Creating a Transparent Promotion Process

I "worked the system" to help my first two senior engineers become Principal Engineers. Here is how I did it and how you can copy this process. Often, I write about leaders. I do not say enough about how individual contributors can grow and how managers can partner with them to do so. Today, I give specific examples with names. In 2011, Amazon had strict rules about promoting senior engineers (L6) to Principal Engineers (L7). I was part of the review process that changed these standards because our data showed external hires at this level "failed" ~10x more often than internal promotions. We were driving away internal stars by holding them to a higher bar than external hires. But when I tried to hire a Principal Engineer, the evaluators determined that my team of several hundred engineers "had no work challenging enough to need a PE." This was nonsense, but instead of hiring I would need to get one of my own senior engineers promoted. My plan was to take one of my strongest engineers, give him a principal-scope job, and use his work as proof to justify his promotion. My organization had about 50 first-level technical teams (each with a manager and 6 to 10 direct reports) spread across Seattle, SoCal, and Bangalore. New to leading such a huge, distributed organization, I had lost touch with each team's detailed work. To be a better leader, I needed to get deep with my teams. This also created an opportunity to "make" a Principal Engineer. I asked a star on my team, Geoff Pare, to pick one team each week for a 90-minute architecture and roadmap deep dive. My EA helped with scheduling and Geoff picked the teams, helped them prepare, and invited other senior engineers to the reviews. Now we get to the tricky secret recipe: 1) I cared enough to try to break the promotion logjam for my top engineers 2) I created a plan that tied to my own needs so that I could win at the same time 3) I put a system in place (once a week, one team, supported by my EA) to make it sustainable 4) I asked Geoff lead off the questioning and discussions with the team. Candidly, this masked the fact that with my huge organization I was sometimes unfamiliar with a team’s work. 5) Through the review process, I fixed my own unfamiliarity. When we presented Geoff's promotion case after doing this work, the tune completely changed from when I had tried to hire a PE. Reviewers said, "He's already doing a PE job, leading architecture across 500 people." He sailed through his promotion. I replaced Geoff in this role with another star, Trevor Lipscomb, and he became a PE soon after. The lesson to managers is this: To grow your team, you must invest effort and bend systems to your goals. For ICs: Look for opportunities like this to collaborate with your manager. Find win/win situations to increase their buy-in on your promotion. My class has "Senior Manager" in the title, but the playbook works for IC roles too. Join to get promoted. https://buff.ly/gos4t9i

When is it a bad idea to promote a good officer? A good promotion empowers someone to take on more responsibility and feels great for the team. A bad promotion can break a team as the person fails to deliver on things people depend on them for. It gets worse long term, as the underperforming officer now sets a bad example for the org. This misguides people who don’t understand the standards and demoralises the people who do. It’s not even good for the officer, getting stressed as they struggle while everyone else is frustrated at them. At Open Government Products I use a framework to help avoid this. Performance looks back and measures how much impact someone has made, while promotions look forward and estimates how much responsibility they will be able to take. While performance is a key factor, making a good promotion requires looking at several other things too. The most common mistake is promoting someone immediately after a period of good performance. Everybody has good years and bad years, and there is a lot of luck that goes into whether a project goes smoothly. Promoting someone too soon sets them up for failure because either their next opportunity isn’t as good, they’re missing some key skills, or they just burnout because you promoted them while they were working unsustainably. Whatever the reason, waiting to see if their performance is consistent is the most reliable way of avoiding these problems. A common pattern I see is junior officers trying to get promoted by working super hard but not taking the time to develop their skills. While you should recognise them with good performance ratings, promoting them is a mistake. This creates a culture of people working harder and harder until they literally run out of hours in a day, then get stuck barely meeting expectations while quickly burning out. That’s why it’s important someone has the right skills and is working sustainably before they get promoted, otherwise you’re just locking them into a death spiral. To reduce the pressure of getting promoted early, at OGP we allocate bonuses so that people with the same performance get the same total compensation, regardless of their level. So if a junior engineer performs at a senior level, his salary + bonus for that year will be the same as a senior engineer’s. This means there is little downside to just staying lower level and outperforming, only taking on promotions when you’re really ready for it. It’s impossible to get this exactly right. My philosophy is that it’s better to have a team of outperfomers than a team of underperformers. The former might be a bit frustrated that they’re not promoted, but overall they’re happy they’re exceeding expectations and working well with each other. On the other hand, the latter is frustrated as they let each other down, while anxiously overworking to try and meet their targets. At OGP we have around 40% of people outperforming and we’ve managed to get underperformance down to under 5%.

“I put you up for promotion... but HR shut it down” No. You didn’t do your job as a manager. I’ve been in dozens of calibration sessions. And here’s what actually happens: A manager pushes for promotion. But when asked for evidence? - No goals tied to a higher scope. - No track record documented. - No peer feedback. - No business impact. Just: “They’ve been working really hard.” Or worse: “They’re just ready.” This is what it looks like when a manager wings it. No clarity on expectations. No intentional development. No real plan to set someone up for success. And when it doesn’t go through, the employee gets told: “HR blocked it.” “HR pushed back” “HR didn’t think you were ready.” Let’s be clear: HR doesn’t block promotions. HR protects the integrity of the process by asking questions to ensure promotions are equitable, earned, and aligned with business needs. Because promoting someone without a clear case hurts the person, the team, and the standard you’re trying to uphold. If you believe someone is ready for the next level, then start preparation six months in advance. - Clarify the expectations early. - Give stretch assignments that prove readiness - Coach them through it. - Track the impact. - Document the value they’re adding. Then come to the table with something solid. Otherwise, don’t hide behind HR. Own the fact that you didn’t do the work. #HR #Promotion #Leadership #Growth

How a "side project" helped fast-track my promotion at Amazon in 2016: I built an internal newsletter about "A/B testing case studies" that grew to 1000+ subscribers (including VPs) while working as a data scientist. Here's the crazy part - no one asked me to do it. Why did I do it? - Every team was running similar A/B tests, making the same mistakes, and nobody was sharing learnings - We were sitting on a goldmine of data from hundreds of experiments - Teams were literally reinventing the wheel because they couldn't see what others were testing. I saw the pain point the teams were facing. I knew this project would help teams learn fast and save them hours of research. Although it was not a typical data science project, it was a high-impact project. However, I had other priorities, so this became my passion project, which I still took seriously. I spent my weekends learning how to write well. I took writing courses. I obsessed over every word. My first newsletter took 3 weeks to write. The result? - Directors and VPs became subscribers - I built massive influence without a senior title - I got the "Learn and be curious" award at my organization This became one of the most important projects for my promotion. The lesson: The most powerful career moves aren't about solving the hardest technical problems - they're about solving the invisible ones right in front of us. --------- If you struggle with creating more impact and reaching the next level, I'm selecting 20 experienced data scientists ready to transform into high-impact tech leads in Jan 2025. This isn't another course about algorithms. It's the exact career playbook I developed over 7 years at Amazon, now helping dozens of data scientists: ✅ Lead data science & ML initiatives and create more business impact ✅ Turn stakeholders into advocates who champion your vision ✅ Position yourself as an expert and get the promotion you deserve Learn more and sign up here: https://lnkd.in/eKr_MFud

Why is it that even in industries dominated by women employees, men rise to the top of the most prestigious and influential organizations? One answer is career escalators. “Career escalators” points to the practices, structures and norms that move a person upward in their careers. However, as research by many, including Prof. Christine Williams shows in her research, “glass elevators” are hidden advantages for men to advance in women-dominated fields. As Cathleen Clerkin, PhD reveals, a broad look at nonprofit workers reveals a slight advantage for men in leadership. Women represent about 70% of employees yet only 62% of leaders. The real gap, however, shows up when you look at size of the non-profit, as measured by revenues. Men nonprofit CEOs oversee nearly twice the revenues as women (~$11M vs. ~$6M). And men CEOs earn on average +27% more than women CEOs. Having worked with many nonprofit boards on their hiring practices, bias is a concern in recruiting CEOs and board directors. Preference for the “think leader, think male” can give an implicit advantage to White men, resulting in disadvantages or de-accelerators for women and BIPOC men. Often those concerns are expressed in donor networks, strategic thinking, vision and public persona -- all of which are important and yet the evaluation of who can do them can be fraught with biases. What can you do? The author suggests many important strategies. ✔ Check for biased language and treatment in the hiring process.  ✔ Track demographic data.  ✔ Be transparent about pay.  ✔ Create clear career matrices.  ✔ Have explicit conversations about career goals.  ✔ Sponsor women and give them challenging opportunities. When we make these often invisible accelerators visible--and work towards creating clear, equitable and transparent access to them--we can come closer to achieving our intention of creating remarkable and inclusive organizations.  Research by Candid. Article published in Harvard Business Review.

As a manager, you usually can't guarantee anyone on your team a promotion. But if you (like me) consider it part of your job to help people advance their careers, here's 8 things you can commit to doing instead: 1) Give people thoughtful feedback on their strengths and weaknesses. 2) Be transparent about the hard skills and soft skills they need to reach the next level. 3) Suggest ways for them to close skill gaps. 4) Prompt them to think about other ways to close skill gaps that you haven't suggested. 5) Advocate for them when it comes to learning + development. Help them tap into company training budgets. 6) Define *objective* criteria for every role and assess internal candidates and external candidates on a level playing field. Hint - "She's not that strategic" is not objective. "She has a hard time translating high level priorities into action plans" is objective. 7) Help people see opportunities for advancement they wouldn't otherwise think of. Bonus points if these alternative paths leverage their natural strengths. Example - Last year, I noticed one of our SDRs was great at translating marketing messaging into cold emails. I asked him, "Have you ever thought about going into product marketing?" "I'm gonna be honest MJ, I've never even heard of that" 12 months later, Cody Colbert is rocking it in our first ever PMM role while working through a certification from Product Marketing Alliance. 8) And if you *really* believe in someone, put the full weight of your organizational political savvy behind them. Closing a promotion is kind of like closing a deal. You've gotta sell leadership and you've gotta sell finance. You are your team's champion. Commit to being a great one. --- This is part 3 of a series on how to have legit career development conversations with high performers (without overpromising!) Link to part 2 (how to frame the conversation) in the comments. Part 4 of 4 coming tomorrow .Hit the 🔔 on my profile to be notified. #leadership #management

4 Actionable Lessons from Activision Blizzard's $54M Discrimination Settlement The recent settlement by Activision Blizzard in a discrimination lawsuit offers crucial insights for all businesses. Here are my four key takeaways: 1. Pay Transparency is Essential: The $46.75 million payout to female employees for inequitable pay underlines the importance of transparent and fair compensation practices. Businesses must ensure that all employees are paid fairly, regardless of identity, and this would become easiest if everybody knew how and/or what everybody else was getting paid - then there is nowhere to hide! 2. Equal Opportunity in Promotion: The lawsuit highlighted issues with promotion practices. It's vital to establish clear, merit-based criteria for promotions to avoid bias and discrimination and to audit them regularly with a group that, itself, is highly diverse. 3. The Importance of Independent Investigation: The lawsuit underscores the need for independent reviews in allegations of workplace misconduct. Businesses should have mechanisms in place for impartial investigations to maintain trust and transparency. 4. Everybody's Ownership Of A Commitment to Civil Rights and Inclusion: The California Civil Rights Department's involvement and the substantial settlement reflect a growing societal and legal emphasis on workplace civil rights and inclusion. We all have a role in raising our voices and in never settling for what is "good enough." It's also critical to talk, regularly, with peers about these issues so we have quality reference points of what good and gold standard actually look like for such things.

5 Subtle Signs You're Becoming Irreplaceable at Work 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁: You identify and address challenges before they manifest, preventing crises rather than simply resolving them.  𝗪𝗵𝘆: This demonstrates rare strategic foresight and proactive leadership that organizations desperately need.  ✅ Center for Creative Leadership research found anticipatory problem-solving is the strongest predictor of executive promotion (r=0.76), outweighing both technical expertise and communication skills. 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁: You effortlessly translate concepts between departments, functions, and organizational levels.  𝗪𝗵𝘆: This bridges critical communication gaps that typically slow progress and create misalignment.  ✅ MIT Technology Review studies show "organizational translators" receive 36% more cross-functional opportunities and are 52% more likely to be identified for leadership tracks. 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗡𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁: You simplify complicated challenges without oversimplification, making the seemingly impossible actionable.  𝗪𝗵𝘆: This rare ability transforms overwhelming obstacles into manageable team processes.  ✅ Harvard Business School research found 76% of senior executives cite this as the most valuable skill, with impact averaging 3.4x compensation for professionals who demonstrate it. 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗩𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁: You make quality decisions quickly without excessive consultation or analysis paralysis. 𝗪𝗵𝘆: This maintains momentum and prevents the organizational drag caused by decision bottlenecks.  ✅ McKinsey & Company research shows organizations with fast decision-making outperform peers by 2.5x in profitability, with individual decision velocity strongly correlating (r=0.67) with promotion rates. 𝗘𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁: You actively manage team energy, motivation, and morale beyond simple task completion.  𝗪𝗵𝘆: This creates psychological safety and sustainable performance, impossible with purely task-focused leadership.  ✅ Journal of Applied Psychological Research JAPR studies reveal that emotional leadership accounts for 25-30% of performance variance between similar teams, with emotionally skilled leaders experiencing 44% lower turnover. Coaching can help; let's chat.  Follow Joshua Miller ➖  𝗟𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲? 🚀 Download Your Free E-Book:  “𝟮𝟬 𝗦𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗦𝗵𝗶𝗳𝘁𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗕𝗶𝗴 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀” ↳ https://rb.gy/37y9vi

Most employees agree workplace culture impacts productivity. But culture isn’t built on off-sites or happy hours. It’s revealed in who gets promoted. Promotions are the loudest signal of what a company really values. Promote the loudest voice → you reward visibility. Promote the grinder → you reward output. Promote the collaborator → you reward teamwork. Your top talent is watching. They’re reading the signals. And when they see the wrong people move up, they quietly check out. Let’s do a quick teardown of what effective leaders do differently when it comes to promotions: 1. They anchor decisions in performance. Clear metrics everyone understands. Documented criteria that eliminate favoritism. 2. They recognize talent consistently. Not once a year in a review. Growth pathways beyond title changes. 3. They stay transparent about opportunities. Advancement criteria are public. Feedback is actionable. 4. They value contribution over politics. Results > optics. Systems uncover hidden talent, not just loud voices. 5. They build real meritocracies. Bias is removed from the process. Diverse talent is not just hired, it thrives and advances. The people you promote define your culture. And your culture defines whether your best people stay or leave. Promotions are culture in action. What are yours saying about you?

Grinding out 60+ hour weeks while “maximizing your visibility” is not a great strategy for getting promoted. You need a clear plan for how to *actually* prepare for promotion as a PM in tech. 👇 𝟭𝟮 𝗠𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗛𝗦 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: ✅ Review company’s internal PM level rubric (do a skill gap analysis) ✅ Ensure your projects have L+1 scope (or close to it) ✅ Ensure your planned deliverables are measurable and clear ✅ Identify promo supporting peer group ✅ Identify your promo supporting leads and high-level colleague group ✅ Create your promo roadmap (milestones and check-ins) ✅ Align with your manager on the above ✅ Start executing on your projects! 🚀 𝟵 𝗠𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗛𝗦 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: ✅ Write your draft promo packet (more on this later) ✅ Continue executing on your projects 💥 ✅ Check in with your manager 𝟲 𝗠𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗛𝗦 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: ✅ Continue executing on your projects 💥 ✅ Check in with your manager 𝟯 𝗠𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗛𝗦 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: ✅ Launch your projects! ✅ Check in with your manager on project success ✅ Check in with your peers and leads on project success 𝟮 𝗠𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗛𝗦 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: ✅ Start measuring your results ✅ Check in with your peers and leads on their feedback ✅ Check in with manager on final promo readiness 𝟭 𝗠𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗛 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: ✅ Land your projects ✅ Measure your results ✅ Finalize your promo packet ✅ Final check-in with your manager 𝗚𝗢 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗠𝗢! I put together a timeline for your reference. 👇 I know, it’s hard to believe that this preparation process takes a whole year. But an “average” promotion timeline is 2-3 years (and much longer for later levels), so 1 year is way ahead of the curve. Your alternative is leaving it up to chance, or, worse yet, hoping for the best. 🤦♂️ And that can be a very frustrating experience. __________________________________ There are a lot of other important components when preparing for promotion: 1. Understanding the company “promo readiness” rubric 2. Demonstrating objective readiness factors 3. Ensuring peer support for subjective readiness factors 4. Understanding what “impact” means for your org 5. Getting your manager’s support early 6. Securing support of your XFN group and peers 7. Securing support from high-level colleagues 8. Understanding your career trajectory 9. Building your promo packet at multiple levels of detail I’ll cover these in detail in my email newsletter this Friday. If this sounds interesting, sign up at https://lnkd.in/gJWMHPhB __________________ If you enjoyed this post: 1. Follow me Alexander Rechevskiy for more PM & career content 2. Repost to share with your network 🙏 Thank you!