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

A Life Engineered

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 👏

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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.

Only getting better at your current responsibilities won’t get you to the next level

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.

I stopped writing a lot of code. I stopped carrying the pager and doing operations. I stopped interacting with junior and mid-level engineers. And that was a problem.

Promotion Donut: Leaving a gap in your current responsibilities prevents you from being promoted to the next-level responsibilities

I fell into what I call the “Promotion Donut.” That’s when you focus only on meeting next-level expectations and neglect your at-level responsibilities. Because at Amazon, annual performance reviews and promotion are distinct processes, I got evaluated for lower at-level performance even though I was making serious headway on the growth necessary to achieve the next level.

Avoiding this trap is simple. If you’re a high performer at the current level, don’t neglect your existing duties when you push for the next level.

For example:

If you average one commit a week, it’s ok if that slips a bit to 1 commit every two weeks. It’s a big problem, though, if you haven’t checked in code for several months, like what happened to me.

Since you’re a high performer, this shouldn’t take up all your bandwidth. Once I understood I was in the Promotion donut, it was easy to get out of, but it did hold me back for a couple of promotion cycles.

Mistake #3: Your Manager Matters More Than Your Ability

Between 2015 and 2019, I experienced three major reorganizations and reported to five different managers. One of those managers was the worst manager I’ve ever had. This person was not technically deep; he didn’t know how our software worked. He was a micromanager, always looking over our shoulders. And worst of all, he didn’t know how to grow his direct reports.

As part of promotion, your manager puts your name into the system to formally kick off the process. Since this promotion only happens twice a year, it’s important to hit this deadline, otherwise your promotion gets held back for at least 6 more months.

Even though he said he would start the process several times, and even though I reminded him to do it many times, he missed the deadline. This incident got me depressed about work. I stopped engaging at work and phoned it in for a couple of months until I was reorganized into a different team and got a new manager.

My new manager was awesome. He was everything that the other manager wasn’t. He helped me understand the promotion donut, and put a plan in place to support growth in the needed areas.

When it comes to promotion, your manager’s support is crucial. While there are political aspects to promotion, a good manager’s primary value lies in their ability to identify your growth areas and support your development, enabling you to meet new challenges. During this period, I loved coming to work and I put in extra hours because I wanted to, not because it was necessary. While I didn’t get promoted until the following year, my new manager showed me how to systematically make progress on my promotion.

My big mistake was assuming that I didn’t have a choice on what team I was on and the manager that I reported to. During these tumultuous times when I was moved to many different teams, I didn’t realize I had a choice, which was to go find a supportive manager that I got along with. Instead, I just accepted the random team and manager assignments.

I’ve interviewed many quickly promoted tech professionals across various companies, products, and eras. What was the common factor across this group? Great managers. While excellent work and some luck were also present, a top-notch manager is crucial for rapid advancement. If you lack one, seek one out.

📖 TL;DR

Avoid these 3 mistakes I made:

1. ❌ Mistake: I assumed current excellent performance was enough for promotion to the next level
   ✅ Do this: Look at your company’s leveling criteria and discuss with your manager what differentiates the current level from the next level and incorporate those behaviors.
   

2. ❌ Mistake: I neglected my current duties while pursuing higher-level work
   ✅ Do this: Take on slightly less of your current responsibilities while pursuing next-level responsibilities. Once you get promoted, you’ll be able to focus on your next-level responsibilities entirely.
   

3. ❌ Mistake: I underestimated the importance of a supportive and high-performing manager
   ✅ Do this: When your manager lets you down multiple times, start looking to other teams and managers as other options. Your manager is too important to your career.

Next week, in Part Two, I’ll share with you my tech promotion algorithm, which incorporates the lessons I learned into an efficient procedure for getting promoted fast.  

You can also subscribe to my Substack and YouTube channel, or follow me on LinkedIn. If you’d like personalized help for your next promotion from me and my team, check out my intimate group coaching program, Speedrun To Promotion and sign up for the waitlist. We will be accepting new clients in October of 2024.

🙏 Thank you to Steve

Thank you to Steve for sharing his raw mistakes and what you can learn from them to not set back your career. As he mentioned, be on the lookout for next week’s guest post, also by Steve, where he’ll walk you through his exact promotion algorithm.

He’s used the algorithm to get hundreds of engineers promoted, and I can personally attest to it. It’s a similar process to what I used to go from Junior → Senior in 2 years.

I also highly recommend subscribing to his new Substack,

A Life Engineered

if you’re not already. He shares raw stories like this each week.

👏 Shout-outs of the week

• Nobody is Watching - The Spotlight Effect by

  Steve Huynh
  on
  A Life Engineered
  — Steve’s recent article on his newsletter is 🔥 and touches on a common mindset problem and how to overcome it.

• Engineering Cultures: Meta vs Netflix vs Airbnb by

  Zach Wilson
  on
  DataEngineer.io Newsletter
  — Zach worked at all three and shares what he liked and didn’t like about each culture.

And finally, some writing from me—since I know y’all miss me 😉

Here is: Tips and Lessons on Rapid Career Growth by yours truly as a collaboration with GreatFrontend and Yangshun Tay, ex-Meta Staff Engineer.

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Thank you for your continued support and the growth to 71k+ subscribers 🙏

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