How to Build Evidence for Your Promo
Your case for promotion isn't going to prove itself
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For most big tech companies, your promotion comes down to your "promo packet".
A "promo packet" is a 10-20 page written argument presented to a panel of senior engineers and management.
Think of it as a legal brief submitted to the supreme court. Each word matters.
And like any legal case, you need incontrovertible evidence.
This post will share tactics to build that evidence so your packet is an easy “yes” when it reaches the promo panel (judge & jury of senior engineers and management who will decide your fate).
Your Packet Does the Talking
You won't be in front of the panel to answer questions, only your manager will be. So your packet better answers panelist questions.
Note: it is safest to assume that your manager is clueless and won't be able to speak in detail to any follow up questions on your packet.
Best case? If your manager has had good bowel movements that day, they may voice a strong vote of confidence and answer questions clearly and concisely.
Worst case? Your manager may actively try to shoot down your promo in the panel meeting. Despite agreeing to submit you for promotion. It has happened.
Expected case? Your packet exclusively is doing the talking on why should be promoted now, and your manager is a NPC to the panel nodding along. Not many questions come up because the packet is an obvious yes vote.
Depending on your manager, keeping their mouth shut and agreeing to let you write your own packet can be a very successful formula.
So let's assume that for this post.
The key part of your packet is evidence that you are “already performing at your target level”, since most companies only promote to reflect your current change in performance – not as a reward for a job well done in the past. Note the nuance.
Building the Case
A legal brief is a good parallel for how you should approach your packet.
The thesis is that you’ve been “performing at the target level” and thus should be promoted.
You now need to provide the evidence for that thesis.
Since you’ve been following along, you already know that the first step is finding the stated Eng and HR provided criteria for your target promotion level.
With that criteria in mind, you need to proactively start building up evidence as proof that you have fulfilled each criteria. Ideally you can link to this proof since it is a Google Doc, Slack message, GitHub PR, internal newsletter…etc.
Sufficient evidence in each criteria makes a packet compelling to the panel.
Collecting the Evidence
6-12 months in advance of promo season, you should be working strategically to build up evidence in all sections of your packet.
Ultimately this comes down to choosing your work strategically.
Some readers might be thinking, “…but my team lead assigns our work?!”
You’re right, nothing you can do. Probably you shouldn’t read further.
For those still reading…
In almost every case that isn’t prison labor camps or the military in a war zone, you will have some ability to influence what tasks you are assigned.
Don’t under-sell what you can do to strategically set yourself up for promotion much faster than you think is possible.
What does this look like in practice?
Put simply, knowing when to say “yes”, “no”, and “can I help”.
Say Yes
Depending on how your team assigns work, your manager or team lead will ask for volunteers for various tasks or new projects.
Start to build a better intuition on which projects and tasks to say yes to. Ask the following to determine if it will be beneficial for your packet:
Will this showcase a new skill?
Will this be high impact to the company?
Will this show end-to-end expertise?
Will this showcase leadership & collaboration across teams?
Say No
Other tasks, you should definitely not be volunteering for in packet evidence building stage. But they could be a good fit when you’re resting up post promo or fading effort in your terminal level.
Is this a task I can do efficiently (not new skill) but others in the team perceive as being a lot of work? Get maximum credit for minimal time/effort input.
Is this a repetitive (see: low impact) task I can do mindlessly if I’m feeling low energy? See code cleanup, migrating callsites for a breaking change, DB migrations, updating CI scripts, upgrading a library version...
Is this a “leadership” task which is low effort but others on the team don’t have the confidence or credibility to handle? Meetings take up time and not all of these tasks are significant enough to boost a packet. Good busy work though.
Say Yes (when you’ll be eventually forced to anyways)
Lastly, personal asks.
Sometimes your manager or team lead will bring up a task or project in a 1:1 meeting. “Would you be interested in X?”
Your response comes in two cases:
Can say no with no impact. They’ll shop it around to someone else on the team. No hard feelings.
If you say no, negative impact. They will take your no and perceive you’re lazy, not a team player, want to make their life harder. And, they could still force you to do it in a few weeks.
Get better at perceiving case 2, and regardless of your feelings, say yes.
Your manager will be impressed that you’re willing to “sacrifice for the team” and be relieved they didn’t have to pressure you to do it.
Many times in my career, there have been new projects pushed on me which I initially would have rather said no to.
In the long run and with a good attitude, I was able to spin most of these into promo packet evidence.
And, they would have been forced on me regardless.
Posing it as a question was just a dishonest managerial niceity.
Social skills are hard for autists, I know from experience.
Make your manager blush
For some of the fluffier packet sections (Mentorship, Team Building...), your manager can actually be helpful.
Start by making your manager blush, and ask “You’ve got a lot on your plate, is there anything I could do to help?”.
Not only will they be relieved that someone has thought of them, and to have one less thing to do, but also their tasks can often be the perfect fit for your weaker categories.
In many cases, the task they ask is both low effort and fits well into your weaker packet sections.
Side note: weaker packet sections are not a bad thing. Putting in huge effort on less critical sections like Team Building or Mentorship simply isn’t efficient. Expertise, Impact, and Technical Contributions are what get you promoted.
Here are a couple real examples:
Lead a manager-free team retro for this quarter’s all company survey
Asked to turn around a flailing project and help mentor the poor performing colleague currently running it
Update oncall training docs
Coordinate quarterly oncall training (can delegate to someone else to do the actual training session)
All of these were low effort but had high marginal impact on weaker sections of the my packet.
Evidence Chain of Custody
Getting assigned the perfect projects for your packet won’t be worth much if you can’t link to them come promo season.
Start a hype doc today.
Add headers for each criteria for your target level. Your company may even have a template. Fill in the sections with linked evidence as you do the work.
If you aren’t willing to start a hype doc, NGMI.
A hype doc is easy and critical, but an easy task to put off if you’re lazy and aren’t hungry enough for your next promo.
Aim to be adding multiple things per week, sometimes even per day to your hype doc.
Without changing how you work, in a few months you will have many pieces of evidence for many criteria.
If there are sections where you aren’t organically building up much evidence, you’ll need to get creative and take action to start filling the gap.
You will usually need a couple points minimum in your weakest section, you don’t need to have equal evidence in each criteria.
Maybe that means joining the interview roster or mentorship program etc. you get the idea.
Every day is a good day to build evidence
Build evidence.
Record in your hype doc.
Write your packet and link to evidence you’ve saved.
Get promoted.
Repeat.
Upcoming posts will include more tactics on how to write a packet that will get you promoted.
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A coffee a month for proven tactics and strategies to land your next promo faster… that sounds like its worth the price of admission.
My colleagues smiling at their bigger paychecks after following my advice and getting early promotions certainly seem to think so.
There's a lot more we need to cover if you're going to make it.
Stay toon'd.
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