Ask HN: Expecting Promotion but Now My Manager Is Leaving | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Expecting Promotion but Now My Manager Is Leaving

13 pointsthrowaway71382410 comments

My title is Senior Engineer. The Lead of our team left a year ago and I've been acting as the lead/manager. I have a Manager, and his boss is a Director. My duties include planning sprints, scrum master (lead scrum calls), back log grooming, sprint planning, sprint retrospecitve, security audits, trouble shooting and otherwise support prod. A whole ton of crap a Senior shouldn't be doing. All with the dangled carrot of "do the job for a year and next review we'll see about a promotion".

I approached this situation with a healthy does of skepticism to begin with knowing full well if they can get the work for nothing they will. Next annual review is in January, My quarterly reviews have been good, the team has been delivering, and we're delivering on a major project I spec'd, planned, train and led the team on.

I was planning to bring up the promotion situation then. Now my Manager who've I've been working with has been moved to another product, and I'm reporting to his Director.

So how do I not get lost in the transition? I want the lead title, I don't care about a raise at this point. Thoughts?

You are already a lead. And one who has performed well. They are acknowledging you as a senior dev. For a year! Whether deliberate or not, this obviously has to be fixed.

This shouldn't be something related to performance reviews. Set your BATNA[1] to give you psychological support, approach your director/previous manager and in the nicest way possible say that you love working here and want to continue to do so but you need them to fix the situation. Put the pressure on them. When it comes to your performance review you want them to be on the back foot.

Note its important to keep communications really nice, really positive, but be willing to walk away. There is a chance they will not accept, for whatever reason. If this is the case then you may be better off someplace else.

[1] Your best alternative to the negotiations failing. Typically this means having a job offer from another company ready (not as ammo, just personal psychological support). But also committing to yourself that you will leave if they don't accept is fine too.

BATNA = Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement

Couldn't have said better. But from my experience, assume the worst and be ready to walk away.

> A whole ton of crap a Senior shouldn't be doing.

If you get promoted to be a manager there will be even more "crap" to do, since your primary job will be to make it possible for your team to get work done, not to write code yourself. You'll be doing exciting things like resolving disputes between your team members, writing performance reviews, interviewing job candidates, maybe deciding who's going to be laid off and...... listening to your employees ask you for promotions. (I was a manager for many years and then went back to being a developer.)

I'm in the same position as you. Here's a couple of things I've learnt in the last few months.

1. Tell everyone what you want and ask them for their thoughts I had avoided telling a few people because I thought it was too forward of me, that they already knew, and a few other excuses. Now that everyone (my team mates, my direct manager, other managers) know what I'm aiming for I'm getting a lot more feedback on my performance. Also I suspect some people are fighting for my promotion know that they know I want it. I kickstarted the effort with "catchup" meetings with everyone I could think of. I framed it as a "catchup" so I could also find out what challenges they were facing and how I could help them. I talked to QA leads, PMs and senior devs on my team and outside of my team. The few coworkers who were really excited for me, I asked if I could do recurring 1:1s with them. It keeps me visible to these people and I'm getting regular feedback on my work and the status of my promotion.

2. If someone says you will not be promoted, ask why and ask different people. I was told I would not promoted and I didn't fight it. But a month later someone else informed me of course I'm getting promoted but not until the beginning of the calendar year. I wish I had asked more questions when I was originally told no promotion would happen, it would have saved me a lot of upset/confusion/unhappiness.

3. Ask your departing manager to recommend your promotion to the director

“I’ve been doing this job for X months so you know by now if you want to promote me to lead/manager. After all, I’m already doing the job. If you don’t know by now let me know.”

Don’t threaten them, just let them know that they got the “free sample”, now it’s time to pay up. Frankly, I would just leave. I hate being taken advantage of.

Don't expect, get what you want. Ask the director if he will sit down for a coffee with you and explain your position. He doesn't have to give you the lead title now just as long as he knows this is something you have been working towards with the goal of your next review.

If they don't deliver they have left you no option but to chase your goal some where else, don't hesitate.

Do you have regular 1:1s with your now former mgr or current director? If so I would have been bringing this up on the regular, not to complain but to talk about how much you’re enjoying the new role and looking for feedback on how it’s going from their perspective.

The only way to know if you’re in their plans is to talk about it, and the sooner you bring it up the better.

Lesson time: feedback on major review cycles should never be a huge surprise. That goes for downward feedback, but it also goes for upward feedback too. Your director is already making plans for next year. Make sure they know what you want and what your view of the current status quo is.

One thing I’m not sure on is, do you want to manage? People management is a whole different beast than the tasks you’re currently taking on.

I would highly recommend reading or listening to audio of book Never Split the Difference.

Take some of those negotiation tips and get the title change. I have had good success applying these in my role.

Yes probably should’ve been addressing this promotion question all along instead waiting the full year. I personally don’t see them following through on this. Sorry that doesn’t leave you with many options, keep doing what you’re doing (may be a raise/promotion next year...) or move on.

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