This guide is written for engineers who want to grow from L3 → L4 as fast as possible. Even if rapid growth isn’t your goal, there are learnings for all big tech career paths in this post. I’ll share everything you need to know to get to L4 fast.
The advice of using your 1:1 to YOUR advantage is so true. Often managers are tempted to just do status updates, versus having deeper career or personal conversations.
Agreed! In my case, my managers would ask me what I wanted to discuss, but since I was so inexperienced, I didn't really know what to discuss so I talked about my projects.
Got some niceful tips from this read. It hits me at the one-on-one with manager part where I also often use it for discussing on-going tasks. I agree it should be used more to discuss career growth but sometimes my manager is so busy thus only chance I get to confirm task-related is using the session.
If your manager really needs project updates you can send them async for them to read
If that doesn’t work, I’ve had past managers schedule an extra hour long one on one every six months to have career conversations. You could ask your manager for that
This is great, thanks for the read! Aligning and working with your manager on the promotion is probably the most important thing. Going from L3 to L4 is essentially just checking off L4 behaviors and expectations. Would love to see something similar for L4->L5.
"I took on any work that was passed my way even though not all of it was impactful."
What are some more concrete examples of work like that?
I remember taking on a few major code cleanups. The old code wasn’t a major headache but I did the “nice to have” work anyway
Also I remember working on some partner asks (e.g integrations, low pri features) that didn’t have much ROI in hindsight
I didn’t think about if the work was worth it
Gotcha. What criteria do you use to determine if the work is worth it?
It depends on the area you work in. On your team there are some primary business objectives you're chasing. I'd focus on those. I write briefly about what "impact" is here: https://www.developing.dev/i/137207897/understanding-impact
The advice of using your 1:1 to YOUR advantage is so true. Often managers are tempted to just do status updates, versus having deeper career or personal conversations.
Agreed! In my case, my managers would ask me what I wanted to discuss, but since I was so inexperienced, I didn't really know what to discuss so I talked about my projects.
Love the personal examples here! This will be super valuable for people looking to make the L3->L4 jump. Great article, Ryan
Thank you Jordan 🙏
Got some niceful tips from this read. It hits me at the one-on-one with manager part where I also often use it for discussing on-going tasks. I agree it should be used more to discuss career growth but sometimes my manager is so busy thus only chance I get to confirm task-related is using the session.
If your manager really needs project updates you can send them async for them to read
If that doesn’t work, I’ve had past managers schedule an extra hour long one on one every six months to have career conversations. You could ask your manager for that
This is great, thanks for the read! Aligning and working with your manager on the promotion is probably the most important thing. Going from L3 to L4 is essentially just checking off L4 behaviors and expectations. Would love to see something similar for L4->L5.
Thanks for reading, L4 -> L5 coming right up! That'll be my next post here
Yeah that's a good call, I've updated the wording to "I didn't meet the promotion criteria" rather than "didn't deserve it".
Thanks for your thoughtful comment and readership Chris!