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Ask HN: Should I Ask for Promotion?

9 pointsby naikasover 5 years ago
I am happy and fully charged to work for my current employer. As a PM, I am tasked to create new products/services and responsible for their growth. I feel I am working more than my title prescribes. So, do I ask my manager to promote me? Or do I keep working with the same energy and let the performance "speak"?

7 comments

Jemaclusover 5 years ago
In my experience, <i>you don&#x27;t get what you don&#x27;t ask for</i>. In other words, your work&#x2F;performance rarely &quot;speaks&quot; for itself. If you believe your work is representative of a promotion, then you should absolutely talk to your boss about it. Even if they say &quot;no&quot;, you can follow up with &quot;what do I need to get there?&quot; and demonstrate a willingness to grow and level up in the organization. That can kickstart a process where your boss is <i>actively</i> helping you get a promotion. (Assuming they&#x27;re a good boss...)<p>For now, I recommend compiling a list of achievements and work that you&#x27;ve done that illustrates your growth. When you have this conversation, your job is so sell yourself as worthy of a promotion. You can&#x27;t just say &quot;I&#x27;m working more&quot;. That won&#x27;t fly. But you can say &quot;In the last 6 months, I&#x27;ve accomplished X, Y, and Z. I proactively identified problems M and N, and recruited Joe and Sally to develop a solution, then implemented it within six weeks. This solution saved&#x2F;made the company $A, and increased productivity by B%.&quot; Numbers and data generally speak more than words.<p>Another piece of advice that a former boss told me is &quot;don&#x27;t ask, tell&quot;. I&#x27;m not sure I&#x27;m 100% on board with this, but the idea is that you go in with something like &quot;I&#x27;ve done all of these things (see above), and it&#x27;s time for me to move up to the next level and get a promotion to Senior Whatever.&quot; This shows confidence and assertiveness, which is generally a good thing the more senior you get. I&#x27;m not 100% convinced this works, but it has worked with me for the last few bosses I&#x27;ve had, so... YMMV.<p>Good luck.
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a-salehover 5 years ago
It depends?<p>I.e. when I worked at a fairly large multinational (around 10k headcount), the only time I got promoted was when I explicitly started asking along the lines: &quot;I like the sound of &#x27;senior engineer&#x27;, how do I get there?&quot;<p>But there was a process. Maybe you don&#x27;t have a process.<p>W.r.t. &#x27;having your performance speak&#x27; I would suggest looking at it as &#x27;building your case&#x27; rather than &#x27;I am working a lot, right?&#x27;
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james_impliuover 5 years ago
Doing lots of your current job != exhibiting you will succeed at the sorts of tasks if you were promoted, which is why if you are great at a certain job you can get stuck doing it, especially if you&#x27;re a bit understaffed which I guess you are if you&#x27;re doing a ton of extra work to keep up.<p>Can you pick up &#x2F; start doing work that&#x27;d make it clearer you could be a leader (assuming that&#x27;s what the next step looks like) without dropping the ball?
claudiulodroover 5 years ago
If you can actually repeatedly and successfully create and grow new products and services, I would start your own company.
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CameronBarreover 5 years ago
Like a-saleh says, about &#x27;building your case&#x27;, you want to position yourself such that it&#x27;s undeniable you are producing more value with your time. Point out that there has plainly been a shift in the value of your time for the organization.
tucazover 5 years ago
You can probably ask for anything you want. I would doubt, however, that anyone would give you anything unless they a have reason to do so.<p>Like an outside offer.<p>Why would I, as a company, promote you and give you more money when no one else wants you? I have no incentive to do so.<p>I’m sure wouldn’t do it out of the good of my heart. That doesn’t exist. People may try to make you think like such thing exists and you might get a promotion from time to time but that is a fraction of what you would get if someone else was interested in you.
caseyscottmckayover 5 years ago
Yes, make people say no.<p>That said, switching jobs is generally the best&#x2F;easiest way to move up.