The illusion of your career path

You graduated from college and started your first job. You are overwhelmed by all the new material that you need to learn, new technical knowledge, new procedures, new people, new rules. Almost everything is new and looks complex and challenging.

In all that chaos of moving from school to the real corporate world one thing looks simple, your career path. There is structure and simplicity here, there is order and rules. You start at the bottom and you move up the ladder. Every year, at annual review time, your manager meets with you. They go over your accomplishments for the year, provide feedback and areas for improvements, and hopefully gives you a raise and promotion.

All you have to do is focus on your job; learn fast, work hard and you will be rewarded. And if you do not like what you have here, just look at another company to give you more.

Most of us believe in this simple view and fall into this deceptive trap.

This simplistic view is just an illusion. The real forces that affect your career are much more complex and you need to learn them, the same way that you learn a new technical skill.

Failing to do that will carry high cost, both in time and money. Your promotions will take longer, and you will make significantly less over your total career life.

The only issue, there is no one to teach you. You have to learn it yourself. No one will tell you what you need to do to get promoted faster; no one will even tell you that it is possible.

How raises and promotion are decided

For most tech companies, promotion is not automatic. Your manager needs to follow a process that shows to his manager and human resources why you are rewarded with monetary raise and/or grade promotion.

You also need to understand that your manager has a finite monetary and promotions budget. They cannot give a promotion to everyone, or give everyone a 20% raise. The budget is a zero sum game, you give more to one, you give less to someone else (with a few exceptions for special cases).

How is that decision made? How the budget is split between the group members?

The exact process is different between companies, but the essence is similar. The group members are ranked based on their accomplishments. That ranking is compared to their current compensation and grade level, and the difference will determine their salary increase and promotions. The number of years in your current position will have some effect, but it is small and taken into account only at the lower grade levels.

Let’s look at an example. Assume that your manager has a 100K budget that represents 5% raise to the group. If your salary is $80K and the difference between your ranking and the expectations from you is about the same as others in the group, you will get a 5% raise. Even if you are a superstar, but everyone else is a superstar too, you still get 5%.

If the difference between your ranking and the expectations from you is higher compared to others, you will get a higher raise, maybe 8%. In that case, the rest of the group have $2.4K less in raises budget (that extra 3% of your $80K).

The first and most important rule, it is all relative, not absolute. From salary increase perspective, you want to be the alpha wolf, not the last among lions.

Promotions are decided in a similar way, except that there is one more consideration. How will you perform at the next grade level.

The need for career development plan

Now that you understand the process, you understand why you need a plan. You need to make sure that you rank as high as possible compared to your peers. And if you want a promotion, you also need to show that you can perform well at the new level.

In order to rank higher, you need to understand what the measurements criteria are. And here is the big surprise, you are most likely not aware of them.

For example, if you are a software engineer what will be the criteria?

The number of lines of code you wrote.

The complexity or efficiency of your code.

Number of new solutions you come up with.

The number of bugs you had.

The financial benefit to the company of your project.

All of the above? In what ratio?

As you can see, there are many ways to rank you and these are only some of the technical aspects. In additions, you are ranked on non-technical items such as:

How independent were you.

How well do you work with others in the group and outside the group.

Your communication skills.

Your leadership skills (and what exactly does it mean?).

Your initiative.

Your visibility in the organization.

How well you match to the company culture and values.

What was the feedback that other people gave about you.

The above list shows that the ranking process is not easy to quantify and tries to take into account many technical and non-technical accomplishments. Many are not quantifiable and depend on the image that you project.

That is where your career development plan kicks in. You need to make sure you rank at the top so you will get the maximum of that limited budget.

How does a career development plan look like?

Like any plan you start with the basics:

What is your goal (what position)?

What are the criteria that will be used to measure you?

What are the requirements from the next grade level?

After you have that information you need to look for opportunities to demonstrate your skills and accomplishments in each and every area. Make sure you cover all areas, both technical and the non-technical.

Dedicate time to implement your plan, two to four hours per week. This should be on top of your regular work assignments. If you do not dedicate the time, it will not happen.

And here is another key take from the above discussion, you do not need to be the best at any one particular area, you need to be successful at all areas. Companies value balanced skills set.

After you prepare the plan, make sure to review your progress every two to three weeks and communicate with management to see if you are on the right track. Do not wait for year end to find out that you made a mistake.

To summarize:

Define your goal

Understand the expectations, technical and non-technical

Demonstrate that you meet as many expectations as possible

Demonstrate next level skills

Remove blocks from your path

Execute it!

How to fill in the plan details?

There is no simple answer, everyone situation is different. Start with your management, ask them for recommendations. Talk to human resources, talk to senior team members, join career development groups, check the internet, find a mentor etc.

Why is it so hard to give specific advice? Because it depends on you, your organization and the situation you are in. For example, you are a team lead and you want to be a manager. If you are in a stable company, and your manager started a year ago, the probability of replacing him anytime soon is low, you need to look somewhere else. If on the other hand you are in a company with high turn over and your manager is in his current position for five years, there is a good chance he will leave soon. You need to focus on being his replacement. The same goal requires two very different strategies! Another example, you need to work with a few difficult people versus all the people you work with are good team players. The first case presents an opportunity to demonstrate your skills by learning how to effectively work with those difficult people. In the second case you need to look for a different opportunity.

If you are a tech engineer with 0–5 yr of experience, you are invited to join my career development mentoring group. Contact me for more details.

Check my other posts and articles for additional insight about your career development.

#career #careerdevelopmentcoaching #promotions #careerdevelopment