![]() ![]() You still ask plenty of questions and keep your manager informed, but you are the initiator. You can handle any individual assignment with little direction. Otherwise, live with the problem and quit your whining. If you’ve got an issue, then propose a solution to your manager and peers and, ideally, implement it. ![]() No one else is going to fix your problems. (I’m dating myself.)Ī common failing at the entry level is complaining instead of solving, aka whining. It means knowing what questions to ask, who can answer them, and how to get the answers. Handling assignments on your own doesn’t mean doing so in isolation. Show your manager and your peers that you can handle assignments and get past roadblocks on your own. Don’t try to impress your vice president. It will likely take you two to three years, depending on your past experience. To get promoted from entry level to independence, you need to become independent. How do you get promoted from one stage to the next? Let’s take that a stage at a time. Money is probably not a concern of yours anymore unless you have a serious gambling problem. You are the distinguished engineer, technical fellow, or vice president. Industry leadership (e.g., Technical Fellow)-you influence the entire division and with it the entire industry (from 500 to millions of engineers).You have become a partner at the company. You are the discipline director, general manager, partner architect, or core technology worldwide expert. Organization leadership (e.g., Partner SDE)-you influence the entire organization of 80 – 500 engineers.Regardless, you have become a key person in your organization. ![]() You influence them as their discipline manager, group manager, architect, or core technology guru. Group leadership (e.g., Principal SDE)-you influence the entire group of roughly 12 – 80 engineers.Either way, your impact extends beyond what you can do alone. You influence them as their managing lead or as their technical lead. Team leadership (e.g., Senior SDE)-you influence the rest of your team of roughly 3 – 12 engineers.This is the last time you’ll be differentiated by your coding skills. If you don’t know how, you know who to ask, or who to ask who to ask. Independence (e.g., SDE II)-you can code up anything your lead asks of you.There are similar stages for the other engineering disciplines. SDE stands for Software Development Engineer, which we’ve recently shortened to Software Engineer (SWE). After hearing it, my employees all ask, “Why isn’t this written down?” I could speculate that HR is too scared to make it simple, that engineers are too precise to generalize, or that Microsoft organizations cling to the notion that they are each special and unique. My peers all know them, and I’ve always told my employees this information. Why am I giving up these “secrets” to getting promoted? Because they aren’t secret. Those basics are documented nowhere, until now-right here. While every manager and organization has its own take on promotions, there are some basics everyone follows. I’ve worked for eight different organizations and more managers than I can recall. I’ve been managing Microsoft engineers for nearly 15 years. If you want to know how to build your skills and systematically grow your career as an engineer at Microsoft, read on. If you’re not a Microsoft engineer and you’re not interested in finding a new reason to bash Microsoft, save yourself some time and skip this column. ![]()
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