The most likely reason for you to be reading this blog is that you have recently been promoted. Let me at the outset offer you my heartiest congratulations. It is good to get the recognition for spending more than industry average time with one company. Considering the alternatives available in a growing market place it is not hard to imagine what you would have done if they had not promoted you this year, but today is not the day to discuss it. The events leading to your promotion announcement have equal importance; you must make a note of it in your daily diary for a need may later arise to narrate this day to your grandchildren.
Dear diary, today, was an ordinary day but who could tell it was all going to change this very day. I was making an important point on ‘operator-overload’ when I was pulled out of the code-review meeting. Many pair of eyes followed me as I walked into big boss’s cabin. Our HR Partner, My Boss and The Big Boss were all facing an empty chair. They all stood up and shook my hand. I tried to keep my composure in this strange setting. I mumbled a short Ganapathi Shloka in case there were any dark forces working towards materializing layoffs. The gaze from all three was so penetrating that I turned back to see if it left a mark on the wall behind. A sealed letter was thrust in my direction and I was urged to read it (aloud.) I opened the letter trying hard to control trembling by feigning fumble. Though the HR team had made no modifications to the 1987 promotion template, my hairs stood at the edge of its seat with the mention of phrases like “contributed to the success of the organization”, “setting high standards” and “promoted to the level of …” It is not that I was not expecting this promotion, why it was last year in the same cabin, I had cried on the subject! Today was no different but the tears I am holding back were that of humility and joy. What will be my parent’s reaction to this news; will I be forgiven for not fathering a male child. I reflected for a moment on how I would look with head shaven as the impending visit to Tirupati Balaji can no longer be postponed. I cursed myself for not preparing a speech to thank the patrons, for all I could muster was, “I will do my best to prove my worth to the organization.” The big boss stood up and gave me a warm handshake, pointing to the door, he said “Nothing less is expected!” With one heavy burden off, I carried another as I came out of the room. The burden of expectations, yes the same burden with which I left my parent’s home in search of a good life?
I ignored the inquisitive eyes as I walked back and shoved the letter in the drawer. I returned back to the code-review meeting but nothing seems to be making sense here anymore. My mind was racing with questions seeking immediate answers to –
- Who else is promoted?
- What is my new title? There were rumors that they will introduce Assistant Deputy Manager at E4.5 Level. I had no time to look at the details on second page.
- How much is the salary raise? Am I in the higher end of raise bracket?
- How will Nitin react when he gets this news? He is such a show off!
- Should I wait for boss to make this promotion official in next week’s staff meeting? Will I be able to hold for that long?
My train of thoughts halted when someone called out loud, “Nitin! Sir is calling you in his cabin.” Nitin with one glance exchange guessed what was going on; he filled his chest with sufficient oxygen to last the long walk to big boss’s cabin. Everyone looked at me to answer an unasked question? I surrendered, “I think they are distributing promotion letters today!” The code-review meeting was promptly called off and for good reasons. The office as seen from my viewpoint now stands divided into two parts and I belonged to top 30% of the elite group of successfully-promoted employees. Nothing will be the same again.
The biting question still looms large, “did I deserve this promotion or am I part of some corporate conspiracy to promote employees once in every 2.75 years?” In the Indian IT sector things work differently. The promotions are handed over to subdue anxiety caused by using same title for longer than 3 years. Skills are function of time by that I mean if you work in an operation theater as an anesthetist you might as well become a surgeon in the third year simply by inducting new skills. Now that might not be true in some of the hospitals but most of the software engineering workshops operate in that manner. There are industry benchmark criterions for rating skills as average, proficient, or excellent based on the number of years one spends doing a particular activity. Most of the employees know where they stand. There is seldom any argument over skills because if you ever do, you end up in a training workshop and/or six months bench assignment. Anyone who gets promoted based on skills criterion alone is seldom exulted. This blog is not about routine promotions but it is a bible for fast tracking your career.
If everything else was equal, candidate’s virtues become deciding factor for fast track promotions. I would like to classify virtues in three levels in descending order - (a) winning, (b) succeeding and (c) ideating. Let us take some sample conversations that one hears from the team members during a customer reported outage due to product defect. We can easily tell the virtue level of participants based on how they react in this situation –
Winning :-
“if we can get the error code or state of device, we can crack the problem within minutes”“by introducing breakpoints, I can reproduce the problem in the lab, in a jiffy”“let us just call the customer directly and start the debugging session”Noteworthy Attributes: Impatience, Risk Taking, and Unreasonable Commitment.
Succeeding :-
“let us look at the data available and see why this problem is happening”“why don’t we make a tiger team to reproduce the exact problem in the lab”“let us not commit a date till we are certain of the root cause”Noteworthy Attributes: Patience, Analytical, and Guided Caution
Ideating :-
“last time when customer complained of the similar issue, the problem was at their end.”“how can we be sure if we have reproduced the same issue”“don’t want them to call me at odd hours; company should plan for such exigencies.”Noteworthy Attributes: Shifting of responsibility, Speculating and Non-commitment.
A good appraisal process is designed to capture these subtle differences in personalities and promote people with winning attributes. This makes everyday life of software engineers worthwhile. Every conversation needs to be weighed. There are measures and marks for spring in the walk. In a real situation, one would argue that everyone collaborates equally to solve the problem. Remember managers get credit for “team” performance. That explains why most of the high performing managers are good at handling crisis. Their own promotion is contingent to solving a crisis that is often created by them or in their honor! Usually Individual Contributors (a respectful title for someone who fixes defects coded by his/her migrant friends) with “winning” attributes emerge on the top of the list for promotion. It is very hard for employees with virtues of “success” to accept this model. They get easily disillusioned with the appraisal process and are constantly seeking a fair system. Things get really out of hand when folks with “success” virtues get promoted together with others. The people with “ideating” virtues are not even looking for promotion and are genuinely scornful when promoted. I learned about this when a pastry shop near our office reported drop in sales after promotion announcements in certain years.
Have you ever tried to find a good reason for not being promoted? Now this is exactly where everyone washes hands off the proceedings. A very close friend of mine (name withheld on request from LinkedIn) had put in his papers immediately after 5th unsuccessful promotion year. This (resignation) gave him enough courage to challenge the appraisal system and here is what I learned. Most companies have written policy to not entertain any promotion gossips and hearsay. When someone reports resignation on being promoted with other non-deserving candidates makes the discussion a corporate espionage and HR deals with it in an official manner. It is considered perfectly normal when someone expecting a promotion resigns for not getting one. My friend was naïve; he provided details of his next employment to his supervisor, as a proof that the industry has found him worthy of higher rank. Armed with additional inputs, his Manager launched a fresh campaign to promote his candidature. There were many possible outcomes of this adventure but none as tragic. HR promised to promote him in due course on the condition he withdraws resignation. He accepted the condition and they officially added him to the next year’s list of promotion prospects, subject to budgetary approvals. His manager’s budget was duly reduced by 15% with a 10% year on year improvement! He is the only non-HR professional on the LinkedIn using their paid service. My friend provided me with deep insight into how Organizations are structured with graphic details. I use this case study to drive the message home. “We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaks.” ~ Edward Murrow
Typical India R&D Center Org structure (Picture Credit)
Let us recap: The current rules for engagement are “winners” get out-of-turn promotion and “successful” get on-turn promotion. It is not very difficult for successful people to demonstrate winning virtues. Pay attention to the language, you have to demo not necessarily deliver. The transition from success to winning is lot easier than drifting towards inaction. Every person contributes towards winning but only few are able to articulate and align. Not willing to change will result in more work for less money.
PS: Standard Disclaimers, such as this article is figment of someone's imagination, there is no truth in this publication. It is purely written for entertainment purpose and of course to get more hits on this web page. Names and incidents reported are fictional and may have coincidental resemblance. It is not written to hurt anyones' feelings. Children below the age of 58 years must be accompanied by adults when reading this blog. No animals were hurt in testing our products. We condemn child labor. We suggest further reading on how to ban fur jackets.
