Doing a good job is not enough to promote you, explains Ryan Peterman, engineer at Meta. You must also make sure that everyone knows.
“If you are going to build this incredible feature that nobody knows, no matter how good it is, you will get any recognition for that,” Peterman said at a conference at the UCLA. “And so, how do you defend yourself after doing a great job, what is the difficult part?”
Peterman worked at Instagram for six years, climbing the staff software engineer before focusing on AI training infrastructure in Meta. He is also the author of the Development Development Newsletter, which offers career advice to engineers without their own mentors.
Making your achievements as public as possible is the “last percent” of the climbing of the career scale, said Peterman. It can be as simple as writing an article on social networks or mentioning your success at a meeting, he added.
“I think that many people are missing this, especially if they are more introverted or they are quieter, doing it just this last step after the right work,” said Peterman.
The outperformance in your current position is not enough, said Peterman. He gives the example of a junior engineer who “is 10 times more characteristics” than the rest of their peers. Although they are likely to receive a positive performance examination, they have not proven that they are ready to assume higher responsibilities – only that they are extremely competent to tackle their current workload.
“When your manager seeks to fill up like the section for the following level, for example, none of the things will be verified,” said Peterman. “There is nothing in the initiative or to do everything expected of the intermediate level.”
Ideally, he added, you will have a solid understanding of the “behaviors” presented by engineers at the level you are looking to reach-and will seek to undertake projects that allow you to present them. If you are lost as to your organization could look for more senior engineers, Peterman suggests talking to your supervisor.
“I was really, really impatient to be promoted, and so I was constantly talking about my manager,” he said. “As soon as I was promoted to one level, I said to myself:” Okay, what is the following level? What can I do? “It may be boring for my manager, but it was very useful to teach me what things I had to pick up.”
Above everything, he added, it is in your interest to be as visible as possible. During his stay in Meta, Peterman took five trainees – those who stood out were more willing to be daring.
“When I think of those who were rock stars, they had the audacity to offer improvements,” he said. “Even if, obviously, I am the oldest, they had the audacity to ask questions, to offer improvements. Sometimes, that was not right, but I could see the logic – but several times they were.”
businessinsider
