Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 426: I got too many promotions and I have anxiety about getting fired

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Long time listener, first time question asker. I love the show, thank you for all the advices :) I’ve been working in one of the FAANGs for around 3 years now. I joined the company at a lower level and for the past two years I received promotions that got me to a level I’m feeling good with. Having said that, my impact on the group and organization is higher than other people in my rank. Since I’m new to this rank, the chances of getting another promotion (the third in three years) is nearly impossible. I love my manager and I’ve raised it to him in a few meetings before but the answer was that I still don’t have the seniority in that level to get a promotion. This feels extremely frustrating as it feels like up until now I was aiming on getting to the rank I should’ve been recruited at and now when I feel like I can honestly make the leap, it’s not possible. I thought about moving to a different group within the company but since it’s really hard to find good managers and he already knows me and my contributions, it feels like opening a new page somewhere else in the company might even take me backwards on the journey to my next promotion. What do you think I should do? Thank you!! Hey guys, I am constantly fighting the irrational fear of being fired from my job or even the slightest hint of getting PIP’d. So far I have not gotten any indication that I’m underperforming and I’ve actually been told I’m doing well but in stressful seasons (when prod goes down or when I’m taking too long to finish a story), I start spiraling. This happens every other month. Therapy hasn’t worked. Being open with my manager hasn’t worked. So now I’m wondering if Jamison and Dave have the secret sauce. Part of it is knowing since day 1 that this company doesn’t hesitate to cut underperformers. Hearing the rumblings about the current market, I’m nervous that it would take me months to even a year to get a new job, and it has me freaking out. What can I do to just calm down?

it takes more than accidentally using markdown in a box that doesn't render markdown to be a great engineer this is episode 426 of the soft skills engineering podcast where i'm your host jameson dance i'm your host asterisk asterisk dave smith asterisk asterisk i'm glad you remembered that last one because otherwise the whole rest of the show would be italic sized bolded i don't remember which one something ah soft skills engineering is your weekly advice show about all the non-technical things that go into the technical field of software development and actually this is interesting because i just recently read a rant by the person who invented markdown saying it doesn't matter if it renders as html or not that's the whole point is you write

it in plain text and then it communicates something even if you see it in plain text exactly but i feel like death of the author like he made markdown and everyone was like nope that's not how it works this is actually for rendering html yeah i'm actually old enough to remember when we used to use plain text emails with markdown like syntax just as a convention and everyone agreed that's what it meant you know like you'd like put in tags but they wouldn't actually anything you'd put tildes around a word to mean strike through that i mean that's literally what markdown yeah exactly so i actually don't know it's like formalization of that convention i don't know what came first the formal formalized spec or just like people used it as a convention

and someone said you know what we could probably render that in like html i think it yeah i think it was like well actually that's a good point i don't know if the original markdown spec was like and if you want you can render this or if it was just type your text this way here's a way to type text that looks like it's formatted but it's not that you can mentally format yeah oh well that's not what this show's about nope i've got it sorry we have to pay homage to http 426 upgrade required i think that's the perfect that's the perfect name for our show yeah and for this segment of the show yes let's upgrade our way out of here yeah dave do you want to thank our sponsor i do this episode is sponsored by WorkOS,

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followed the http 426 status code and is that upgrade requested or upgrade required required required yeah they have followed the requirements and upgraded their lives by going to soft skills dot audio clicking support us on patreon yes getting an invite to our slack team and the incomparable value that comes from us shouting them out every week you really can't put a dollar price on that but we did but by by definition the dollar price is below the value you get because the value is infinite right that's right yeah if you want to join them do the thing best investment of your life clearly i challenge you want to read our to find a better investment okay sorry yes i would like to read our next question i mean our first question okay

this comes from anonymous listener who says long time listener first time question asker i love the show thank you for all the advices with a smiley face emoticon i've been working in one of the fangs for around three years now i joined the company at a lower level and for the past two years i received promotions that got me to a level i'm feeling good with having said that my impact on the group and organization is higher than other people in my rank. Since I'm new to this rank, the chances of getting another promotion, which would be the third in three years, is nearly impossible. I love my manager and I've raised it to him in a few meetings before, but the answer was that I still don't have the seniority in that level to get a

promotion. This feels extremely frustrating as it feels like up until now I was aiming on getting to this rank I should have been recruited at, and now when I feel like I can honestly make the leap, it's not possible. I thought about moving to a different group within the company, but since it's really hard to find good managers, and he already knows me and my contributions, it feels like opening a new page somewhere else in the company might even take me backwards on the journey to my next promotion. What do you think I should do? Thank you. So, joined Fang, promoted twice in three years, wants to be promoted three times in three years, And you're hitting, I would say these are built-in process limits to prevent, I don't know, prevent inequalities. So here's the deal. Giant mega companies have processes put in place to protect against bad behavior that also just by virtue of employing a ton of people catch some legitimate exceptional cases in them, but they don't care.

Like the, they're okay with the cost of, think of it this way. There's, there's someone who is maybe very articulate, very good at bullying their manager and just like forces their manager to put them up for promotion. They're not a great contributor, but they just like work the system and they climb really fast. And this is like a limit against that. And if you are truly an exceptional case, you are hitting the same limit. But I think that the company is sort of like, them's the brakes.

We would rather prevent a bunch of more common bad cases and deal with the fact that someone thinks they're an exception and they are frustrated by this. So you are in a tricky situation. This is one of those moments where I just feel like the universe owes us some serendipity because this is not episode 429. This is episode 426, upgrade required. But really what's happening here is a 429 rate limit exceeded. You have hit the rate limit. you have requested too many promotions in your time period and there's a token bucket algorithm and your bucket is full or empty doesn't don't you put tokens in the bucket and then you can

use them oh that's right the bucket refills and you drain them to use them yes your bucket is empty and you need to wait for it to refill i'm sorry i'm that was that was a little more snarky than i intended but that is what probably what is happening here and i'm also guessing that this particular fang company is not one that i have worked in because well maybe it is i don't know it's i'm guessing this is one of the other fang companies that has like 50 levels for software engineers because getting to getting a promotion your first year and a promotion your second year that's that's a lot and even thinking that it might be possible for you to get a promotion in your third year it just tells me this this is one of those companies with a lot of levels

Yeah. Or you just are unrealistic in your expectations. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. I mean, it doesn't sound like you are unrealistic because you're saying the chances of getting another promotion the third and three years is nearly impossible. So yeah, correct. And arguably, that's the system working. Maybe. so theoretically a promotion is the company recognizing that you're contributing at a higher level now and it takes time to both develop the skill to demonstrate or develop the skill to contribute at that higher level and demonstrate to the company that you are contributing at that higher level it's not just an instant thing and it's not that you know deep in your heart you are

yeah you merit it right it doesn't matter if they don't believe you or they haven't seen it demonstrated for long enough okay doesn't work yes and these things take a combination of time and accumulated contributions i think at least in the eyes of corporations and maybe in reality as well like i i tend to think that a used car metaphor is a is a good applicable metaphor here where when you look at a used car it has two important attributes that contribute to its current state those are the amount of miles that it has driven and the number of years old that it is. And both of these things contribute. And some might say the miles contribute more than the years, but the years also contribute. You know, things wear out, rubber breaks down. I don't know

how much rubber is involved in a software engineering career, but there's some amount of breakdown. I think it's the rubber hammers I use to hit the servers if they're not behaving. Perfect. The same thing is true in a career in that you can make contributions like miles, but it also takes time to see the effects of those contributions so for example you might have delivered some just absolutely amazing software product maybe it's used by customers maybe it's used internally but it's going to take time to see the ripple effects of that software product i mean it's kind of like adopting a new javascript framework or something it's like yeah it feels good on day one and then on day 1000 everyone's like why did we choose this terrible thing

we all what have we done but it took a thousand days of usage to see that and you probably couldn't have gotten there in in day one so yeah time is definitely a factor and even though we're kind of saying you know even though you feel like maybe you should be promoted don't discount the value of the time it takes to see the real effects of your work yeah it takes time to develop experience and some of that is because it takes time to be exposed to things whether that is the negative consequences of your own bad decisions that you made in the past or just different ways of doing things you you bounce around projects you work with different people you fix new bugs you make new bugs and and all of that is separate from your raw intelligence and capacity as a

software engineer that's right i don't know there's somebody's got to stand up for these companies, like you said. Thank goodness. We are here. And then the last thing I'll say about standing up for these poor defenseless giant companies is there is this phenomenon where people get lucky on a string of projects that just happen to be high profile, high success rate, and just everything goes super smooth. And I think sometimes companies want to see the passage of time with you to know if you are on a lucky streak or if you are truly a high value contributor. And that was it just your circumstances or was it you? And that takes time as well.

So they want to see a few more of those accumulate. Yeah. Yeah, there is a lot of potential luck in getting assigned to projects that are very visible and have high impact and have the right combination of support and team members and requirements to deliver well. And obviously bad luck, too, to just get the opposite of all that. Yeah, exactly. I don't think that can ever be, that won't ever go away. But I mean, people are at least trying to squint it and say, is this only luck? I think. And all that means slow, slow, slow promotions. Takes more time. Yeah. I got to ask, anytime someone says I want to get a promotion,

I like to ask them why. Is the promotion its own reward? Because typically not. Typically, there's some reason behind wanting that promotion. And right now I can think of three options for reasons why you might want a promotion. One of them is more money. Another one is recognition. And the third one is to change the kind of work that you do. And so money is kind of self-explanatory. If that's your motivation, you might be able to find another way to get that desire met that doesn't involve getting a promotion. In other words, if money is what you want, you might be able to talk to your manager and say, hey, look, I would like to make more money. I understand getting promoted is one way to do that. Are there other options for increasing

my pay? And it could very well be that you've got plenty of room within your current level to make more money. So that's, I would have that conversation with your manager. The second one, getting recognition, is you might be able to find ways to be recognized in your company. You'll have to help your manager see your contributions, which it sounds like your manager does a pretty good job of that already, given that you've had two rapid fire promotions in two years. Recognition comes in many forms, you know, and sometimes you can't just force it, But, you know, you can look for opportunities there. And the last thing you really can't, it's much harder to do without a promotion in a big company, which is changing the nature of the work.

Like if you say, I want to do more architecting, I want to do more cross-team collaboration, it is possible to do that. But it is higher effort when you don't have the title to back it up. Well, I think my advice is be patient. I don't think there's much you can do besides keep doing good work to make this happen immediately. And there is a risk that you will be annoying and make it harder to get promoted by pushing really hard right now. I think it's fine to keep reminding and keep saying, what can I do to get promoted kind of every few months or so? But if you are dissatisfied with the answer, I think your manager probably does not have a ton of freedom to just say, okay, you've convinced me. I've decided and it will happen.

I think if you convince them and then they try really hard, they're also going to get stymied by the organizational barriers in place to prevent too rapid of promotion. So pushing really hard on your manager might just bother them because now they're like squashed between you and the org. You and gravity. So, yeah, just keep bringing it up to keep it top of mind and make sure you are doing the things you should be doing. But I think you just have to wait or quit and go somewhere else. Maybe one of the reasons this person asked this question is just to say, is this reasonable to expect a third promotion in three years? And I would say that's pretty rare. One promotion per year, even at lower levels for three years in a row, that's uncommon. Very, very uncommon. So your expectations are a little bit out of whack on this one, I think. Also, I notice three years ago were the good times, right? Oh, yes.

This could be a little bit left over from low interest rates, infinite free money, tech hiring sprees. And you are in a different time now where there are more resource constraints. There are more people competing for software engineering jobs. Yes. There's just a little bit less power in the engineer's hands because your ability to say, okay, I'll just go somewhere else. It'll be better than this place is lessened as a whole. I mean, yours individually might still be great, but it might just be harder to get promoted now because they're handing out fewer because they have less money and feel less pressure to shower engineers with praise. Yeah.

Well, on that note, I think we've answered the question. All right. Good luck. i think you'll get it it just might take a little while yeah i agree jameson i just want to randomly tell you this important fact that i have worked for three companies that have built their own sso implementation and these were some of the biggest mistakes i've made as an engineer that's foreshadowing we want to tell you how to avoid this mistake yeah it does seem straightforward at first but then you remember there's oaf oidc saml skim our back a bunch of other acronyms

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We actually use WorkOS where I work right now, and they have amazing docs. Their kind of developer-facing stuff is great. They've got example apps in a bunch of different languages, Node.js, Python, PHP, Go. It's nice. Yeah. And sometimes people worry, well, do I actually get to maintain control over my UI? And yes, WorkOS provides a login UI toolkit called AuthKit, which uses Radix themes, which are open source. And so you actually have tons of customizability over the look and feel. Yep. It's a drop-in replacement for Auth0, and it gives you really great pricing. One million monthly active users for free.

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by building a homegrown SSO system. Join many companies that are using WorkOS today, like Vercel, Webflow, Perplexity, and Loom. You can check it out at WorkOS.com. That's WorkOS.com. Dave, should I read our next question? I was hoping you would. Okay.

This is from an anonymous listener who says, Hey guys, I'm constantly fighting the irrational fear of being fired from my job or even the slightest hint of getting pipped. So far, I've not gotten any indication that I'm underperforming and I've actually been told I'm doing well. But in stressful seasons, like when prod goes down or when I'm taking too long to finish a story, I start spiraling. This happens every other month.

Therapy hasn't worked. Being open with the manager hasn't worked. So now I'm wondering if Jameson and Dave have the secret sauce. part of it is knowing since day one that this company doesn't hesitate to cut underperformers hearing the rumblings about the current market i'm nervous that it would take me months to even a year to get a new job and it has me freaking out what can i do to just calm down well i have very good news for you jameson and i just completed our certification as space therapists Aha.

Now, I did complete it, like you said. I was not paying very much attention, so I don't remember. Does this apply to celestial bodies? Can we provide therapy for asteroids, or is it to human beings in space? Well, that's the caveat. It was mostly for things that follow the laws of orbital dynamics. Okay. We're going to do our best here.

Yeah. I mean, hey, the Earth is in space. so and you're on it so yeah i assume i think we're good on it that's that's true it is a big assumption you're making a critical one oh boy this is a hard one battling your own brain with your brain oh yeah that's a good point and it knows everything that you're thinking it knows about your tactics that you're going to use Exactly. Because they're coming from it.

It can anticipate you. It's like fighting an AI clone of yourself. Yeah. Didn't that happen in one of the Matrix movies? Didn't Neo fight Neo or something? I don't remember. I kind of lost interest after the first one. By the way, I just watched the first one again 20 years later.

It holds up. Yeah. It's pretty wild how good it is and how, I mean, it was so groundbreaking, but it's still just good. It's good. All right. Well, question answered. yeah matrix is a good movie that's what they asked right i think does it does it seem like we're avoiding this question oh well i don't think it is just the question askers own brain

because of this the company doesn't hesitate to cut underperformers thing so they have some evidence that people do a bad job and then are gone pretty quickly talking to my manager hasn't worked. So I wonder what that means. I assume that you said, hey, I'm worried that I'm underperforming and I'm just going to get pipped or fired. And then your manager said, oh, no, you're not. You're doing fine. Yeah. And then that didn't work because your brain's like, nah. I don't believe you. Yeah. I don't believe you, manager. Yeah. I'm going to suggest a slightly different thing, which is don't just say, hey, I'm worried about this. Tell me if I'm doing a

good job, you can flip the question and say, how will I know early enough to do something about it if I'm not doing well enough? Listen, I want to do great work. I don't want to get fired. I hear you say, right now I'm doing well. Awesome. Maybe I'm not always going to do well. I would love the outcome of that to be, I change and improve and still work here, not i just get fired yeah so how can i know quickly and and early that there's a problem i need to change or something i need to do differently it's a good question that's a little bit different than like how am i doing and then you ignore that because it's if it's good you're gonna ignore it and i think there's a possibility that hearing more direct feedback about what you're not doing

well actually makes this feel better okay because you're more clear about what you need to do instead of this just this vague like oh everything's fine that you don't trust yes that's what you said to the last person that got fired yeah right and and if you get some feedback on how to improve or what to do differently and then you act on that that feels maybe a bit more stable than just this like, they tell me everything is fine, which means it's not bad enough to fire me yet. But maybe there's something they're not telling me. Yes. I like that. I like getting concrete about what you're doing badly. Of course, the answer might just be, no, I can't think of anything, which might make the problem worse. Keep on trucking. Yep. Yeah. Well, one way to get

really concrete about it is to calibrate by asking your manager, tell me about the process that was followed for the last person that was cut for underperforming what was the timeline what what what did their manager talk to them about and then if you can get really detailed what was their underperformance what were you looking at that told you they were underperforming yeah that might be really helpful to just know oh that's what it looks like it's almost like you're operating in a society where the laws are secret but the police are out there arresting people and you're like i don't know if i'm next because i don't know what the laws are i'm i think i'm okay i haven't been arbitrary yeah it feels arbitrary and i think it's the arbitrariness

that's really getting to you yeah i think there's some vague manager instincts and hr stuff that might discourage managers from sharing concrete details about why someone was let go so it's possible that their answer will be, I cannot talk about that, which is not very comforting. You'll know when you get fired. Yeah. One way you could sidestep that confidentiality concern is you could say, hey, without disclosing the name or identity of someone, can you just give me the story of how they underperformed? I just really want to know where the boundaries are to make sure I am doing my best work here. And that's an important part of the question as well is i'm not just trying to dig up dirt on people and understand the

the scuttlebutt of the gossip i'm preparing for a lawsuit against this company if you could go ahead and incriminate yourself exactly not what you want to do here just say look i want to do my best work here and i want to make sure that i am well within the bounds of what are my expectations so tell me a little bit about someone who got let go for underperformance what do they do don't tell me their names i don't i don't care who they were i'm not trying to chase that information and calibrate i think you'll be surprised when you hear what people do you're like oh oh that was really bad you know you're like i think i'm gonna be fine yeah yeah i mean you could also try to do this yourself trying to think back to what it was like when i was in ic

do i feel like i knew who was underperforming and who wasn't i think sometimes i did and sometimes I didn't yeah I think sometimes it wasn't so that might not help if you don't work a ton with them if you don't really work on the same project if it's a different domain then it is kind of hard I've definitely seen when I've had to let people go for underperformance as a manager I've definitely seen some of their peers be surprised which means yeah they didn't know and I by the way when when I've done that which has just been a few times when I've done that I never go hey we're letting someone go for underperformance you know like sorry that's their that's their confidential personnel file i'm not going to publicize that and that that kind of contributes to the problem

because people can't calibrate they just know oh bob's not here anymore you know i don't know why the secret police got him yeah exactly he said the wrong thing to dave made the wrong joke so i understand why understanding the calibration is hard and maybe you've got a terrible company and they do just randomly fire people and it and it sucks but probably not you probably work at a decent place and there probably are really good reasons and you are probably nowhere near that underperformance line but it would help comfort you to know yeah i i have a a totally different idea for how to feel better about this stuff hit me exercise and now now we're really getting into kind of the therapy you know or therapy space therapy world yeah space sorry

space therapy we do not we are not therapists but i have found that basically this is a rumination problem i think you know your brain is spiraling you can't control these invasive thoughts you're ruminating thinking about what might go wrong and sometimes that's an indication that your body isn't getting enough physical movement and exercise i'm not saying that's true for everyone or even in this case but i've heard a lot of people tell me you know i started exercising and just everything felt better the way i thought felt better the way i felt physically felt better so give it a shot the way i felt about how i felt yeah the meta feelings yeah and then that made me feel good meta meta feelings i have found there's definitely just a

an aura of betterness about exercising but also one of the benefits is if you are doing something that occupies your brain you don't you can't ruminate if you're like i gotta make it down this hill without falling over or i don't know i have to push this heavy thing up that's going to squash me if i don't or whatever whatever it is you're doing survival mode right it's hard yeah it's hard to think like oh what about that comment that i said in the stand-up did that come across as yes overly pessimistic about the company or yeah it it turns that off and it's really nice to turn that off sometimes especially for a field as cerebral as software development where it's it's all in your head you're just comprehending abstractions and creating new ones in your

head and then sticking them in the code base and stuff that is a benefit i have found and i'm now on day two of my exercise program so i can speak from i'm back in it nice forever yeah this is day two of infinity exactly yeah no i've probably gone a good five years without regular exercise Oh, really? With little bursts of a week or two in between. Does this coincide approximately with when you started having children? Yeah, second kid is exactly five years old. That was a tipping point.

Yes. Yeah, that was when I went from, I can fit this in to, my goal is to not die. Yes, yes. I mean, exercising would make that goal easier, but I chose not to do that. For, I don't know, good reasons probably. well no i think there were bad reasons but yeah yeah yeah i have one more idea i like that idea one more idea what is it so worrying about things that haven't happened yet is i heard a great phrase for this it someone called it dress rehearsing tragedy so it's like

i'm gonna go ahead and live this terrible experience right now even though the terrible experience has not happened to me yet. I'm going to take on all that pain and suffering, even though it hasn't happened. And so that's what you're doing. And sometimes logically acknowledging that can help you to say, you know what, I choose not to live this pain that hasn't happened yet. One way I have found that's helpful, kind of as a mental exercise, like a thought exercise to avoid dress rehearsing tragedy is to actually think through all the things that would happen if this tragic thing happened. So, in this case, getting fired from your job for underperforming. I would write down step by step what that would look like. I get called into my

boss's office. My boss tells me, today is your last day. Please turn in your computer. I go home. I go to sleep that night. I wake up the next day. I start looking for a job. It might take six months. What will happen? And you know what will happen. You will survive. you will find a way to earn an income, pay your bills. You've probably got friends and family. It's like, look, worst case scenario, I'm couch surfing. Maybe that's your scenario. I don't know. Different people have different worst case scenarios. But you are a software developer, so probably you are not on the brink of starvation. And depending on where you live, there's probably a lot of good social safety nets in place, whether through family, whether through

some kind of societal governmental or other organizational help you're probably going to be okay like you're going to survive it might feel bad it might be painful but you will work through it and so i think writing all that down is being like oh that's that's what i'm up against that's what i'm worrying about can help you to put it in perspective and say look no one's cutting off one of my arms you know it's not the death of a loved one it's not permanent and just i guess basically what you're doing what i do is i'm arguing with myself but i'm forcing that argument to happen not at an emotional like survival level of my brain i'm forcing that argument to happen at a more cognitive higher order reasoning level by writing it down and then you can hopefully

win that argument with yourself and convince your brain to stop thinking so hard about it yeah i like that idea although i've told people before just stop worrying about it and they're like that didn't work so you know stop worrying about it harder isn't that uh like a that that tragedy dress rehearsal thing isn't that uh a vaguely stoic concept i feel like i've heard i don't know much about stoicism but i feel like i've heard that i don't know maybe i i also i'm not a i haven't read a lot about stoicism either could be let's go with yes okay well in space we declare it to be so in space no one can hear you say that's stoicism in space no one can contradict jameson and dave that's true on that note have we answered this question i think so good luck

let us know how it goes and i really hope you can get control of these thoughts yeah and if you can your life will be better absolutely and you can i believe you can all right what should people do if they want their own questions answered go to softskills.audio and click the ask a question button where you can fill out our little form we must say thank you to everyone who has done this we really appreciate you your questions are awesome they fill us with joy and we love reading them every week please keep it up we do we will catch you next week thanks for listening