You were working hard to get promoted to your dream Staff Engineer role.
Your manager seemed happy with your contribution, giving you the confidence that this might just be your year. In fact, you were so confident that you even made some grand plans to celebrate the occasion.
Moreover, to make sure nothing goes wrong, you took up additional responsibilities and worked long hours to excel in every area. After all, you wanted to leave no stone unturned.
Then, the review meeting with the manager happens on a bright Friday morning.
And you get the earth-shattering news that you have missed the mark. 🎯
Apparently, you were almost there and some really small things kept you from getting the coveted prize.
What a shame!
But the manager thinks you are on the right track and expects you to keep going at the same pace. After all, it is just a matter of time before you realize your dream.
Of course, you smile and shake hands at the end of the meeting.
But you are shocked to the core, unable to believe what happened.😐
Things immediately take a plunge as you try to process the new reality.
Every time you go to the office, you feel a weight dragging you down.
You no longer enjoy the company of your colleagues and they’ve also begun to notice that you are upset. Team meetings have become a chore and you don’t feel like sharing your thoughts.
The meetings with the manager are even worse. You feel like throwing up at the empty words of encouragement.
But all you can do is smile and nod.
To make matters worse, some of your colleagues have jumped to other opportunities with a pay raise and a promotion.
While you were slogging like an idiot to increase your chances of promotion, your colleagues were preparing for interviews. And now they are all ahead of you.
You are mentally shattered and finding it tough to get over the rejection. 🚧
What can you do about it?
🔥 Right off the bat, you need to remove any negative thoughts you might be having about your own ability.
Rejection can make us feel small and incapable. But you must not let that affect your self-worth.
No matter how good you are, you can still find yourself in this situation. Life is random and some things are simply out of your control.
With that out of the way, you need to start thinking objectively about the whole situation.
Hello 👋 and welcome to a new edition of the DevEvolution newsletter.
Every week, I send you an email like this with actionable advice on a topic that can help you grow in your software engineering career.
In this post, I try to help you navigate a tough moment in your career and provide actionable tips on how you can get over a missed promotion.
🛎️ The Manager’s Point of View
You might hate your manager for ruining everything. In fact, you might think your manager was partial in decision-making and snubbed you intentionally.
However, you still need to give your manager a fair chance before hardening your feelings too much.
Try to step into the shoes of your manager and consider why they might not have promoted you.
👉 For starters, the whole thing may not even be a direct reflection of your performance.
There might have been budgetary constraints that the manager cannot reveal to you.
The market cycle plays a very important role in these decisions. If growth is going well, there are more chances of getting a promotion. However, in times of slump, the lack of new business requirements can result in promotions being held back.
👉 Second, it might sound hard, but the manager might be correct and you are probably lacking in some aspects. This is especially true if you are getting promoted to senior roles such as a Staff Software Engineer, Tech Lead, or Engineering Leader.
Promotions are a combination of skills and business needs. When you are a junior developer, simply increasing technical skills results in a promotion.
However, this stops once you enter the territory of senior roles. Both skill and business requirements are tougher.
You are expected to have deep technical skills as well as mature soft skills such as stakeholder management, platform strategy, communication, mentoring, and so on.
To make matters difficult, companies need lesser people in senior roles. This means they won’t create a new position just because a certain individual meets the skill criteria.
If you didn't get a promotion, it might be because of a skill gap, but it can also be that the company does not have a position or both.
🧭 The best way to find out what really went wrong is to have an honest one-to-one discussion with the manager.
Ideally, you should initiate the discussion after the review discussions for that cycle are done and dusted. This is important to help things cool off a little and allow room for objective discussion.
Your next course of action depends on what you find out from the discussion.
🚒 What to Discuss with the Manager?
The discussion with your manager may go in several directions, depending on your overall chemistry with them.
However, no matter how it goes, your main goal is to try and judge the real intention behind your manager’s decision to not promote you. You might never be a hundred percent sure, but you should try to get as close as possible to the truth.
Basically, you need to put on your detective hat 🎩 and try to glean as much information as possible.
Also, you need to do the investigation without revealing your real emotions during the discussion. Contrary to popular belief, showing that you are hurt and vulnerable won’t help and will only make you appear weaker.
The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.
- T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia
Here are a few points you can keep in mind:
👉 If the manager says that you were not promoted because of not meeting a certain skill parameter, don’t leave it vague. Ask them to list down specific actions you could have done to meet expectations for that particular parameter.
👉 In case the manager lists down the actions, try to get a feel for what happens once you perform those actions and demonstrate the required qualities going forward. Will you be promoted? If yes, can it happen mid-cycle or do you have to wait the entire year? The goal here is to gauge whether it was really the skill issue and not some hidden reason.
👉 If the manager isn’t able to articulate the exact actions, I would take it as a 🚩red flag. See if you can make the manager commit to a set of action items for the future.
👉 In case the budget issues or market cycle are pretty obvious, the manager may quote it as the reason for non-promotion and ask you to be patient. In that case, you need to question the manager if someone else in your peer group has been promoted despite the economic situation. However, don’t make it sound personal as if you are simply jealous of the other person.
🚀 Making a Plan of Action
All right, you are done discussing things with your manager.
Ideally, you have extracted as much information as possible without sounding like Batman interrogating goons.
At this point, I would recommend that you take everything you heard with a grain of salt. Good things and even bad things.
One of the most important skills of a manager is persuasion and sharing information on a need-to-know basis. No matter how good your relationship is with your manager, they won’t tell you everything.
I don’t think these skills are meant to fool you. 🍔
However, most managers hate disruption in project activities due to personal issues and they would do anything to keep you on the right track even if they can’t fulfill your demands. In their mind, the greater good of the team is more important than pandering to individual sentiments.
Now comes the hard part. You need to decide what you want to do next.
Here are a few points that can help you make the decision.
👉 If your gut says that your manager had a valid reason for not promoting you in a particular cycle, then you would do well to stay put and work harder for the next cycle.
In my experience, the biggest growth happens when you stick under an honest manager for a significant amount of time.
On a career-spanning timescale, even a 1-year delay is nothing. Sometimes, you might end up getting a double promotion and find yourself way ahead of your imagination.
That’s how the power of compounding works in money as well as professional relationships.
However, it’s important to make sure that the discussion was positive and that the manager has a specific plan for you to work on.
👉 If you don’t believe your manager and think they are lying through their teeth with no sign of genuineness, then I think it’s time for you to start looking out for other opportunities.
No matter what the market cycle is, you can always get good opportunities if you have the necessary skill set.
Of course, don’t be impulsive.
If there’s one thing you should learn from managers, it’s the art of not showing what you actually feel.
Never reveal what your next move is, but start working towards it. Maintain a professional front at work.
Silent work always pays off in the long run.
👉 You didn’t get the promotion. But you still love the job. The work is great. The team is great and there are a lot of learning opportunities.
If you find yourself in this situation, you need to introspect on just how important the promotion was for you. Was it just a matter of prestige or are you genuinely looking to play the role?
I have seen numerous examples of folks getting promoted only to find out their lives had become a walking hell.
Sure, there was a boost to compensation, but ultimately, peace of mind is what makes the difference. If you are still early in your career, time is on your side and there’s no harm in waiting a little longer
⌛ Ultimately, there is no right or wrong answer to this conundrum.
A lot of times how you react boils down to your personal preference and your inner psychology at a given point in time.
However, a systematic framework as described in this post can certainly help navigate the tricky situation of missing a highly-expected promotion.
In my view, the best thing is to not get over-excited or emotional about the matter.
One missed promotion cannot ruin your career. Building a career is not a sprint but a marathon.
🕹️ Over to you
Have you missed a promotion?
If yes, how did you handle the situation?
Write your thoughts about the whole thing in the comments section.
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Wishing you a great weekend ahead! ☀️
See you later.