My experience has been completely the opposite. Becoming the go-to person is a way to become a load-bearing employee that never gets promoted or otherwise has company mobility because the people who rely on the go-to person need that go-to person to stay exactly where they are.
Sounds like the lesson is to be a go-to person (for knowledge, not doing work for others) but don’t be irreplaceable. Seek to train others so you can scale your influence and you can be promoted without leaving a team or system in a bad place.
> Go-to for correctly operating a dated tool deep in the bowels of the machine? Cog.
> Go-to for all questions related to the machine, its history, future, and all machines like it? Not cog.
The difference between these two is the people you work with. If people come to you to have their questions answered but can't execute on it properly then... you become #1. Of course this can be twisted around to theoretically be a you problem or it could be an endless churn of warm bodies coming through hiring.
I think the headline is correct, but the content isn't. Becoming the go-to person for the people with more authority than you is great. Becoming the go-to person for some people at or below your seniority level won't. Being the "python expert" who all the juniors ask python questions of won't help you, but if you can be in a situation where you frequently (probably informally at first) discuss higher level things with people above you and they value your input, I think that's a good thing. Get them used to the idea that they can go to you for input on important higher level things.
Not in my experience. Then you become an invaluable resource that those above you need to get things done. Why would you ever give that up? That's a recipe for being stuck forever.
I think the article misses the point on the whole spectrum soft skills really are.
Becoming a technical domain expert doesn't automatically make you helpful to others. You might not have the ability to communicate knowledge, or the ability to foresee how being helpful is ley to moving ahead the corporate chess board.
There are unspoken rules of corporate ladder advancement, which are not discussed in OP's article.
Yeah, in my experience developers who go above and beyond (especially in agile sweatshops) are generally rewarded with more responsibilities and the compensation never scales. Promoting these types into new roles is costly bc they can't really be replaced.
In my experience “Go to person” in a mature product has 2 stages:
(1) person who performs somewhat repetitive jobs
(2) person who is trusted to own projects in a given area
Being able to get rid of (1), either through automation or delegation, allows you to go to (2). If you’re stuck on (1) for too long, it’s better to leave.
This is also my experience. Being a go-to person led to 5 separate instances where a clearly underqualified person was promoted above me, with the company outright stating that I’m too valuable where I am (but also when I asked for more money, I wasn’t THAT valuable).
Then when I left they replaced me with 4 people cause losing a decade of deep dive rather than topical knowledge hurts.
Had they promoted me, I could have just trained a new person.
You do what you gotta do. The only way to learn really how valuable (in a capitalist sense) you are is by getting offers (ideally multiple) elsewhere. I accepted a counter offer once and stayed 2 more years. Ultimately I left for the same reasons, I was hitting a ceiling and they were not budging. I increased my comp 50% and reduced my responsibilities another 50% with the next move.
I've known several people who never got promoted because their bosses knew they'd have to hire 2-3 people to replace them, and there was no budget for extra people.
Of course they did all quit eventually, and I assume the budget for the extra staff was found somehow - albeit too late to keep their expert.
I work in an organisation that has a list of essential people and I happen to work close with one of them. The entire 300 people company would seriously cease to exist if this person found a new job, got sick or whatever can happen. In my 20 years of working as a software developer and manager, I’ve never before witnessed someone who wasn’t replaceable. As you’re taught in MBA, “anyone is replaceable it’s just a matter of cost”, but that just doesn’t apply to this person because of how much operational knowledge they have. Both about the businesses, the finances and also the technical aspects. This person doesn’t make much more money than I do as a software developer. Which isn’t bad, but also nowhere near their value. They’ve also been sort of shifted around the organisation because nobody really know where to place them as they are essential to everyone. No effort is being done to document or train anyone in case they leave.
This is obviously anecdotal, but this sorry isn’t atypical from my experience. People aren’t credited (or promoted) unless they ask and work for it. My own strategy was sort of silly, I let my bosses know how much more money I could make if I took up one of the offers I get (there is a severe lack of developers in my area or the world), and well, it worked well enough to get me good raises and into management before I decided I didn’t want to be a manager at all. I’ve cruised by people who sacrificed themselves way more than I’ve ever done, simply by playing the social and political aspects of working, and I’ve seen so many people not get their due, that I really doubt the articles point. That being said, it’s easier to position yourself well in an organisation if you’re genuinely nice to work with and being a go-to person obviously helps with that. Not only because of your knowledge and willingness to help, but also because people who have that last part are generally just more approachable. But unless you figure out a way to turn that into money, then I really double it’ll help you much in the modern job market.
Quality of work doesn’t even really do a lot for people. I’ve worked with three people who did exactly the same job, and the one who produced the best quality work was paid 50% less than the two others because they were “bad at negotiating” pay… I’m sure their manager was happy about that, and it wasn’t even too dangerous as the person was simply “content” which was really a MBA way telling me the person was so uncomfortable with big life altering changes that they would likely work that job until retirement.
Right, generally the people who benefit from the expert enjoy mobility.
I think being known for learning quickly and making good decisions under pressure is what gets you promoted. At senior levels not being an asshole is also a prerequisite.
100% agree. "promoted" to management happens under two conditions:
- ladder climbers: people who drift from shop to shop or team to team in search of the next promotion. Theyre on your team just long enough to get real visible with the boss and then theyre gone. they make terrible leadership decisions because the only thing they have to offer is charisma and feel-good meetings.
- walking wrecking-balls: people who complete about 30-45% of a project and cant communicate what theyre doing or the outcomes from their actions. they are unaccountable even to their peers, they walk away from hard tasks or challenges and if something fails they make up excuses before anyone can walk back the root cause to something they did. these get promoted to get them out of the teams way or they spread like a cancer to some other team thats never heard their name before. these people care about having an office, but nod through meetings like a supreme court justice. their direct reports will never encounter them. this is a quarantine promotion.
Becoming the go-to person in a given area or process will quickly get you to "senior" which is what the article is talking about. It is easy to get stuck at this level as you say but the trick still works to get to staff the flavor just changes a bit, you have to be more of a generalist.
However, becoming an expert on something is still valuable as long as that something has value outside the company (ie: you can advertise that kind of expertise in an interview).
So becoming an expert in something is valuable and if you realize you've become the "load-bearing employee that never gets promoted or otherwise has company mobility" then it's strong signal that you need to start replying to recruiters.
I agree, whenever other senior / mid-level employees quit you’ll have to pickup the slack as it’s hard to find the right competences - specially at a discounted rate.
Personally I did manage to get promoted, but not before giving notice.
I noticed this happening in my current role and I am managing what I agree to more to make sure it’s something that clearly aligns with things that will get me promoted.
Always saying yes to "go-to person" like asks is a great way to never get anything done and never let anyone else become the "go-to person" for a particular topic. So yeah, if you don't manage it right it can cause issues, but IME being the go-to person is only half of the game: offloading your responsibilities is the other half.
It's more complicated than that. Becoming a go-to person may get you promoted, if the company has an adequate value system. No company is perfect, but they vary a lot and you need to find companies where they at least try to promote the right people.
It also depends on what you're the go-to person on and what the promoted position is. Being the expert on some low-level technology isn't necessarily going to help you get promoted to a managerial position or the upper tiers of technical positions.
Work is a pie-eating contest where the prize is more pie. Many learn this lesson too late in their careers. On at least three occasions (as recently as two weeks ago) I turned down promotions because the marginal stress was greater than the marginal salary increase. More money isn't always worth more.
The point is knowing where your limit is. A promotion often comes with more money and career opportunities. At least it did for me most of the times. The only time when it didn't I left and found better opportunities within a few months.
If you like what you do, and they give you new challenges that you enjoy (more pie) and more money/benefits. It's a win win scenario. I realize is not always the case and maybe in many jobs is rarely the case. My whole career almost every promotion has had substantial benefits, opportunities and growth. I am working nowadays less than I did my first 10yrs of career and doing almost 10x the comp.
Anti-cynicism response: you also get rewarded with respect, money, and fulfillment. Obviously the answer to all questions is “it depends”, but I can’t allow a “hard work is pointless” comment to go unanswered.
> you also get rewarded with respect, money, and fulfillment
Nope. You get rewarded with exactly how much you're able to get away with demanding via negotiation. The CEO won't suddenly swoop down and say wow what a hard working guy let's double his salary. You get rewarded if you're the only person who's able to do something but you're going to quit because a better company offered you more money. That puts them in the position of either rewarding you or watching you leave.
At a small minority of jobs, more work will result in respect, money, and fulfillment.
At most jobs, doing more work without a promotion already on the line just means you'll be expected to do more work going forward and your future evaluations will be based on your higher workload rather than your original baseline, which will make reaching that promotion even harder. Ask me how I know that...
If "it depends" is the answer to "does hard work pay off", then obviously "Hard work is pointless" is true, as it is no longer a guarantee that it will pay off.
Also, life is work. Be grateful you're not a subsistence farmer, like nearly all humans ever, and a quarter of humans even today. You can learn to take joy in it, or you can choose to be unhappy about it.
There's an old story about three bricklayers; the first says "I'm laying bricks to feed my family"; the second says, "I'm building a wall"; the third says, "I'm building a cathedral." [0]
One could think of humanity's work as, "we're helping to build a universe." [1]
Promotions tend to come with financial incentives as well.
I also don't think that, as I've gotten promoted, I've actually taken on that much extra work. The work itself has changed a lot, but it's work I find easier and more enjoyable so for me it almost feels like I'm taking on less. I'm also militant about my work life balance, and maintain very strict hours where I'm reachable.
Not once after a promotion I've been asked to work more than the rough expectation of 8hrs a day (and even that has been flexible). Work conditions vary across companies and it's a shame people gets so cynic that they miss opportunities at good companies.
This advice is wrong on so many levels. What gets you promoted is being aligned with your leadership and being easy going. You'll get bonus points if your skip level likes you - it usually makes promotions come quicker. Aside from my time at Google, where technical leadership was valued - being the "go-to" person usually gets you more work for the same pay as others in your level. In fact, the "go-to" person on my current team was taken for a ride, exploited for multiple years, and then sacked in a round of layoffs because he became "difficult" (which he had every right to be for his treatment). My advice to young folks would be to join teams with a history of promotion (very important to ask during interviews) and a low turn over rate.
Also joining the chorus. Don't listen to this article. Don't forget not to do this for real life and friends too. If you did anything helpful you're expected to Google their specific problem for them or know how to help them. My friends are used to calling me up to ask for help all the time.
If you teach them you know how to fish once, you're their personal expert oceanographer for life.
In my experience, becoming a go-to person gets your boss promoted. This was the case in 100% of my roles, until the very last one, when I refused to become this person....and my boss was fired.
Sadly through that process my role was orphaned, so I was also let go in the round of 2,000+ layoffs that shortly followed.
At least at Google none of this is true. Finding a project that is visible and being a part of it will get you promoted. Being a go to person will get you a lot of pretty words about how great you are. Nothing else.
One place I worked had an informal piece of advice passed between employees: Either do something important well, or break something badly. If you don't you can't be noticed
It's a same thing everywhere. Hard work makes you a go-to person (at whatever). The go-to person gets you into high visibility projects. You ultimately can bargain your promotion using both of these qualities.
There was a guy I knew at Google who just went around figuring out what everyone was doing on a specific problem, made a bug for each one, and wrote a slide deck where he implied he was responsible for the cumulative result of 30 other teams. He's an L7 now.
I really regret telling him what I was working on.
From the article: "I helped my first report at Google get promoted from Eng 1 to Eng 2 within 9 months, by advising her to find something that she can become the “the go-to person” for."
Readit News
Go-to for correctly operating a dated tool deep in the bowels of the machine? Cog.
Go-to for all questions related to the machine, its history, future, and all machines like it? Not cog.
Boiling it down, is your recognized expertise high or low in scope?
> Go-to for all questions related to the machine, its history, future, and all machines like it? Not cog.
The difference between these two is the people you work with. If people come to you to have their questions answered but can't execute on it properly then... you become #1. Of course this can be twisted around to theoretically be a you problem or it could be an endless churn of warm bodies coming through hiring.
Becoming a technical domain expert doesn't automatically make you helpful to others. You might not have the ability to communicate knowledge, or the ability to foresee how being helpful is ley to moving ahead the corporate chess board.
There are unspoken rules of corporate ladder advancement, which are not discussed in OP's article.
Being able to get rid of (1), either through automation or delegation, allows you to go to (2). If you’re stuck on (1) for too long, it’s better to leave.
Then when I left they replaced me with 4 people cause losing a decade of deep dive rather than topical knowledge hurts.
Had they promoted me, I could have just trained a new person.
Also they greatly reduced bus factor. Looks like a win for the manager.
I've known several people who never got promoted because their bosses knew they'd have to hire 2-3 people to replace them, and there was no budget for extra people.
Of course they did all quit eventually, and I assume the budget for the extra staff was found somehow - albeit too late to keep their expert.
This is obviously anecdotal, but this sorry isn’t atypical from my experience. People aren’t credited (or promoted) unless they ask and work for it. My own strategy was sort of silly, I let my bosses know how much more money I could make if I took up one of the offers I get (there is a severe lack of developers in my area or the world), and well, it worked well enough to get me good raises and into management before I decided I didn’t want to be a manager at all. I’ve cruised by people who sacrificed themselves way more than I’ve ever done, simply by playing the social and political aspects of working, and I’ve seen so many people not get their due, that I really doubt the articles point. That being said, it’s easier to position yourself well in an organisation if you’re genuinely nice to work with and being a go-to person obviously helps with that. Not only because of your knowledge and willingness to help, but also because people who have that last part are generally just more approachable. But unless you figure out a way to turn that into money, then I really double it’ll help you much in the modern job market.
Quality of work doesn’t even really do a lot for people. I’ve worked with three people who did exactly the same job, and the one who produced the best quality work was paid 50% less than the two others because they were “bad at negotiating” pay… I’m sure their manager was happy about that, and it wasn’t even too dangerous as the person was simply “content” which was really a MBA way telling me the person was so uncomfortable with big life altering changes that they would likely work that job until retirement.
They are the go-to person for managing projects, but not doing any of the lower level work. Just my experience.
I think being known for learning quickly and making good decisions under pressure is what gets you promoted. At senior levels not being an asshole is also a prerequisite.
- ladder climbers: people who drift from shop to shop or team to team in search of the next promotion. Theyre on your team just long enough to get real visible with the boss and then theyre gone. they make terrible leadership decisions because the only thing they have to offer is charisma and feel-good meetings.
- walking wrecking-balls: people who complete about 30-45% of a project and cant communicate what theyre doing or the outcomes from their actions. they are unaccountable even to their peers, they walk away from hard tasks or challenges and if something fails they make up excuses before anyone can walk back the root cause to something they did. these get promoted to get them out of the teams way or they spread like a cancer to some other team thats never heard their name before. these people care about having an office, but nod through meetings like a supreme court justice. their direct reports will never encounter them. this is a quarantine promotion.
However, becoming an expert on something is still valuable as long as that something has value outside the company (ie: you can advertise that kind of expertise in an interview).
So becoming an expert in something is valuable and if you realize you've become the "load-bearing employee that never gets promoted or otherwise has company mobility" then it's strong signal that you need to start replying to recruiters.
Personally I did manage to get promoted, but not before giving notice.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Wisdom says, work hard enough to earn your wage, but remember everything that matters in life happens after hours.
For all your hard work you get rewarded with ... more hard work.
If you like what you do, and they give you new challenges that you enjoy (more pie) and more money/benefits. It's a win win scenario. I realize is not always the case and maybe in many jobs is rarely the case. My whole career almost every promotion has had substantial benefits, opportunities and growth. I am working nowadays less than I did my first 10yrs of career and doing almost 10x the comp.
The shit generally follows the path of least resistance. The more you handle, the more that flows your way.
Also it is more beneficial to look like you are hard working employee than actually be one.
In IT scope of the work is endless, there is no point to rush. If you finish early you'll get next ticket.
Nope. You get rewarded with exactly how much you're able to get away with demanding via negotiation. The CEO won't suddenly swoop down and say wow what a hard working guy let's double his salary. You get rewarded if you're the only person who's able to do something but you're going to quit because a better company offered you more money. That puts them in the position of either rewarding you or watching you leave.
At most jobs, doing more work without a promotion already on the line just means you'll be expected to do more work going forward and your future evaluations will be based on your higher workload rather than your original baseline, which will make reaching that promotion even harder. Ask me how I know that...
One could think of humanity's work as, "we're helping to build a universe." [1]
[0] https://sacredstructures.org/mission/the-story-of-three-bric... — this story supposedly dates back to the 17th century.
[1] https://www.questioningchristian.org/2006/06/metanarratives_... (self-cite)
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/01/30/busy/
Teach a woman to teach a man to fish. :)
Deleted Comment
I also don't think that, as I've gotten promoted, I've actually taken on that much extra work. The work itself has changed a lot, but it's work I find easier and more enjoyable so for me it almost feels like I'm taking on less. I'm also militant about my work life balance, and maintain very strict hours where I'm reachable.
If you teach them you know how to fish once, you're their personal expert oceanographer for life.
Sadly through that process my role was orphaned, so I was also let go in the round of 2,000+ layoffs that shortly followed.
I really regret telling him what I was working on.
There are 4 types of questions
1. Questions from architects/leads
2. Questions from peers which learn from what I am saying
3. Questions from peers which do not learn but wants me to do their job
4. Questions from product owners
Naturally 5. Own work - suffers.
1, 2 & 4 are ok. I would like to get rid of 3.
I think my way out would be to promoting 2. to help me with 1, 3 and 4. So I can do more of 5.
If you don't get promoted, there is a risk that you become the guy that is just there to solve everyone else's problem.