In the zero-interest rate economy, it was easy for early to mid-career engineers with average skill to switch to a company that paid them 20%+ more money. I did it myself multiple times.
The current economy and AI have turned the tables. Even today, waiting for three years is pushing it for most folks, but understandable. Career growth is being decimated across the industry, and opportunities simply aren't there anymore like they used to be. You can be dedicated and above average, but you are still stuck in the same industry as everyone else.
If you ask for a raise and they say “maybe in two to three years” thats simply a polite no.
> “you know the world outside is hostile to job seekers and a steady paycheck beats the unemployment line”
You can search for a new job while employed. Unless you are stuck on an underwater submarine playing hide-and-seek you can always fire off a few inquiries.
I've been told to wait for a pay increase/promotion twice. And I got it both times (luckily). The time periods were only a few months or a year each time.
I think it's a judgement call but making such a long-out promise like 3 years in the tech industry is a huge red flag. Even at one year you should be skeptical and asking how/why as the author suggests.
Being told you have to wait until the next pay review cycle, is normal. It’s how a business with healthy and defined processes should operate.
But you should only be waiting at most a year. If you get told “wait 2+ years” then that’s usually a sign that they’ve already decided you’re not eligible (for whatever reasons they decide) but don’t want to be candid with you.
If you get told to wait for any duration beyond the next pay review cycle, then take that as a sign that you’re not going to progress under the current regime.
Theres some false dichotomies here. Not getting a promotion might not be as intentional as the author seems to believe. Often orgs are slow to change and headcount is one of those hard to challenge issues.
100% agree with the timing point, often the promotion has very little to do with what is within your control.
As a hiring manager who’s worked at various different scales of organisation, I think the original article is a fair warning.
Headcount doesn’t take 2+ years to resolve. Even in heavily bureaucratic organisations, it’s a few months at worst.
Organisation wide restructures can take years and changes to departmental structure can be suspended while the org restructure happens, barring any unusual and typically director approved circumstances (like scoring major new project with a key client).But any employee would be well aware of such restructures and client projects.
Changes to pay will typically be postponed until the next pay review cycle. So could be up to a year. But if it’s longer then that’s typically a sign that your manager (or above) has already vetoed any such pay increase and they’re not being truthful with you about it.
Ultimately, if you get told to wait 2 years and the reasons are not “company wide restructuring” then there’s some shadow politics going on and you should definitely be reviewing your job prospects. And if there is a company wide restructure happening, then you should also be updating your CV just in case too.
If you get told to wait 3 years the just assume it’s never going to happen. Because you can guarantee even if your management has the best of intentions, priorities will shift multiple times within those 3 years.
You've got the causality a bit off here. A promotion is always intentional: somebody with power has to actively decide that getting you promoted will advance their interests.
Not getting promoted, on the other hand, is the default state of affairs. Are they doing work above their level? Will they keep doing it even if they don't get the promotion? Great, then there's no need to promote, move onto the next thing or person.
Reading this article reminds me of all the advice in university on the importance of soft skills. The OP sounds like a competent technical worker but lacked the soft skills to secure his position.
All organizations have a consensus that guides it's decision. While heavily skewed towards leadership, even the consensus of the lowest hierarchy worker is important.
From what I saw in TFA, OP correctly identified that there was a need for FinOps but did not do the work to get buy in from the organisation. Even though I find it absolutely tedious and sickening. Some amount of politicking is inevitable for survival.
There's also a corollary to this: if the organization does not recognize some work as needed or useful, you could well be actively wasting your time putting effort into it. There might be a good reason the company doesn't care that you just don't see, and leadership could be (at best) confused about why you would spend time on it.
Given enough soft skills, you can persuade your boss that what you are doing is important, and help him/her represent the department as uncovering and proactively addressing an important issue. Ideally it should align well with the boss's boss agenda.
For sure, but sometimes what you or I think should be important really isn't in the grand scheme of things. An example could be focusing on cost or efficiency - generally very reasonable things to care about - but if all a company cares about right now is growth at all costs, then that focus would be wrong. This can happen - the company leadership might see a market that they absolutely must enter and be dominant in no matter the cost. That may not filter down well 3-4 layers of management; so the soft skill in that instance would be in sussing out what several layers of management above you actually care about and surfacing to them things that align with those concerns.
> On your way out the door, you hear the rumors: someone else did your thing years after you showed yours off. They got the credit, the bonus, the promotion, the recognition. They're a Senior now, or a Lead, or a Director, or a VP.
If it actually went down like this, that's pretty horrible, and that someone else is a grifter. Very harmful for any organization in the long run, because that behavior will be applied to anyone who's "ripe to be taken advantage of" (from his point of view), burning them out of the way.
That is, if they were aware that you made the thing that they picked up later. Though I wonder why the original didn't go through. The other person pushed harder for it to go through, or showed it off with a different sort of demo? Or was it a different sort of technical implementation / design?
> The pink slip comes as a total surprise. It always comes as a surprise. You did everything you were told, even waited patiently like you were asked. You trusted the organization to reward you in turn - and now you've lost your job.
Your reward is your paycheck. On Friday night, the balance anyone owes anyone is zero.
You didn’t “trust” them at all. They had no further obligations to you, nor you to them. You seem to have invented obligations that don’t exist.
This is not about employer vs employee and job security. In fact, the post mentions that there could be good reasons for layoffs. What the post highlights is -
1. Trust - When an employer tells the employee something and then ignores it - then a truth based culture gives in to cynicism. Communications in the company become suspect. Even when there are win-win situations, where cooperation could lead to positive outcomes for both management and workers, a lack of trust means the company cant execute.
Also, this will affect communications with customers and shareholders.
2. Regardless of being right, the author is helping others in similar situations, who can adjust their expectations.
3. The post isn't so much about company vs employee, but competing factions within the company, who are invested in alternative tools/proposals. Promotion is used as a means of making one's faction stronger. This need not be for the benefit of the company or customers. Lobbying will also, of course, affect truth.
Factions might be inevitable (and there can even be good reasons - people genuinely have differences of opinion). But, if the company has good leaders, they will prevent this from erupting into a strong zero-sum situation which drowns other goals - company's profits, promoting competent people, a culture of trust.
The fact that so many companies operate this way is really depressing. I want to work with people I trust to have some genuine respect for my future, personally or career wise.
There is nothing more destructive than talking to people daily, having a good working relationship with them, and then randomly getting laid off with no warning or explanation. Years of positive interactions go up in smoke overnight, because the company couldn’t bother to treat you like a human with needs, and instead act as if you’re just a mercenary.
And to be clear, I’m not talking about budgetary or performance issues that lead to layoffs. I mean when you’ve done good work for a company for years, then out of the blue, get a meeting request for a Friday afternoon.
It makes for a cold, mercenary world that I want no part of.
Not all companies operate like this, but many large ones do. Smaller chops can have exactly the kind of culture that you describe, but they're also quite often hard to find as they tend to have some stable business and long employee retention, it's unlikely you will find them at the same time you're looking for a job.
Yeah I am lucky enough to be in a company with a solid culture now.
I definitely think you need to avoid companies with 1) large turnover, 2) investor-driven growth metrics, and 3) a hostile or passive approach to company self-criticism.
Like the guy in the article, I have found that companies which hand-wave away legitimately good ideas or criticism in favor of some vague “strategy” reason tend to be untrustworthy. Well-run companies want to improve themselves, even if they don’t have the resources to make that improvement quickly.
It is also a good way, if one doesn't care about the whole company going to shit. The onboarding cost and experience cost of letting someone with multiple years of experience go can be huge. There might even never be someone able to really replace that person.
> The fact that so many companies operate this way is really depressing. I want to work with people I trust to have some genuine respect for my future, personally or career wise.
I disagree. It’s not depressing, it’s business. Treating people as if they are business professionals is showing them respect. This is why we negotiate salary.
(Separately: your coworkers treating you as a business professional is in no way a lack of respect for your future or your career.)
It’s passive aggressive and unprofessional to think that you are somehow owed something additional and undefined after your paycheck is paid and options assigned.
I enjoy business relationships specifically BECAUSE the obligations of each party are formally documented. Nobody can legitimately be mad when everyone does what the contract says, because everyone read it before signing and everyone voluntarily signed it. There’s even a clause in there that explicitly states that the contract is the full and complete agreement between the parties and supersedes all other agreements, written or verbal.
They’re not joking when they put that in. The cake is a lie.
Nobody has to guess at what is expected of them. It’s written down. Contrast Aunt Judy giving you socks for Christmas: does this mean you owe her a birthday present? At what age does it change? It’s all so fuzzy and context-specific and people are so cagey about giving firm answers about what the rules (and there ARE rules) actually are.
Business has none of that. It’s great.
> It’s not depressing, it’s business.
That's exactly what GP said.
If that's your jam, great! It certainly isn't mine either. Indeed, my theory is that the world is going to shit because of doing business like that. Where's the humanity in that? We're not automatons.
The jokes on you if you think the written piece of paper means anything.
Yeah, this is a cold attitude and it’s also not somehow inherent to business. It’s a reflection of the decaying social fabric of American business culture. Wanting to work in a place with some civility and decency isn’t passive aggressive.
Having that opinion 50 years ago would get you fired from any company immediately. Because social mores were less eroded then.
When Aunt Judy gives me a gift, I try to get her one too. It’s not a transaction I need to keep in my head, worrying if I owe her something. That sounds like an extremely depressing way to interact with other people.
Pretending that there aren’t unwritten social rules around gift giving and obligation is disingenuous. There ARE rules and there are consequences for not following them. It isn’t about a transaction, it’s about the expectations placed on participants by others in the system.
It’s not depressing at all, it’s how our society works. Most people have no problem intuiting most of these unwritten rules, or are quietly taught by their parents or relatives.
The point wasn’t about transactions, but about whether or not the rules of the system are written down and accessible or not. Both social circumstances have rules.
If you come at it from the idea that businesspeople are cold and unfeeling sharks, and that everything is a transaction, then naturally you would think it’s sad and depressing that someone must apply rules in the workplace and rules in other social settings too. But that’s a vast oversimplification that misses the point: that business professionals carrying out a task directly and efficiently is neither cold nor unfeeling, nor is it some portent of a decaying social fabric. It’s simply professionalism.
Most working people aren’t professionals and have no desire to be, so it comes across as hostile and insensitive, but it’s not.
It’s perfectly possible to be professional and not come off in the way you’re describing as desirable.
In fact, acting in the way you’re describing is itself a negative social rule that will lose someone business opportunities. Because people with value that don’t want to operate in a coldly transactional environment will be turned off by it.
“I don’t owe you anything other than money for the task you’re doing,” is a good way to eliminate a sizable portion of potential high-quality employees.
The further up the economic chain you get, the more important this becomes. It doesn’t make you seem professional, it just makes you seem like a difficult person to deal with, and thus someone to avoid.
I agree, which is why all that garbage that we are supposed to regurgitate during interviews about wanting to save the world, or why this company is so interesting, in reality it is a meaningless theather.
We sell our work, they give us a paycheck, done, lets not make it more than it is.
there r companies that scale 100x in 3 years
If you aren't scaling yourself as much then you're moving too slow
I love this and will make it my motto. Scale yourself 100x every 3 years, or you're too slow. If I manage to keep it up roughly 11 years I will finally achieve planet scale.
I am now eager to see your track record and how did you personally scale 100x in last 3 years (or ~1 000 000x in last decade)
Does it count, if your belly size scales as much?