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Comment by stoops | Hacker News Reader

This exemplifies why I quit my last job.

But primarily,

"We promote engineers and managers when they have demonstrated that they are consistently performing at the next level. Promotions don’t unlock new responsibilities; the new responsibilities and increased scope come first and then we recognize it with a promotion."

Every discussion I had with my manager, my promotion was six months away, despite IC contributions exceeding the sum total of the rest of my team when measured per-project via our number one KPI: annualized cost savings (larger org was seen as a cost center).

Unfortunately these "principles" are becoming harder and harder to avoid.

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Another way to say that is it's lame to give a someone a promotion to a role they are already doing, because it's the easiest way to communicate that they've been underpaid for way too long.

This is only true if the only way to get compensation increases is via a promotion. Granted at many companies this is true, but it probably isn't true at Square.

If you get promoted to Senior level, the assumption is that you're getting paid what a senior should be. If then, you take on additional responsibility above and beyond what a Senior is doing, you get merit increases up to some higher point. That is, a Senior who is getting 5/5 performance ratings probably makes more than a Senior with a 3/5. Eventually, that 5/5 person might get promoted (I say might because an exceptional Senior might not make a great Staff engineer. Someone really good at implementing things quickly, but with terrible design sense won't make it to Senior in a lot of orgs, for example, even though they might be a very strongly performing Engineer) to the next level, at which point the process starts again.

Yes, this is the one part of the paper that stuck out to me. Too often I've been fed the "take on the responsibility and then we'll pay you" line. It feels dishonest to me; like they are extracting more work from you without giving you more money/responsibility/etc. If you want me to "take it to the next level" then you need to reward me at the next level.

Growth isn't strictly monetary and needs to be self-driven. I know there's not a snowball's chance in hell I'll ever get promoted at my current company, hell if they offer me a promotion I'll very probably turn them down. I work for a consulting firm, and the last thing I want my role to be is babysitting resources.

But I'm sharp, and I focus on getting sharper every single day. I don't have 'pre-' conversations about what could potentially happen, I simply solve the problems the organization has. If the company recognizes it great, if not you'll look around one day a few months after I leave and lament, "man things were so much better when we had Vince around."

This is a management failure. If your manager isn't living up to their promises, they are either incompetent at working the system for their people (and misjudging the situation/their own pull) or they've been lying to you the whole time.

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