If you stay in limelight by participating in company wide activities then you can time to time threaten the manager and get promotions.
5. If suddenly there is a critical need and you get an offer with same package or little higher.
Well said. #3 is a great point
Promotion within a company seems rare. More responsibility etcetera usually means a new workplace, and recreating yourself. Is this not the way?
I’ve been promoted 4 different times over my career at companies, and been given opportunities for growth with no additional responsibilities but more freedom even more times. While you are absolutely right that if a title and more money is all you want hopping jobs will get you it initially - I find it’s easier to learn how to be effective in a new role when you have history at the company than coming into a new company having never done it.
I love this channel! Do you have any videos on dealing with difficult developers? I have a huge ego and can be hard to work with. What can my co-workers do to prevent being pummeled by me? HA, you just answered my question!
I’ve got an older one about confronting difficult developers but this is a broad topic I could do several videos on. I’ve been the difficult one too: ruclips.net/video/BKYui7B6DI4/видео.html
Great, gems of software engineering
As in many other jobs out there, 'expert level' is waay down the list of requirements - in truth, they'd rather have these people on the shop floor for a number of reasons (clue: do you rate your managers technical skills highly?).
Licking ass and being loud with the usual "How can we improve productivity" answers tends to get you there, speaking from years of experience. Promoting someone because they're exceptional with their job is, sadly/criminally, extremely rare...everywhere!
Being a software engineer is probably one of the worst choices of guilds if you want to make a career. At most, you would end up as "senior software engineer" or maybe the euphemism "software architect". But that's it.
Very informative, thanks
You’re very welcome.
I have a lot of friction with other managers and business analysts. Not sure how to fix it. But it always feels like I am shooting myself in the foot and never promoted. I try to stay professional, work environment is super hard to deal with sometimes.
Watching this channel gets one promoted I hope.
I see now how tremendously different projects are and why choosing the best one(s) is important.
Who you work with and what you do could be so vastly different from one job to the next. At the end of the day, do you get satisfied seeing the code changes you and others are writing?
I've never been interested in promotions. I hate the facade of superiority a title creates. I've always only really cared about the product, my teammates, and the quality of my code. How'd that work out for me? It was always pretty much assumed that I'm a senior developer or higher (aside from my first actual experience in the industry of course). Titles are just motivation mechanisms that employers use to make their employees feel like they're going somewhere in life with their career in hopes that they'll be productive in the way they need them to be.
I can’t say I disagree with the futility of titles in a lot of situations. In the “broken world” in which most companies operate, unfortunately it’s a necessary concern sometimes depending on your goals. But I don’t talk about whether getting promoted is important or not in this video, that’s a complicated topic with a very situational context itself. Great feedback thank you.
@@HealthyDev I appreciate the reply! Hope I didn't come off as pessimistic either there. I've just found it more simple to not worry about titles and just focus on my perception of what actually matters. You make great content btw! I enjoy you laying out the conclusions you've come to based on your experiences.
Nah I get where you’re coming from, no worries!
Or you could just... apply for a senior role at a different company and quit. Promotion isn't based on your output but on what the company itself needs. If the company doesn't need one, they wouldn't create a role for that.
On the flip side there are other companies that value what you have. Don't sit there waiting on someone to grant you a title, go out there and get it yourself.
On your 3rd point "Taking more responsibility"...how can one manage this without falling into the "one man army" mentality others may develop with you? I tend to try to do different types of work to solve and create value, but it gets really annoying when people start depending on you for everything which feels like a complete burn out for me
That's definitely a tough call. Yeah it's easy to overstep that, I guess it requires wisdom and discernment (which I don't always have!). I talked about one time recently when I started feeling myself getting sucked into that and had to make a change in another video, "I Quit My Software Project to Get Healthy!": ruclips.net/video/h04f8Fjdvv0/видео.html If you haven't seen that one yet, maybe there's something there of help. I also talked about delegation and my challenges with it in "Lead Software Developers Better By Letting Go!": ruclips.net/video/Fp5oQyNV_ws/видео.html
@@HealthyDev hey! thanks for the reference videos!
That 2nd video is great... my issue is that it's not even as a lead... it's as a member of the team that I have these issues! Even the lead depends on me to give them guidance...for these projects...
@@odenkaz for sure. Glad you can get some value out of it even if you're not "officially" a lead. Yeah a lot of these issues stem from the fact that many software teams are still setup with a "command and control" structure when it's really collaborative knowledge work. That disconnect seems to create all kinds of dysfunctions for us as we try to cope with it the best we can...
the blazer and hand gestures sell this
💯🤸🏾♂️
Cut the brake-line on your bosses Prius and as he leaves the office for the day, leave a note on his desk that says, "If I don't make it home today, please consider XXX for my position, he's worked very hard and he's corporate material. -Thanks, Jeff".
Excellent tips
I’m so glad to hear they help! Many of these I didn’t do so well earlier in my career (understatement) 🤨
It's all about experience and i'm so glad someone with your knowledge and experience decided to help other people in these points of views. I've been in the industry professionally for about 3 3.5 year. I'm 20 years old. Some of these tips of yours I had faced so far and many of them are things I have to pay more attention cause It's easy to underestimate or forget them. By the way not all of them work well for all companies, specially new startups with lower engineers..
Thanks for sharing your feedback. I definitely agree that this information is not universal. As I share in my “5 Biggest Lies” video, situations at companies are really different.
With that being said, I still think these are good skills to consider developing that may not guarantee a promotion, but will make you more effective and probably easier to work with. Thanks again for your support!
That is correct. And once these become your second nature. You can be a better and more reliable employee in better and larger companies. Btw I've already watched your video about 5 biggest lies and it was really great and helpful. Thanks 👌🏽👍
Excellent, I’m glad it helped you!
The other day said, I can't help you, I don't know. I wanted to know. I feel that's such a negative and I feel inadequate.
I feel ya. Our industry practically worships knowledge but is incredibly devoid of wisdom IMHO. One of the things that helped me is answering like I suggested in the video: “I don’t know, but I’ll find out”. It combines honesty with taking initiative. If they don’t want me to find out, they get the opportunity then and there. YMMV
Your voice is so deep, haha. Anyway, great video, thank you.
You’re welcome! Glad it helped.
Haha, I get a lot of girl drummers in my feed and this comment is like all the role reversal
4:46 I can't for the life of me figure out what you mean. To get the job in the first place you need to claim to be an expert at everything and pretend to know even when you don't. Saying I don't know mean that you are automatically eliminated in any job interview and working with customers is essentially the same thing. Just like a job interview if you say I don't know then a customer just like a boss will say "ok then I'll find somebody who does"
I have to disagree completely with you here. Taking a job claiming to be an expert at something your not is dangerous. I'm always honest in interviews. There's no sense selling false capabilities only to disappoint them when you start.
@Tyler Steimle definitely! That even inspires more confidence than telling them that you'd find out at all. I don't always know enough to tell them at the time, but if possible that's a great approach. 👍
It really bothers me that you don''t own a crash cymbal. That's all.
I owned 6 at the time of this video :) Have since sold three of them but yeah I was teaching my wife to play around that time and we just needed the ride ;)
what will get you promotion? changing company every 2 years
My tip is this, integrity.
Do good at your job and don't expect praises. Don't expect a promotion. Expects mistakes , and quickly fix them. And do not complaining or bullshitting.
Because in development team, majority are show and no go, but you need to show actions instead. That's what make you different programmer. Lastly, for communication, explain the thing like you explain to a 5 year old. Always works.
Great advice and insights. Thanks for sharing!
@@HealthyDev no problem. Is just an experience. And I don't want anyone commit my mistakes I did in the past. Which is "thinking solo in project will get a better spotlight" , I did get the spotlight , but not of fame but rather of shame.
Pro Tip: You don't want to be promoted. Getting paid more is awesome. Getting promoted sucks.
I've been at it for more than a decade at a FAANG and still haven't been promoted to senior, so I know a thing or two about failing. Above all else, deliver code quickly.
Delivering code quickly should be the golden rule. It's hard to "help others" if you're behind on your own tasks, or in other words, take on THEIR tasks and get extra credit. And of course it helps prove you are reliable and can deliver on promises and are ready to take on more responsibility.
Not focusing on business value is a pitfall that I've repeated personally and seen others do too. This can come in the form of "you like doing the right thing" at a perf review, and usually, this is the first piece of bread before the manager delivers the sh*t in a sh*t sandwich. One way this can happen is if you wasted time delivering "perfect" code, and violated the golden rule in the process.
Genuinely helping others succeed can be a pitfall if you haven't already been recognized as a dominant dev on the team. Whatever you do, make sure you take credit. In all my years, I've met only one person (a manager), who gave their full-hearted effort to help me deliver code faster. Everyone else, interactions were more about asserting dominance, measuring each other up, and/or taking more of the credit and end of year prizes. So no matter what, make sure you are taking credit.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I’m guessing you know FAANG companies aren’t necessarily known for the best effort to recognition ratio for many people. Too much competition.
Because you work in a small company, so you'll never be promoted :(
Again, gold advises. It is hard to admit you are not worthy. Well, the first step to grow it is to identify your weaknesses, work on it, improve and then FIND another job and try again. Why ? because once one company see you as not manager material, nothing in this world will change that opinion.
Software Dev is made to failure by those template Management.