Promo Season: Dates & Tactics
Tactics for every part of promo season so you can get that W
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If you're not intimately familiar with what a "promo packet" or "promo panel" is, then you're in luck… because today, we open the kimono so you can understand how promotions really work in big tech.
Why rush getting promo’d?
Promotions at big tech companies run on a regular cycle, usually every 6 or 12 months.
This means if you aren't preparing now and miss getting put up for promo, you could be stuck waiting another 6-12 months before you can try again.
6-12 months is a long time, anon.
That's 6-12 months of missed delta comp (the difference between pay at your current and next level). This is material when a promo could give a 15-70% annualized total comp increase!
Do you follow BowTied Bull’s advice and avoid inflating your lifestyle after each promo? See if you can spot the difference below.
Then you know that this “delta” could equate to an extra couple years of missed savings. That pushes back when you can retire by years. No good. (See this post for a more in depth explanation.)
Each year that you drag out getting to Step 1 with quick promos compounds negatively to years of extra work required before you can retire.
Fail to plan your next promo? Then you plan to fail.
Instead, keep reading and you'll see what a default aggressive plan to getting promo’d could look like for you.
Let’s get into it.
Terms and Conditions
But first, there’s a couple terms we'll get out of the way briefly, as they will be touched on more later:
Promo: short for promotion
Comp: short for compensation
Promo Packet: A 5-10 page document which is the written argument for why you should be promoted. It tends to include sections like: summary (pros, cons), eductation and industry experience, evidence for each criteria in the eng level ladder, peer feedback, misc additional contributions.
Promo Panel: a review meeting of your packet and promotion by 4 engineer peers of your target level or higher. Their decision to promote (or not) is almost always respected by the rest of the chain of command. I've never heard of higher ups exercising a veto on a candidate that the panel approved.
Hype doc: A document you curate which is a log of your work categorized to the eng level criteria. An up-to-date hype doc makes linking evidence in your promo packet much easier than trying to remember and hunt for Slack or Google Doc links come promo packet writing time.
Glue work: non-technical work which helps the project, team, and company function smoothly, but is rarely seen as convincingly promotable work. Examples include: editing documentation, code cleanup refactors, in-depth internal customer support, contributing to technical working groups, planning offsite events or team dinners.
Default aggressive, good, extreme ownership: Go get you some Jocko and stop making excuses.
And here’s some conditions to keep in mind:
What you're about to read may not be "aligned" with what your manager and HR tells you. But remember that they have no incentive to help you get promoted.
Less promotions = lower labour cost for your employer. So, don’t be surprised that their advice is bad or ineffective. That’s the point, thanks for playing.
As for me, I'm just a cartoon Stack on the internet who DGAF about minimizing your employer’s labour costs. That’s their problem.
I care about people like you getting to Step 1, and breaking free of this iron prison.
So, let’s make that happen.
Know The Promo Season Schedule
Anyone playing or following sports knows the schedule for the season.
Practices, games, rest days, off season training, spring training.
Do you think promo season is any different?
You need to know when to be:
grinding and generating "promotable work" evidence for your packet
in packet writing mode (plan for 10-20 hours)
getting your manager in the mindset to put you up for promo (1:1 meetings)
jacking up your soft skill metrics like interview count
… and when you can take your foot off the gas and rest up in the off season
Your manager and HR would rather you just spend your entire life at work grinding on promotable work, but doing that exclusively is a sure way to not get promoted quickly.
You need to carve out the minimum necessary time to prepare on all dimensions to be promoted quickly and successfully. Maximize your strongest dimensions and minimize any weaknesses.
Thus, each promo cycle will have a schedule that could look something like this:
Dec 10: Managers register intention to promote
Dec 20: Managers finalize promo packet with candidate, begin to collect peer feedback
Jan 10: Managers submit final packet for review
Feb 1 - 10: Promo panels are held
Feb 20 - 28: Successful promotions are signed off by company leadership
March 1 - 10: Organizations finalize and tweak promotion and annual raise compensation changes
Apr 1 - 10: Managers let candidates know their promotion outcome and compensation changes
Given this example schedule, your preparation should be starting 6-12 months in advance of your final promo packet submission date.
Prepare to Win
You'll need to give serious thought to what tasks you need to accomplish to make your next promo happen given your own strengths and weaknesses, and unique team or company dynamics.
To get your creative juices flowing, here's a few examples of preparation I did for my most recent promotion over the 6-12 months before the packet was due:
Raise it early with manager
Few managers care enough about your career growth to raise the topic with you.
So… kick off the conversation yourself!
Stop waiting around like a girl at the dance. If your manager is asking you if you want to be promoted, you’ve waited too long.
Especially when you're under 30, ambition is a respected and admired trait. At any age, emphasize how you want to grow and mature as an engineer and member of the team.
Note: Explicitly mentioning higher comp as a motivating factor is a sure way to raise red flags that you're a selfish mercenary (even though higher comp is obviously what you want).
Don’t take no for an answer
Your manager may be hesitant or have concerns.
That’s okay, take the feedback in stride and immediately start putting the recommended changes in place. In 4-6 weeks you can point to fixed behaviour and pickup the conversation.
No matter what their feedback, don’t get defensive. Tacitly agree, and then spin it to what small steps you can start taking that would show progress.
Progress and trajectory is what you need, not completion.
Also, if your manager is new to the company, they may not be well calibrated yet to your company levels and be much stricter than the eng culture requires. Especially in this case, you need to gently push back, promise no drama (next tactic), and get them to agree to put you up for promo.
Promise no drama
A tactic that has worked twice for me is to reframe the promotion as a way to get feedback from the organization.
Phrase it like, “I know it’s a bit early but I’m totally okay if I don’t get it. I’d really appreciate the specific feedback if it doesn’t go through, and if it does then that’s great.”
Your manager wants to avoid drama.
People that don’t get their promos can easily start sulking and pissy about it, which doesn’t help their chances for next round in 6-12 months.
Even worse, the stats I’ve seen for my company show that if you don’t get promo’d this round, if you go up next one you are likely going to get it. The extra 6 months will have given you enough time to reframe the packet and improve some of your weaknesses enough, plus the panel will probably have a bit of pity on you and your manager if you’re reasonably likeable.
Make your manager’s life easier with no drama, they will like you more. If you’re not likable enough, then no manager is going to help you get promoted.
Regular check in
Managers have a lot on their plate. Check their calendar to see all the meetings the company is paying them to attend.
Assume that your promo will fall through the cracks unless you temporarily become your manager’s secretary and ping them on outstanding tasks and due dates.
If you assume they will keep on top of it and you miss promo when they mess something up, that is on you.
Take extreme ownership of every aspect of your promo process, or enjoy your copium when it falls through for some reason.
Keep your hype doc up-to-date
After a previous promo, I thought I'd reached my terminal level and let my hype doc start to rot. Updating it multiple times per week is a hassle.
But, when I decided to go for promo to a higher level (turns out I misjudged what my terminal level should be), not having an up-to-date hype doc made writing my packet a frustrating time sink. I had to go look up all the evidence links with hacky Slack or Google Docs searches.
Keep your hype doc up-to-date. No excuses.
Get in the habit and stick with it even when you think you've reached your terminal level.
You never know when you'll decide to go for promo again.
Plus, it's a good log of work to have in your back pocket if layoffs come around and you need to justify why you're worth keeping…
… and why your colleague (who doesn't have as good a hype doc as you, anon) should be on the chopping block.
Pre-write your packet
The best way to know where your weaknesses are is to write your own promo packet. The section you most want to avoid writing will be your weakest.
Be honest with what section is your weakest and start working to address it.
Your company should have templates you can start from. If they are only accessible to managers, then ask them for a copy.
Write out your packet, link words in the description to your evidence (Slack, Google Docs...).
Pro-tip: Drop lots of links, make the whole paragraph blue with a separate link per word. Reviewers are also lazy humans, they will not click every link. They will click a few and then see all the blue hyperlinked text and assume you’re an absolute GOAT.
Note: Don’t go overboard and link stuff that isn’t good evidence. Assume it will get clicked. It must be sufficient proof to have linked in the first place.
”Hey boss, mind if I write my own packet?”
A new trend is managers being so lazy they won't even write your packet. You'll be stuck combing your hype doc and writing your own.
Some colleagues have been so pissed at this that they’ve threatened to report it up the chain that their manager is a lazy POS who won’t even write packets for their team.
Instead, anon, you will take that bad news in stride and say: “Good. If I write my own packet, will you submit it?”
Frankly, this trend is in your favour and you should lean into it.
Even if your manager will write, you should ask to write your own packet.
Writing your own packet is the easiest way to influence the framing of your argument for promotion.
Your manager can always edit it before submitting but again, most are lazy humans, and will probably not do a full rewrite. So your framing will still remain.
Even for the "Manager summary of support: pros/cons" section, I usually write it for them and both times the submitted packet ended up only having the smallest tweaks to wording.
Obviously softball your cons with fluff using the formula :"Minor bad trait but actually it's a good thing or already dealt with":
"Bill holds a high standard for the team's work and can sometimes get frustrated when others on the team don't meet that bar, but he always is helping mentor others to improve their work."
"Jane is devoted to her work and is encouraged to keep her work at a level that is sustainable for long term service to avoid burn out."
… you get the drill
Make sure your manager is calibrated to the level of honesty expected in the pros/cons section. Dumping your weaknesses as bluntly as possible in the cons when the company culture is fluff will stand out and sink your promo.
I’ve seen this happen before, you’ve been warned.
Address Weaknesses
My weakest critera going into promo was Mentorship and Hiring. I had put off both joining the official mentorship and interviewer rotations as long as possible given the time sink and generally unpromotable work it was.
But, a minimum threshold needed to be met to show I wasn't perceived as a completely selfish incel unwilling to share some of the org burden.
In the 6 months before my promo, I ramped up my interviews to 2-3 / week so by the time my packet was written I had 30-40 interviews done instead of <5.
I also joined the mentorship rotation and made a point to try and lean into mentoring style dynamics with colleagues which I could then use for my packet.
Both tactics were successful. There was no significant or deal-breaking negative feedback on those criteria points from the promo panel.
My promo went through, mission accomplished.
Build up promotable technical work
When given the option of choosing your projects or tickets, lean into onces that let you flex your technical skills. Large projects, end-to-end implementations, coordinating across teams to a successful outcome.
Whatever is admired as good work in your company, find a way to start doing it. Then, feature it in your packet.
Regardless of all the HR fluff and other criteria, promotions are generally made based on your technical contributions. A strong technical contributor will get promoted over a weak one who has stronger evidence for all the other soft skills.
Pro-tip: If your team doesn't have open work for you to grab, consider contributing to your company's open source projects (or ones outside the company that are used internally), or internal working groups on shared libraries, frameworks, infrastructure.
Companies hold different values on OSS but regardless, it can be a venue for you to flex your skills and if the code is used internally then you can still include it in your packet.
OSS work on random projects that aren't used at your company are side projects and can't easily be spun to be included in your packet, unless you get super famous for them and it reflects well on your company.
Volunteer for one-off "glue work" tasks
Every team will have non-technical tasks which need to be done to satisfy the bureacratic powers that be (or simply to keep the team functioning).
While your manager may fasciliate some of these (sprint planning, retros, writing project newsletter, team OnCall training, annual survey review...), they often will be more than happy to delegate.
This will give you the chance to both get on your manager's good side (they're always happy to have someone else do their work) and increase being seen as a "glue work" team player.
Better yet, make your manager blush and ask them in a 1:1: “You have a lot on your plate, is there anything I could do to help? How can I lighten your load?” 9 times out of 10, it will be a small ask that’s easy to do. Become their go-to player and they will go to bat for you come promo time.
While "glue work" isn't usually super promotable, having a list of it in your packet helps show you're a "team player" and willing to do grunt work to help your team and the company.
Note: avoid long term commitments to repeatable “glue work”. This will drag you down and suck hours away from your Step 2 activities. Volunteer for one-off tasks or commit to a limited time frame and then say you’ll re-evaluate. Filling your calendar and task list with "glue work" is a sure way to end up with a weaker packet lacking significant promotable technical contributions.
Questions? Comments section is open.
There's a lot more I could share about promos but we'll leave it there for now since this post is already getting a bit long.
And I think it should already give you something to start working on this week so you can get your next promo.
Anything you want to learn more about? Leave a comment and I can expand on it more in the next post.
Was there a new tactic that you are going to try out? Let me know in the comments!
If you're looking to fast track your progress to Step 1, then you'll probably want to subscribe.
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.
- BowTied Fullstack
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