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Ask HN: Career Advice

12 points by maury91 ↗ HN
I'm working on the same company from nearly 3 years as Senior Software Engineer, around 2 years ago I started having talks with the manager of that time to move to a Lead position, made various plans and one of them was to do something significant for the company. I had an idea in mind on how to improve the architecture of the frontend part of the company application, I expose the idea to a couple of colleagues, and with some brainstorming the idea becomes a presentation, I present the presentation first to the manager then to the CTO. Fast forward 6 months and a team was created to make this idea a reality, in few words the project is to transform the frontend from a big monolith into micro-frontends, the project includes creating tools to make that happen, a proof-of-concept split of the monolith, and best practices to keep everything working properly and tidy.

The created team at the beginning was composed by: 1 developer ( myself ), 1 product owner, 1 scrum master and 1 manager. As I joined this new team I had to change manager. The promise was that more developers will join the team in the future. After 2 months two developers join the team, one month after the leave the company for reasons unrelated to the work being done ( one of the developer wanted to become a doctor, the other was his best friend and followed ). Two months later another developer join the team, he leaves the company after 2 months because the job was too hard compared to the previous team. Another six months pass and new hire joins the team, this was 5 months ago.

During this one year and half I had constant talks with my new manager about the Lead position ( that then became Staff Engineer position ), all that happen were talks talks and only talks, no action whatsover. The justification for the impossibility to move that position is that I need to show managerial skill over a big number of developers and unfortunately my team is composed by only two developers and the other teams grew very independent from us, and the reason why other teams are independent is because we did a good job at documenting everything and setting up the tools and the new micro-frontends so best practices are natural to follow, at the beginning the other teams did approach us with questions and need for direction but in the last 4 months this has become very very rare.

The worst part is that everyone in my previous team had a promotion, all the juniors are now Mid or Senior, and the other Senior developer is now Lead ( we were only two senior in the previous team 1 year and half ago ).

I honestly don't know what to do anymore, I feel like I hit a brick wall, I talk about this with my manager every two weeks and he always says something will be done. Work has become de-motivating, I ended up in the team that does one of the hardest work in the company and that every other team now depends on, and this has only set me back. I tried to move back to the previous team but they don't let me because I'm the person with the highest knowledge of how the architecture of the app and it's inner workings.

23 comments

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jacquesm
You need to move to another company and aim for the team lead slot there. It's not going to happen where you are today.
f0e4c2f7
I would say, generally don't count on promises from managers or companies about promotions, raises, or anything else.

Do the highest quality work you can figure out how to do, for the sake of the art. When you're ready for a promotion (like now) if the company doesn't give you one just leave and let another company do it.

It sounds to me like there may be more to learn in your current role though. You could think of this as an opportunity to take ownership and responsibility for the problems of the team, even if they aren't your fault and work on learning how to be a really good lead, even if that isn't the title.

Titles and money are easy enough. The actual bottlenecks are skills, insight, and experience.

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roland35
If you want to improve your situation I would be more specific with your manager. Say exactly what you need, not just what the problem is. It sounds like you need: 1) additional engineering resources backfilled, even if only part time and 2) a more direct conversation about promotion. You want to start the process now.

Also have this same discussion with your grand-boss or even the CTO. It sounds like you have one foot out the door mentally so YOLO.

Leaving is certainly one good option too. Starting this effort shows good initiative which is great to talk about in interviews.

tehlike
Threaten to leave, or actually leave. No fixes for a team or manager that don't give you what you want.
giantg2
If you threaten to leave, be ready to do it. In most cases, I'd say it's a bad idea to threaten because they might end up firing you later a bad time for you (basically the working relation might turn bad).
russfink
Or give you a sequence of very short, non-critical tasks for a year before they decide they can trust you again. Speaking from experience.
tehlike
Good point. Be ready to leave and have an offer in hand. Otherwise it won't work, you will get even bigger promises while (as others said) they will try to backfill you or fire you on the spot.

İf you are the most knowledgable person in the project, that should have the leverage to get what you want.

JonChesterfield
> The created team at the beginning was composed by: 1 developer ( myself ), 1 product owner, 1 scrum master and 1 manager.

Good grief. That's not a normal team breakdown, especially for a new project.

maiorana
yeah, that's excessive on the project/product management aspect.
maury91
I do agree was excessive, and even now that we are only two developers still feels a little bit overkill, ceremonies like daily end up being very fast, and ceremonies like retro feel very forced ( it gets very hard to say what went well and what wend bad when nothing really happens... )
maiorana
Go find yourself a better job that pays more and will give you the ability to manage others (maybe harder now than it was last year?).

If you really like the work you are doing at the current company then use that offer to get the promotion. It's not clear though if you want to manage people or if you just want more money.

Always good to heat check your earning potential every 2 years though.

maury91
Honestly, both of them, I feel ready to take on more responsibilities and extend further my impact on the work that is being done by helping other developers do a better job. I did believe that taking a project that "shakes the foundations" of almost every team in the company could have been a good proof of that. I do agree obtaining the skills and experience is extremely hard, especially on Covid times were you see your teammates once every company party ( we are doing hybrid work, you can go to the office when and if you want, I go often, my teammates of the new team never )
nickmyersdt
You have too many managers and not enough developers. In this type of organisation, management goals are the only ones that matter.

Change organisations to one where you don't have teams starting with 1 dev, 1 prod manager, 1 scrum master and 1 manager. Move to one that has a clear way of developing and moving people up and on.

maury91
My team is the only one with too many managers, other teams are more balanced with usually one manager and 6±1 developers
giantg2
I see a lot of people saying to change companies. Maybe thats the only thing you can realistically do.

But I think this sort of situation is common at many, if not most, companies. It seems like it's trial and error to find a company that will treat you right. That varies by person and manager. I work for a company that is consistently one of Computer World's best places to work and all sorts of other awards. I see people join fresh out of college and become managers within 5 years. Yet I've been mistreated, passed over, put in bad situations, etc. I'm 10 years in and only a midlevel, eventhough they had me fill a senior role for a year and tech lead for a year.

I guess I'm saying you might as well try another company, but don't be surprised if it's the same or worse. Your other alternative is to give up like me, being frustrated all the time and making under $100k.

maury91
This is exactly what scares me, the company I'm now is not bad on paper, work/life balance is good, various colleagues are friendly, it's not a bad place to work... I believe I can find other companies with the same good key metrics, the problem is that I have no way to know if is a company where I can succeed and move to the position I aim to. In theory the company where I work now had everything to make me believe I could move to Lead, it feels like my unluckiness started when I moved to the project that looked promising, and my main error was not understanding that the rest of the developers don't like change ( I will explain this better, when the team was being created it looked like everyone wanted to join it, a new project, exciting challenges, non-repetitive work. The reality was the opposite, only few people joined just to promptly leave, and I believe it is because developers like to work on repetitive task: create the n-th new page, create new components, refactor something too look more new, etc... they don't really like the uncertainty of having to research every sprint how to complete their tasks )
ipaddr
Act like a lead and lead your project to success. Take control over the project and make it work. Let them reward you after or use your success story in the next interview.
maury91
The project is already a success, now we are in the maintenance and improve part.

We have now 5 microfrontends released to production

We successfully split the old monolith into 3 microfrontends, and meanwhile 3 more teams have been created and each of them is working on a new microfrontend, two of those have already been lunched into production ( one of these teams was created and started working while the work from my team was almost stable ( for stable I mean that the contracts between the various pieces is unlikely to change, not that the app is full of bugs ))

iamandras
I've been in this situation many times. Managers have different reasons and excuses why a certain promotion is not possible. It can be a budget issue, you don't fit the expected Lead profile, and your hard work and proactive behavior are not visible enough.
EToS
At a guess, there are a few things which "could" be working against you:

- Leadership at certain companies can include a lot of people management, and so being in a team of one possibly does make the case for progression in the eyes of HR.

- The company isn't big enough to facilitate career progression for everyone.

- The project may be seen as innovative, but possibly something that will be absorbed into the best practices of all teams over the coming years, and so there may be less of a case to promote anyone in the team because of this. (this is where you need to read between the lines a little, as PO's will omit plans like this for obvious reasons)

- Unknowns.. the people who briefly worked on the team may have raised concerns during 1-1's / exit interviews that you're unaware of.

The best advice i could give is to leave any frustration at the door during the next few months, and keep an eye open for you're dream role at another company.

yrgulation
> The created team at the beginning was composed by: 1 developer ( myself ), 1 product owner, 1 scrum master and 1 manager.

Find a new job, that gives you the role you want.

treis
>During this one year and half I had constant talks with my new manager about the Lead position ( that then became Staff Engineer position ), all that happen were talks talks and only talks, no action whatsover. The justification for the impossibility to move that position is that I need to show managerial skill over a big number of developers

>the other Senior developer is now Lead ( we were only two senior in the previous team 1 year and half ago ).

>I honestly don't know what to do anymore, I feel like I hit a brick wall, I talk about this with my manager every two weeks and he always says something will be done. Work has become de-motivating, I ended up in the team that does one of the hardest work in the company and that every other team now depends on, and this has only set me back.

You've got all your answers here. Time to move on.