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> I watched my dad spend his career getting promoted into misery. He worked so hard to climb the ladder and was successful at it, but it took him too long to realize it was making him miserable.

With every job I've had, I look at the people senior to me and ask "Do I want their job?"

Sometimes the answer is "Yes", but more often than not, the answer is "No." When it's the latter, you have a few choices:

1. Try to carve a unique senior role for yourself. I've never succeeded at this. In a big company, roles tend to be predefined. Or at least, if you're in a department where they aren't, then you likely would have answered "Yes" to the question above.

2. If you enjoy your work, just work to stay in it, do well but not get promoted. Accept your station in life.

3. Find another job.

I've never regretted following 3 above. It hasn't led to better opportunities or pay, but it does keep me active.

And with regard to "Find another job". Consulting might be one of the best options if you like to keep doing what you enjoy most while getting good pay. I believe as a consultant (depending on your role) you might also be better able to avoid office politics. E.g. you don't have to follow some stupid "improvement strategy" with your boss to get a 2% raise at the end of the year.

This is the most "it depends on what consulting house you work for" thing I've ever heard. If you're at any mid or large sized consulting firm, office politics are 3-4x as important as anywhere else.

> This is the most "it depends on what consulting house you work for" thing I've ever heard. If you're at any mid or large sized consulting firm, office politics are 3-4x as important as anywhere else.

I don't mean to work for a consulting house. Instead one should setup it's own consulting company. In order to set your own rate. Determine your own wage growth, etc...

I hear this "third way" approach suggested a lot, and as someone who's just starting to dip their toes into it, I think that there's some merit to it. I do worry about how to overcome the principal agency issue and a potential mutual lack of trust that comes from being set up as a consultant rather than an employee.

But on the other hand, wouldn't that be an issue anyways whether FTE or a consultant? May as well figure out earlier.

Sorry, just thinking out loud here. Honestly, consulting really does seem to be the worst of all worlds, at least for a while, even if you do eventually want FTE. You get to actually test whether you get along with a firm without committing full time. And they have to give you a compelling reason to join for you to do so. If you have the skillset that is useful enough for them to need to hire you in the first place, you also have already means-tested that you are adding value. Maybe it really is the best way to start.

Maybe he failed to breach the manager effort thermocline

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2015/02/22/theres-a-payof...

Ooooof. what a read.

> Answer by Michael O Church

The author of this is a notorious troll best known for being repeatedly fired from his jobs (AFAIK he's actually never held a management position) and banned from HN, Wikipedia and Quora for sockpuppeting etc.

That's a ridiculously harsh viewpoint on a named individual.

For my money, he's probably one of the most insightful writers on technology in the field.

I honestly thought that some of the stories he told about people hating him on the internet we're exaggerated, but seeing this comment is increasing my faith in his story.

FWIW, I have been on HN since way before this, and found him to be an insightful commenter here also.

I agree. Even though he was extremely controversial, and though I can see why HN banned him, and I disagree with his views, I don't regret reading his comments, they were thought-provoking.

Is my summary actually inaccurate? What are his qualifications to pontificate at length on the life of a middle manager, much less that of a director or VP at a large company, when he's never held any of these roles?

Personal experience, I suppose. Much like our own qualifications to talk about stuff on HN/Quora.

I think that your summary was incredibly harsh against a named individual, and I regard that kind of talking as incredibly unfair (especially for someone who's banned here).

Like, I talk a bunch about Directors and VP's even though I've never been one, and I'm sure you talk about stuff you don't have personal experience with too.

And the use of the phrase "notorious troll" is flamebait and not conducive to intellectual discussion.

I was curious about your viewpoint as I've never heard of this guy, though what you described sounds like a familiar story in tech, so I googled him and found this: https://www.quora.com/Why-was-Michael-O-Church-targeted-by-S...

I found a few others too... It's interesting that in every thread there is at least one (usually only one) individual defending him in martyr-like way and questioning the motives of anyone who might criticise him.

(Now including this one, having refreshed the page!)

Well, if the shoe fits ...

That part about the "business guys".. felt it. We should just quit and form a nation.

I had the opportunity to work with a VP at a Fortune 500 company who was probably one of the best leaders I've worked with. Honest, not a lot of BS, willing to fight for her team.

Now she could have been feeding me a line of crap, but I don't think so. Her attitude was people get too wrapped up on promotions. Her view was focus on getting the right mix of experience, regardless of the level you do it at. Once you hit that sweet spot of really knowing how the business works, that's when you'll make significant jumps up in the organization.

It was an interesting observation (and likely very relevant to her own experience), but it was something I continue to noodle on.

I'm facing a similar situation, and I just decided to quit as I realized how toxic it could be.

I work in a software consultancy, it was all good, but several years ago the company was sold and the management realized other professional service industries do the same thing as you mentioned, and they are really pushing forward this approach. They called it 'promote or leave'.

It's crazy and stressful. People have to juggle several roles at a time: I was just a typical developer 2 years ago. Last year I was actively involved in architecture stuff, there were so many things to resolve while I still have my own deadlines to meet. This year I was thrown at the team lead position of two teams simultaneously, while I still have developing and solutioning tasks measure by days, and often I found myself can only start to sit there after endless meeting and programming only after 5 pm, and I also often need to assemble keynotes at night because all of the sudden there's a pre-sale meeting tomorrow morning.

The best part is people would call these 'challenges' as they are good things. These challenges give people nothing but fragile works and projects. People who had enough would leave, and people who left would only strengthen the toxic atmosphere.

When I worked at IBM I heard about this RA tactic before. To get rid of an unwanted employee a company might promote them frequently/repeatedly until they quit.

What's the logic behind that? Why not fire them if their performance is poor? Is it because its cheaper for the company?

Someone explained recently that you can undermine unions by promoting labor to management and then firing the new managers.

I still don't get how and in whose favor this plays.

Management can't be in the union. So cripple the union by promoting the most effective members into management?

Alternatively, if you want to fire someone and the union blocks it, promote them instead, then fire them later.

> Management can't be in the union.

That's a weird rule. I've never encountered that in European unions.

There's a different gradient of workers union influence for employees at different levels. Traditionally, workers at the bottom of the pyramid have the highest union influence and it decreases as it goes further up.

I've seen it happen when the company appeared to want someone to turn around a sinking ship (project) (or go down with the ship and assume responsibility.) This was for a big project at a big publicly traded company. They gave someone a promotion and an ultra-reach assignment (literally, an assignment so reach that it was effectively unreachable in retrospect.)

The person failed the assignment and went down with the ship. It wasn't a terrible deal because he got a huge layoff payout.

Probably the Peter Principle. The army does the same thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

FWIW it's also done for ICs at Google where you have to get promoted to senior by some time or you're let go. I don't know what the story is for managers.

You can be doing mostly the same job as eng I vs sr and be just fine if you stay in sr forever.

> FWIW it's also done for ICs at Google where you have to get promoted to senior by some time or you're let go. I don't know what the story is for managers.

Google explicitly changed the policy from expecting that all eng ICs reach L5 (Senior SWE) to expecting that all reach L4 (informally a "solid individual contributor").

I know it's not entirely related, but the informal responsibility you posted is really enlightening.

Would you be ok with sharing your informal take on the other levels?

I was at Google for about 10 years. Here’s my take on the levels.

L3: How well do you do what you’re told?

L4: How independent are you? What’s your individual impact?

L5: How deeply technical are you? How well do you influence others on the team? What do you own?

L6: What’s your reputation in the greater org? How is the product area better because of what you do? Why aren’t you a manager of a 10-person team yet?

L7: How is the company notably different because of you? What technology did you create that most everyone knows about? How have you made a difference in Google’s quarterly revenues for your product area? Why aren’t you a manager of a 30-person group yet?

L8: Why do you have the final say on whether the product area moves forward on any given idea? What books have you published? Which VPs regularly consult with you? Why aren’t you a director of a 200-person org yet?

> The army does the same thing.

The military has an up-or-out philosophy, where you must achieve a certain rank after a number of years or get forced out. The major issue with this approach is that promotions in the middle ranks heavily favor seniority. So you might have completed all of your course requirements ahead of time and have glowing PMA from your CO, all in preparation for taking your exam after you meet the time in rank, score the best on the exam, but still get passed up in favor of someone else who has been trying for 4 years to get a promotion because their FMS is higher due to seniority, not capability.

I can see why someone would conflate it with the Peter Principal, but I don't really think it's the same thing. The Peter Principal is predicated upon being good at your job at rank N, but doing poorly at rank N+1.