The 3 Big Mistakes That Almost Cost Me My Promotion (And How You Can Avoid Them)
Guest post by Steve Huynh, ex-Amazon Principal Engineer
Hi, fellow High Growth Engineer! Jordan here 👋
As part of the month of collaborations, I’m incredibly excited to feature Steve Huynh, ex-Principal Engineer at Amazon and author of the
Newsletter and YouTube Channel, with over 150k subscribers.Today, he’ll share 3 promotion mistakes he made on his path to Principal Engineer and what you can learn from them.
Without further ado, I’ll pass the mic 🎤 to Steve 👏
Steve here 👋
Many people assume that their next tech promotion is just a matter of waiting patiently for the right people to recognize their good work.
The problem is, nobody is looking.
I wasn’t promoted to Principal Engineer at Amazon until I took the reins of my career and got systematic about the promotion process. In this post, I’ll share with you how to avoid the mistakes I made.
Next week, I’ll share the algorithm that I developed that’s helped hundreds of people I’ve worked with personally achieve their promotion faster based on what I learned from my mistakes.
⭐️ Main takeaways
The three fatal mistakes to avoid when making a push for promotion
The common element that all fast promotions have
I progressed from Junior Engineer to Senior Engineer at Amazon in three and a half years, which is exceptionally fast. But it took me another eight years to get to the next level. Part of that is Amazon’s leveling system, which famously lacks granularity. Most companies have a staff title between senior engineer and principal.
I also made three critical mistakes that set my promotion back years.
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Mistake #1: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
2016 was the midpoint of my eight-year journey to get to the next level and the year I decided to make a big promotion push. My performance reviews were excellent. I was rated the equivalent of “Exceeds Expectations” or “Top Tier” each of the prior four years.
My key strengths were rapidly developing major software systems for new products within the Amazon ecosystem, actively hiring, onboarding, and leading several large development teams, and maintaining excellent operational standards across these teams and systems. I was the subject matter expert on the code base and team architecture. I was also really good at interacting with stakeholders.
My strategy for promotion was to excel even more at my current responsibilities. However, I overlooked a crucial point: the next-level job differed significantly from my current role. As the saying goes, “What got you here won’t get you there.”
In other words, the job at the next level that I wanted was different from the job I currently had. I had to demonstrate organizational impact across several teams. I couldn’t get promoted by impacting and influencing only the team I was currently on.
Putting my energy into being an even better senior engineer wasn’t getting me closer to becoming a principal engineer.
This oversight is common at every career level–excelling in your current role isn’t enough for promotion. While some naturally perform above their level, everyone eventually hits a wall where they must change their approach to advance.
Most companies have leveling criteria that clearly describe the expectations for each level. My first mistake was not consulting this document. If I did, I would have realized I needed to uplevel myself past doing what I was used to.
Mistake #2: The Promotion Donut
In 2018, I realized I needed to expand my influence. I shifted focus from team-level systems to our organization’s overall software architecture. I needed to think long-term and strategically, while also advising on organizational and product decisions. I began mentoring senior engineers and collaborating with principal engineers, moving beyond only guiding mid-level engineers.
But I got a rude awakening during performance review time. I got the “Meets” performance review rating, which was the lowest I’ve ever gotten in my career, even though I thought I was performing at the highest level of my career.
The reason was that in my quest to be a principal engineer, I neglected being a senior engineer.