
Ask HN: After working 70+ hrs a week my manager says no for promotion - ye55gi5
I am angry at myself for being stupid. I worked for 70+ hrs a week for one year and built a new groundbreaking platform. During my recent conversation with my manager, he told me it&#x27;s not enough for promotion and we should wait. I did my best to convince him. 
I am wondering what did I do wrong? Quite frequently I get walked over by people. Although I am good at workplace politics I am not best. I am baffled that men and women who are underperforming are going to be put for promotion. I know first hand two people who have caused delays in projects are going to be considered. All they have is probably strong connection with their managers.<p>How do you navigate workplace politics and getting ahead in the career? Changing job is one option but how long I can keep running from situation?
Also,given the state of technical interview and irrationality to ask any irrelevant question, I don&#x27;t know if I wanna go through it again anytime soon.<p>What do I need to do to move ahead and up in the career?
======
sillysaurus3
What you did wrong is exactly what so many do wrong: Your market worth is
defined by _your market worth_ , not by _how much effort you put in_.

Go out on the market. Update your resume, try to get an offer. Be ready to
accept it. Negotiate with your manager and show them empirical evidence you're
worth more.

The reason you have to be willing to accept the other offer is that the moment
you approach your manager with it, they might decide to replace you rather
than promote you. But counterintuitively, your willingness to accept the other
offer will work in your favor and is more likely to get you promoted than
replaced.

Do not under any circumstances assume that loyalty to your job will be
rewarded in any way. The fact that your manager was willing to let you work 70
hour weeks for a year is evidence you were being taken advantage of. That's
life, though. The way to win is to play the game.

(There are situations where letting an employee work 50+ hour weeks is
justifiable, e.g. if the employee goes into it with eyes wide open and without
any implicit promises of future promotion or future compensation increases.
Quarterly reviews with salary increases would also take it out of the "being
taken advantage of" category.)

As a final note, it's very common for employees to force themselves to work
crazy hours without any encouragement from management. It's not necessarily
management's job to stop you from doing that, though a good manager will. I
did this to myself my first couple of jobs, and had only myself to blame. I'm
not saying you necessarily were doing that, but it's such a common story for
someone to come into the industry with something to prove and convince
themselves to dedicate their life to their job to the exclusion of all else.

Go home each day after putting in 8 hours. The door's right there. If you work
harder than that, you should feel like you're getting an excellent deal out of
it. And no, promoting you doesn't automatically count as an excellent deal.
You should still probably work 8 hours outside of very special situations.

EDIT: If you're feeling upset that you got taken advantage of, don't sweat it.
A year isn't such a big deal in the scheme of things. You're far more equipped
now for your upcoming years than one year ago, for example.

~~~
x0x0
I was with you until you said negotiate with the current manager. Unless OP
came up with this 70 hour a week thing all on his or her own, his or her
manager had some hand in leading OP to believe that delivering this platform
(or whatever) would get the promotion OP wants. One of the most basic
responsibilities a manager has to a report is managing the report's career, ie
what work merits a promotion. So either OP made some stuff up entirely in OP's
head with no input from OP's manager (bad, a manager should be proactively
discussing this) or OP's manager led OP astray (really bad).

Either way, I'd suggest rolling the dice and starting over elsewhere. And this
time, OP needs to be really clear with the new manager on what OP wants and
what work or deliverables gets OP there.

~~~
kamaal
>>And this time, be really clear with your new manager on what you want and
what work or deliverables get you there.

In many cases even this doesn't work. That is unfortunately how toxic politics
really is. Politics is an art of manipulating people and deceiving them into
doing things.

In the case you mentioned, its possible that the manager will agree for the
deliverables on hand. When the time for reward comes, they will simply say
there were other contenders and delivered more than you did. You can't argue
much from there, because they will start throwing in the 'confidentiality'
card saying "You don't know how much more the other guy delivered".

Its always easy to say this because you don't have any way of verifying it.
And calling their BS on their face means permanently damaging your
relationship. Then you have no option but to leave.

In short: If you have this kind of a manager, stop fighting the system, just
leave.

------
rifung
I have no idea what the problem is with respect to your not getting put up for
promotion, but I certainly see a problem in your title.

Working x hours a week doesn't mean you should get promoted. Getting promoted
has nothing to do with how hard you work but fulfilling the requirements for
you to get promoted. If you want to get promoted, talk to your manager and
figure out what you need to do to get promoted.

For example, at Google to get promoted you have to show that you are already
performing at the level you want to be promoted to. The difference between
different levels has nothing to do with how many hours or how hard you work,
but with scope, so unless you're given a project that has an appropriate scope
for the next level, you aren't going to be able to be promoted, and it's much
easier to get things which help you fulfill those requirements if you talk to
your manager.

In summary, talk to your manager and good luck.

~~~
justonepost
Sounds great in theory, unfortunately, this doesn't really work in many
situations because you need to be doing the job you were hired for.

Really, do you want more money or a better title? A better title doesn't
really help at all and in fact can hinder. What you want is more money. Best
way to get that is to move to another company.

If you want to be promoted to management, you need to learn politics and
management. Lots of books on audible can help you with that.

~~~
kamaal
>>Really, do you want more money or a better title? A better title doesn't
really help at all and in fact can hinder.

If you have opportunity on one hand and money on the other. Always chose
opportunity, because a good opportunity will lead to better money in the
future.

~~~
jjpe
Spoken like someone with plenty of money in the bank, which is of course a
luxurious position to find yourself in. And in those circumstances I agree
with you.

But the above doesn't hold for everyone, and thus I don't in general agree
with your assessment.

------
0xbear
I’ve been in this situation. You should leave and get a pay raise that way.
Next time when aiming for a promo remember that results alone won’t get you
there. You have to fiercely and constantly beat your chest about your
achievements, and “show leadership”, and once you become perceived as
valuable, diplomatically let management know that you have much better gigs
lined up. It sucks, and I wish it wasn’t this way, but that’s how it is.

That said, by far the most efficient way to progress in your career is to not
let your employers take you for granted by changing jobs every 2 years or so
unless things are seriously on fire.

Another bit of advice: do not work much more than 40 hours a week on a
sustained basis. Over my 20 year career I have observed negative correlation
between that and promotions.

~~~
Clubber
>Another bit of advice: do not work much more than 40 hours a week on a
sustained basis. Over my 20 year career I have observed negative correlation
between that and promotions.

Isn't that a strange twist of human nature in the US workplace? The harder you
work, the less respected you are. It's absolutely true though.

~~~
0xbear
People who work 70 hours a week on a sustained basis are just bad at saying
"no". Not saying "no" often is the surest way I know of to disappoint all
those people you're saying "yes" to. People's attention span to things that
are peripheral to them is very short, so no amount of commitment is ever
enough, and you have to deliver (most of) the things you have signed up for.

You can't do that if you bite of more than you can chew. You _can_ do that if
you manage your time properly and say "no" often. That way you have some slack
to recover if things go wrong, and deliver on your commitments.

~~~
qb45
... and even if you deliver 100% of your 175% commitment, I have a somewhat
dark and cynical hypothesis that the manager may secretly feel guilty about
overworking you and resolve this guilt by downplaying your achievements.

Merely feeling or behaving like a doormat for no reason will make many people
around uneasy. Any situation that shows you somehow deserve it, relieves them.
If they aren't self-aware enough to recognize this, congratulations, you are
training them to exploit you.

------
wheelerwj
I want to commend you on taking the opportunity to examine the situation
rather than just letting it go. It can be really hard to break out of a rut.
While everyone else is suggesting the obvious; find someone who will pay you
more, I'm going to offer a slightly different angle because when you mention
other people who are underperforming are being considered and that you are
good at office politics, it raises a red flag for me.

First, I would recommend taking a long look at your communication skills.
Growing in the workplace is often about effectively selling your vision and
then making sure it gets executed. Whether its a corporate strategy or a
update to an internal microservice, you're going to need to get people to buy-
in to your ideas. Just because you can do the work, doesn't mean you can get
other people to do the work too.

Second, another concern of mine is that you aren't properly understanding the
goals of the company, or those of your immediate supervisors at least. If you
put in an insane amount if hours and hit all your deadlines, but people who
work less and cause delays are being considered for a promotion instead of
you, it leads me to believe you might be doing things you aren't asked to do,
which leads me to believe you might be a bit of a rogue employee, always doing
what you think is best even if it's not what your supervisor wanted.

Finally, another nod to communication skills. The fact that you put in so much
time and your colleagues might not be, makes me wonder if you don't work well
in a team. If you're a solo 10xer, great! but you still have to work with
other people if you want to grow within a company.

regardless, the absolute most important thing is that you are very correct to
question the circumstance. Something has to change!

~~~
matt_wulfeck
> _Growing in the workplace is often about effectively selling your vision and
> then making sure it gets executed_

It's so hard for me personally. It can be really discouraging knowing your
idea is good but you can't get any buy in. I have to stop and think, and ask
myself "is it worth it for me to jump on my sword for this?" Often times the
answer is no.

~~~
wheelerwj
More people struggle with this than you think. Leadership IS hard.

If you are having a hard time with this, take a step back, instead of telling
people what you think would be better, ask what they think would be better.

It's easier to get people to put time into something they already believe in
rather than a whole new idea.

------
yskchu
A few life lessons after a decade in IT:

1\. It's 10% about what you do. And 90% about how you present it. Presentation
includes getting people to people know your value, your impact to the
business, and most importantly, talking yourself up, and talking yourself up
to the right people :). The higher you go, the more important this is. Which
goes to point 2:

2\. The higher you go, the more it is about who you know, and how well you
know them. Who's ear have you got? How influential are they, and who are they
influencing? What do people think of you?

3\. Then it's your teammates, and your peers. You want to get promoted, but
what do they think? Are they going to support you? The company thinks of this
too.

You mentioned people who have caused delays, being considered for promotion
instead of yourself. How well do they hit the above 3 points?

The higher you go, the more that it becomes a people job instead of a
technical job. One thing to ask yourself as well is, do you want to go up? Or
do you want to stay technical? If you want to go up, better get in the game!

It's normal to get frustrated on the journey up the ladder. As others have
mentioned, the hours are only the entry price, there's many other factors at
play here. Btw, as you'll know when you become a manager, his job is to make
sure you deliver - and you have, for one year already, 70 hours a week. His
job is not to get you what you want, his job is to make sure you work (and the
harder that he can make you work, the better). Personally I don't agree with
this approach, and it's not one I use, but then again, I've personally had
many managers like this.

Ultimately, you will be promoted. I'm sure of it. You're already talking to
the right people (this audience :)). It'll just take time. How much time,
depends on how well you master factors 1-3 above.

~~~
Caveman_Coder
This is both true and sad. It's also why I've stayed predominantly technical
(I did take a managerial role at one point but changed jobs for a technical
lead position). Some people may be cut out for middle management corporate
bullshit...I am one of those that is not :)

------
kamaal
Lets say you worked 75 hrs a week? 5 days a week- So that comes to around 15
hrs a day. That is a lot. Even with 6 days that is 12 hrs a week. _Never do
that again_. Unless you are working on your own venture or have somebody over
you, a boss that has agreed to reward you in return before hand.

My guess is you work at a big corporate. Then Im sorry to break out the bad
news to you. You managers knows too well that you are hard working and deliver
results. But he likely has a political cartel going on, due to which it
doesn't really matter how hard you work. In fact you can even do 120 hr work
week and all you would be at the end is a useful work donkey on which he can
dump all the work while he rewards his lackeys. _Never ever ever, contribute
good work to an unfair system._

And yes you got it right, your only option is to keep hopping jobs until you
find the right manager. There is no known solution to this problem unless you
wish to be as big a fraud and cheat as much as they are or bigger.

The only advice I can give to you is to not take this to your head. Spend your
time being productive, useful and gaining skills as you spend time in this
profession. These investment pay on the longer run.

But as far office politics itself is concerned. Alas there is no other
solution. Unless you find a manager that can take care of you, or you are just
enjoying an insane patch of luck. You just have to suffer through politics.

No known solution exists.

------
isaaclyman
A true story for your consideration:

One of my first jobs was as a dishwasher at a pasta shop. A few of my friends
worked there and helped me land the job. One of them, Kevin _, was a
particularly good dishwasher--fast, efficient, conscientious. The managers
were vocally appreciative of his work and used him as an example.

One day, I was talking to one of the other friends, Macey_, and I mentioned
that I thought Kevin was probably up for a promotion. The career path at this
pasta shop was dishwasher > cook > waiter > manager, and at a place like that
you could move up pretty quickly because turnover was so high. Macey said with
some confidence that Kevin would never get promoted. He was just too fast at
washing dishes. He'd made himself indispensable, especially on high-traffic
evenings, and the management would never gum up the works by moving him to
another position.

Macey was wrong. Kevin was promoted to cook within a few weeks.

I guess there are managers who won't promote their most productive employee.
And there are managers who will.

~~~
isaaclyman
Apologies for the random italics. I meant to add asterisks indicating that
names had been changed.

~~~
skrebbel
Use the edit, Luke!

------
jdswain
It doesn't matter what you do, it's what you're seen to do. People that are
good self promoters do well at this, and people that quietly get their work
done, don't. I don't like this myself, and I'm not very good at it, but it is
how it works. You know the type of people that are always telling their bosses
what they have done (and usually taking credit for work that was done by the
team), they are the ones that move up first. You'd think that bosses would see
through this but they often don't.

I have read about 'making your manager look good' as a tactic for promotion,
and that seems to make sense too, but I've never really tried it. This
probably means not bringing up any bad news too.

This all may seem cynical, but I've seen it work for other people.

------
SeaDude
Did you build the groundbreaking platform solo or did you and a team build it?

Is it truly groundbreaking on its own merit or is this a personal adjective?

If you are part of a team and you are putting in long hours where other team
members (çloser to bosses ear) are not, you may brew issues. Pull others in,
delegate, share some credit, involve the team.

How well have you self-promoted this groundbreaking (yuge claim btw) platform
outside of your own team? Does anyone else at the company know your name or
are you the "guy in the basement carrying/justifying three positions with your
output"?

It is very tough to catch rec in a large org where everyone is pitted against
eachother for promotions.

Some ideas are:

1\. Be careful touting your hours worked as a metric for promotion. Sometimes
you look like a sucker rather than a leader deserving promo. Also toutimg
hours automatically makes coworkers appear bad. If they have the managers ear,
you tell me how this goes.

2\. Consider the word "promotion". If your looking to a manager to "promote
you", make it easy for him/her by promoting yourself first. Show other
groups/team members this project. Become a trainer. Shake hands and kiss
babies accross your org. Let them have no option but to speak your name in
conjuction with this groundbreaking platform.

Im in a similar boat. The above are some things ive done to stand out and be
promoted. Lots of groundwork over 3-4 years.

------
caw
Without knowing you or your workplace exactly, there's two buckets this falls
into. The first is nefarious, where your manager took advantage of you to
provide output and will replace you with someone else eager. In this case the
only solution is leave and try to determine the red flags that led you to this
point to avoid joining another role with the same demands.

The second possibility is that there's a missing communication gap here. As
you've discovered, effort alone is not the key to success. Effort may get you
between basic levels, e.g. Programmer 1 to Programmer 2, but not necessarily
from Programmer to Team Lead where there's more expectations beyond technical
skills like mentoring, working between organizations, etc

Some questions to ask yourself and possibly discuss further with manager:

1\. Why did the 70+ hours go on for a year? Was this coming down from top
level or self imposed? Where was the communication about sustainability, or
outcomes upon completion?

2\. Where was the 1:1s and check-ins during this project that you got to the
end before knowing the outcome? You own your 1:1s, use them to discuss your
career goals, advancement, and blockers, not just as a status update. Schedule
them if your manager isn't.

3\. Was your manager previously aware of your desire to get promoted?
Remember, not everyone wants to get promoted. Have you previously discussed
goals, measures, and skills to obtain this?

4\. If you previously discussed the goals and measures, why did this 70+hr/wk
project not align with these goals? This in particular is a failure of
management. "Crunch time" is a given in industry at times, but this seems into
Death March territory if it was top-down.

4(b). If the previously discussed goals did align with this project, what else
is missing that didn't get met? If everything did get met, argue to that
positioning and discussion rather than "I worked really hard and made a
thing."

5\. How was your communication of the work you were performing and completing?
Sell benefits, not features. Did others perhaps think that you worked long
hours because of your lack of skill, thus requiring more hours to make it up?

------
huehehue
Unfortunately there's no silver bullet, but I'll share my opinion/thoughts.

If the game is to move up the ladder, then it's best to understand what
management thinks is important. What does your boss really value, and how do
you think they see you?

If you know underachievers that are getting promoted, then _somebody_ doesn't
think they're underachievers. Are they more vocal/communicative about their
work? Do they take your boss(es) out for lunch or hang out on the weekends? Do
they dream up new initiatives and share ideas? Good work often goes
overlooked, so it's probably on you to make sure your bosses know what you're
up to.

You might even consider seeking an objective appraisal of your work (well, as
objective as possible). Does your new platform _really_ deliver enough value
to warrant a promotion? Maybe, I have no idea.

If it turns out that your work really _is_ undervalued, and the politics game
isn't for you, then it might be better to move on.

------
SBCRec
My thought is, maybe you are too good at your current role? Ive heard of good
performers not getting promotions because they are needed to maintain
performance in their current team. (not in a software company)

------
hliyan
You'll probably need to give us more context. It's dangerous to speculate
without it. What was the value of the platform? How long have you been with
the company? Have there been any incidents over the last year that would have
created a negative impression of you in the mind of your manager (however
justified or unjustified)? Are you an isolated case or is this a pattern at
your organization? What is your communication channel with your manager like?
One-on-one chats, email, text? How often?

------
jmull
Waheell...

This is a big can o' worms, and no one here knows what really went down (I
don't think even you do) so there a necessarily going to be some assumptions.
Can you forgive me (and the others that are presumably preparing their own
replies even as I type this)?

If you're cool with cutting straight to the chase: I'm pretty sure there are
some kind of "rules to getting ahead" at your workplace that _you are not
perceiving_. I don't know what they are, but I think you must be really
whiffing on them bad to not even get a token promotion for what you've
contributed.

(One assumption I'm making is that you've done what you said you did. I have a
decent BS-dectector and while there's limited info to go on here, I believe
you are sincere.)

So...

1\. What promotion did you go for? Your accomplishments have been technical so
if you were going for a technical promotion -- e.g. SW Engineer to Senior SW
Engineer, or Senior to Principal or whatever -- or just a raise in $$$ then
you've made a good case. On the other hand, if you were looking to go into,
e.g., management then the technical accomplishments might not as obviously
qualify you. (Personally, I think people who show they can excel in domains
with complex and competing constraints are qualified for a wide variety of
responsibilities, but I haven't found that's a widely held view among
executives.)

2\. You manager may be powerless to give you a promotion. Some mangers (weak
ones) won't admit it, but they may have no actual power to promote you no
matter what they do.

3\. You say you're OK at office politics (good but not the best) but I think
there must be some stuff -- some dominant trends -- that you are not fully
perceiving. E.g., you thought the way to get ahead was to work 70+ hours a
week for a year, but apparently it's actually to develop a "strong connection"
with your manager.

I don't know. You might be able to adjust and excel and get the promotion you
want at your current employer, but it really sounds like you will be "swimming
upstream" there: you've got skills and a work ethic that they don't value.

Consider working normal hours at your current position and in the meantime (1)
look for a new position where they might value what you have to offer; (2)
spend the newly freed-up hours doing something personally enriching (whether
personally or professionally).

Edit: Ah, shoot, went from zero to 37 responses while I wrote this, and the
Opost is flagged to boot. Oh wells.

------
garganzol
Been in similar situation for quite a long time. The only thing that worked
exceptionally well for me was to found my own company. I became my own boss,
hired a few people, did and currently do some great products.

Before that, I never tried to change the employer to get a raise. I felt
pretty quickly that I can do my own game, so there is no sense in making moves
to local extremums. Instead, I just used the time at work to get more
experience and expertise.

~~~
thesmallestcat
What sort of products?

~~~
garganzol
Industrial security, desktop-based.

------
strictnein
The not-so-secret way of getting raises and promotions in the tech world is to
switch jobs.

------
Caveman_Coder
Tell yourself this daily: "Quit being a corporate lackey. This company doesn't
care about me they only want to extract value from my labor."

~~~
hayd
I too want to extract value for my labor.

------
comstock
You won't like this answer, but as you point out, the solution is to get
another job.

Broder experience should help, you'll begin to see patterns based on the
different places you've worked and be better equipped to handle the problems
you encounter.

The only jobs I've really regretted are those I stayed at too long. The last
years seem like a waste of time, I could of provided more value, and got more
useful experience elsewhere.

------
partycoder
There are many things in play here.

We humans are social animals and we still have a lot of vestigial stuff when
it comes to establish our relative social rank. The people you perceive as
being less competent maybe appeal to those vestigial "leadership traits" more.
Superficial stuff such as your voice, your posture... and less superficial
stuff like how you express yourself, verbally and non-verbally. You can try to
work with a voice coach, you would be impressed with the results.

Then, maybe you are a victim of your own success. Being too effective in your
role can make it harder for you to be replaced.

Support is required for getting promoted. Support would be taken for granted
in a meritocracy, where people recognize and honor merit, by supporting people
that deserve a promotion or stepping aside if a better candidate comes up. But
not every organization is a meritocracy.

It is not only about doing a lot of work, but also about being able to take
the credit for that work. If you were an individual contributor in a team,
most likely the credit got distributed among the team or your manager took a
good chunk of it.

------
jmspring
Working a lot will almost never lead to "a promotion". The environment you are
in doesn't see the issue with you working 70 hours and did nothing to mitigate
it. That is poor management, poor product definition and poor program
management. Run from these situations.

Startups that tout "we work hard, we play hard", avoid them. That is
synonymous with "you work hard, we hope to profit". Sadly at a YC recruiting
event some years back there was an SF startup touting "we are a family" and
"we meet with customers after hours to get input" as positive things. I wish I
recalled the name of the startup. Unless it is your own startup or you have
significant equity (founders shares), your 70 hours is a nice charitable gift
to management and the investors.

I've been guilty of this. Caring about the company, product, etc. only to pull
my head out of my ass, realize the negative impact on my life and walked away
before the 1st year cliff of vesting.

------
nextweek2
You might be working yourself out of a promotion. I once worked for a company
that promoted poorly performing programmers to project managers to keep them
out of production code.

Good software engineers end up doing the same job but getting titles: Senior
Engineer, Team Lead, Specialist Engineer, Consultant Engineer. Basically the
same job but with a little prestige.

If you are a hard worker then you should realise your value, line up a new job
and take it as a lesson learnt. Changing jobs is the fastest way up the ladder
and whatever you do, don't burn bridges. You might be back in 12 months as
your managers manager, I've seen it happen.

------
peteforde
You need to consider that if you're a manager and you have an employee working
70 hours a week, your first intuition might be that they have to invest almost
twice as much time as the others to keep up.

This is neither true or fair, but you didn't come here looking for fairness.
The reality is that they simply aren't aware of the value that you believe
that you're creating, and they certainly aren't happy about you putting in so
much time to do it.

Time for the next adventure. This time, set boundaries and make sure to have a
social life outside of work. You'll find that things go smoother. Hang in
there!

------
TheRealPomax
Does your contract actually stipulate 70 hours a week, or were you fairly
compensated for your overtime? If no to either: why did you keep pulling 70
hours a week after the first week? Because if you worked at the same level as
someone working 40 hours, with the only difference being you were willing to
work 70 for no additional pay, then as an employee you're not worth more than
someone working 40 hours a week. You may have actually cheated yourself out of
a promotion or even raise simply by pretending working long hours for the same
pay would be worth it in the long run.

------
NamTaf
Why would any company promote you and thus pay you more if they already
extract nearly double the total work* out of you for the current pay? You are
a mostly-replacable cog in their machine and it's in their best interest to
pay you as little as possible for as much effort as possible.

Changing jobs isn't running from it. You change into a higher position with
both higher responsibility and pay, and therefore move up.

Don't ever work extra to 'prove yourself'. All you're proving is that they're
able to get more effort out of you for no extra cost.

------
everdayimhustln
Effort and results may not be enough because real life isn't a meritocracy.
Insecure manangers worry they'll promote someone whom could be promoted past
them as their new boss instead of them getting promoted (promotions as win-
loss), save some money on their P&L by BS under-promoting people or
pigeonholed someone as a worker role instead of mentoring/trialing them for
managing or leading. These and other nonperformance factors can high-peforming
staff surrounded by communication major managers.

------
JSeymourATL
> he told me it's not enough for promotion and we should wait. I did my best
> to convince him.

Don't let others make a decision for you -- promote yourself! Want to break
out of mediocrity? Here's some food for thought from James Altucher >
[http://freakonomics.com/2013/06/05/in-praise-of-
mediocrity-a...](http://freakonomics.com/2013/06/05/in-praise-of-mediocrity-
an-excerpt-from-james-altuchers-choose-yourself/)

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nunez
so many questions:

1\. Wha did you work on, and how valuable was it to your company? In other
words, to whom was this product "groundbreaking?" if what you worked on wasn't
perceived as valuable, then you could've spent 100 hours a week on it; the
result you experienced would have been the same. Which leads me to:

2\. How often did you catch up with your lead and "skip level" (his or her
lead)? Tou want to move up in your career; did you have this conversation with
them? have you worked on goals with them? If you haven't, then you were
effectively flying blind, hence the result.

3\. Did anyone else know about the time you were spending on this platform
that you built? If not, why?

4\. Did your manager tell you why you were rejected for promotion? Did s/he
build a performance plan (the good kind) to ensure that you got the promo next
time?

Switching companies is a solution, and you'll probably get paid more and
perhaps receive a title upgrade, but not keeping these things in mind will
limit or handicap your progress eventually. you want to vertically progress,
not horizontally unless you REALLY like the space within which you're working
(this post tells me that you're not).

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throwaway20300
I would make a concerted effort to improve your English. You may not perceive
it as fair, but you will be judged by your usage of language, and some of the
mistakes you made in this post would indicate "not management material" to
many managers. Believe me I know it's difficult -- I lived for some time in a
country where I spoke the local language much worse than you speak English,
but this is something you may want to consider.

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barry-cotter
Quit right now. Do you know anyone with technical skill and either
organisational or political acumen who knows you have technical skill? Go do
consulting with them. Go do consulting with someone. Quit and start applying
for jobs like it's your full time job. Quit, work on that market for lemons
upwork.com and blog about the problems you're solving. Quit, do a Udacity
nanodegree and then work on their hiring platform, Udacity Blitz.

But definitely quit.

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tlogan
Finding a new job will temporary temporary solve your problem.

Management will only promote people if they think promotion will help them or
the company. Promotion is not a way to reward people for their hard work. You
have bonuses for that.

If you want to promotion you should already act and take responsibilities as
you are already promoted. So instead of building platform you should be
convincing other people (or management) for resources to build the platform.

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Danihan
Cut down to working around 30 hours a week, ya goof

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nicholas73
Level 0: Work hard

Level 1: Learn to ask questions until you get a full answer. What are the true
blocking points for promotion? What he told you was vaguery.

Level 2: Have an action plan worked out with your manager beforehand, so that
the roadmap for promotion is scheduled with clear milestones. This way you can
hold someone accountable before you make sacrifices.

Level 3: (long term career stuff)

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cmer
If the promotion was for a manager role, it might simply be because "you get
walked over by people".

Good developers rarely make managers unfortunately. While I don't have much
info, it could simply be that your manager doesn't think you're fit or ready
for a managerial position. And btw, there's nothing wrong with that.

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taylodl
One of the advantages of being an older developer is not only have we seen
every technology coming and going - and have a deep understanding of what new
tech is likely to stick around a while - but we've also seen every office
politics scenario as well. We know the technology and we know the system.

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kabdib
If your manager says "That's not enough" and doesn't give you any more
guidance it is time to find a new manager, either at that company or another
one. What you need to be doing should not be a mystery.

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jcslzr
Seems like you didnt get the memo: [https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-
principle/](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/)

you are welcome

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petraeus
Your first mistake was believing effort has anything to do with success. Its
all about who you know, not how hard you work.

Disclaimer, those who works hard and also know the right people can be
successful

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barhum
Most people just act irrational and maybe can't really see how much you
actually contribute to the organization. We humans are really biased when it
comes to choices.

I would read these two books:

How to Win Friends and Influence People

Thinking Fast and Slow

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david38
You need to quit. Get a new job immediately.

Either your work wasn't very good, in which case your manager should have told
you before letting you spend a year doing things that way

Or your manager is taking advantage of you.

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foota
Maybe try to raise the visibility of what you're working on? Did you ask where
he felt you could work on?

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bitJericho
Stop letting people walk all over you and say no.

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amriksohata
Best thing you can do, is leave

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uyoakaoma
Why is this flagged?

