[aeyes]

I have seen this from the manager side at these kinds of companies, explaining to your manager that you are quitting because your level does not match your work is a waste of energy. Their hands are usually tied.

Promotion decisions are made by committees which are 1-2 levels above your manager, your manager presents the candidates. They round up a pot of multiple teams which are discussed at once and there are usually hard quotas (like 5%) of promotions to give out to this pot of employees. These hard quotas make it impossible to "do the right thing" because even if a lot of people deserve the promotion, only x% can get it. The composition of the pot of people can easily cause the problem which is described in the blog post, for example if you have a high number of juniors or a high number of employees who joined at the same time or employees with incorrect levelling from the start. If 20%+ deserve a promotion then it simply turns into a game of luck.

As a manager you try as hard as possible to get these promotions but the system of these big companies is just too rigid. Its like a pit fight instead of objectively looking at output. I have seen a lot of people leave for the same reason but I haven't seen a single change to the system in 5+ years.

Next we could talk about layoff mechanics, its equally disturbing.

[raw_anon_1111]

Honestly, I’ve worked at everything from small to medium lifestyle companies, startups, Big Enterprise, BigTech, and now Í am a staff consultant at a third party AWS consulting firm across 10 jobs.

In all of those jobs, I have found line level managers absolutely useless and powerless.

At the jobs where I was responsible for strategy, one of my conditions for employment was I would be reporting directly to a director or CTO.

[vkou]

> I have found line level managers absolutely useless and powerless.

They are doing exactly what they are paid to, which is communicate decisions made above them to the people doing the work.

You are correct - that is a powerless position. That's by design. Work isn't a democracy.

[Palmik]

Hard disagree.

At Google, in most orgs, manager can influence the chance of success significantly:

- Making sure their team works on what the org leads find "impactful"

- Facilitating cross team collaborations, which will lead to good peer reviews for your report

- Helping your report write the promo packet

- Presenting the promo case effectively during the calibration meeting and being prepared to advocate for the report and respond to criticism from other managers at the meeting

- etc.

There are many managers that do very few if any of these things, and it shows.

Yes, there are quotas, but nonetheless the manager plays a big role in whether their report makes the cut.

There is no harm in saying that you are quitting because you do not feel valued / rewarded enough. Hopefully it will effect change in the manager. Of course it's best to keep it polite and not burn any bridges in the process.

[zhach]

Author here. My manager and I discussed lengths about the capabilities they do, and it is just like this. It's not his fault at all. It's a game at the end of the day, and it's your choice whether or not you want to keep on playing

[alpb]

Having been at G and also getting denied promo several times consecutively, it's almost always a manager's fault. They're either not bringing the committee feedback to you properly or not representing your work well in that room. Either way it's a sign that they're unable to do better, and you're better off not reporting to the long term.

[blobbers]

Do you think retrospectively your manager may not have been as supportive of you as you had thought?

You missed promo 3 times, and when you left he didn't try to counter you. Is it possible s/he might have been blocking you?

[wavemode]

All of this is true, though it's definitely worth noting that some managers are better than others at advocating for the promotion of their top performers.

Getting a manger who is too passive, or too checked-out, or just plain doesn't like you, can literally set you back in your career advancement by years.

[Lord-Jobo]

Get lumped in with the wrong manager, in the eyes of the VP positions, and it can deadend your whole career. They can be a decent manager too. But if they aren’t compatible with their boss, it will burn you all the same.

[venturecruelty]

If only there were some sort of way employees could get together and like... I don't know, use their labo- I mean, work energy as lever- I mean, to convince management to recognize their uni- I mean, get their boss to pay them more.

[aeyes]

I have worked several union jobs, collective contracts usually don't touch the promotion process. If they do they often give automatic promotions after X years where X is still a fairly high number. And obviously this is not a great strategy for many reasons.

Negotiations about yearly pay raises are common but these are in the 2-5% range. Even non unionized big tech companies usually still give these yearly adjustments but its nothing compared to the 20-30% you can get when you level up.