When I told my parents about my promotion from Senior Engineer (L5) to Staff Engineer (L6), they thought “Staff” sounded like a step down. In the industry though, this title represents a level of higher technical leadership. Last week I wrote about what sets L5 and L6 apart. Now, I’ll share how to get promoted to L6 as fast as possible and how I achieved it in 1 year.
How to find L6 scope if engaging in projects outside my team’s business scope is the only avenue to growth? I feel that my manager doesn’t want me to invest many time into such projects which is understandable as I produce less value for the team.
Your manager should be rewarded for the impact of their team. If you work on a more impactful project that is outside of the scope of the team they should be incentivized to let you since you're growing the impact of the team.
If you need to deprioritize something to create that cross-team workstream, you'll need to get buy-in from your manager.
If you can't get buy-in, you could try stretching yourself to create the cross-team workstream in your spare time. There's risk of burnout with that approach though.
Yes, the value of Momentum or "Big Mo" is important to our careers. Great stuff Ryan!
Thank you Tom!
How to find L6 scope if engaging in projects outside my team’s business scope is the only avenue to growth? I feel that my manager doesn’t want me to invest many time into such projects which is understandable as I produce less value for the team.
Your manager should be rewarded for the impact of their team. If you work on a more impactful project that is outside of the scope of the team they should be incentivized to let you since you're growing the impact of the team.
If you need to deprioritize something to create that cross-team workstream, you'll need to get buy-in from your manager.
If you can't get buy-in, you could try stretching yourself to create the cross-team workstream in your spare time. There's risk of burnout with that approach though.