Use Your Year-End Review to Reach for a Promotion

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/an-illustration-of-stylized-people-wearing-business-casual-clothing.webp?id=65257424&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C112%2C0%2C113"/><br/><br/><p><em>This article is crossposted from </em>IEEE Spectrum<em>’s careers newsletter. <a href="https://engage.ieee.org/Career-Alert-Sign-Up.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Sign up now</em></a><em> to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, <em><em>written i<em>n partnership with tech career development company <a href="https://www.parsity.io/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Parsity</a> and </em></em></em>delivered to your inbox for free!</em></em></p><p><strong>Hard work rarely speaks for itself.</strong></p><p>When I landed my first job as a software engineer, I had a simple plan: Work hard and somebody would notice. Eventually a manager would tap me on the shoulder and hand me a promotion (probably with a nice little speech).</p><p>That plan stalled my career for about five years.</p><p>I switched jobs twice, kept my head down, read a stack of programming books, and sometimes pulled 12-hour days. I was never promoted. At my third job, out of frustration, I started interviewing at other companies and almost immediately got an offer for a senior engineer role.</p><p>So I went back to my job and quit. My team was blindsided. I liked my manager and the people I worked with, and they came back with a counteroffer. Then someone from HR asked me, “Why didn’t you just ask us?”</p><p>Honestly, it never occurred to me.</p><p>I took the counteroffer and stayed. Three jobs in, I finally got promoted, and all it took was asking (in the most dramatic way possible).</p><p>Today, I would take a different approach. </p><p>Year-end review discussions are a great time to push for a promotion. But at most companies, raises and promotions are largely settled before the formal review conversation happens. If the year-end review is the first time your manager hears you want a promotion, you’re usually too late. </p><p>Now is a great time to start the conversation.</p><h2>Hard work is invisible by default</h2><p>Engineers tend to believe good work speaks for itself. It rarely does. Your manager is juggling a team, a roadmap, and their own boss. They see a fraction of what you do, and the work they don’t see might as well not exist when raises get decided.</p><p><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/improve-public-speaking-skills" target="_self">Perception is reality, so you have to shape it.</a> That means learning to brag a little.</p><p>A “brag document” is a running list of what you accomplished, when, and why it mattered. Add to it every two weeks or once a month, and write each entry so your manager’s manager would understand it.</p><p>Engineers tend to write things like “migrated the billing service.” A better entry reads “migrated the billing service, which cut failed payments by 30 percent and unblocked the Q3 pricing launch.” If there’s no number, name who benefited and how.</p><p>Include the work people forget to count, too: handling incidents, mentoring new hires, interviewing candidates, and writing the docs everyone else relies on. If you <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/best-ai-coding-tools" target="_self">helped your team adopt AI tools this year,</a> write that down. (It counts as leadership, whether or not anyone called it that.)</p><p>The document does two jobs. It gives you ammunition when you make your case, and it gives your manager something to ctrl + c then ctrl + v when they argue for you in meetings you’ll never attend.</p><h2>Just ask</h2><p>Bragging builds the case. Asking forces action.</p><p>If your goal is a promotion or a raise, you might ask: “What would it take for me to get to [the next level] in the next year?”</p><p><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/from-engineer-to-manager-how-to-cope-with-promotion" target="_self">A good manager</a> will give you an outline that can turn into a plan. Push for specifics until you have deliverables you can work toward, then send a short recap email so the plan exists somewhere besides your manager’s memory. (Managers change jobs too.)</p><h2>When the answer is “no”</h2><p>Sometimes the answer will still be “not this year,” and the reason may have nothing to do with you. </p><p>Budgets get frozen, promotion slots get capped, and decisions get made above your manager’s head where even a manager who wants to help can’t.</p><p>Don’t read too much into that. But be honest with yourself, too. Most of the time, a no means there’s something you aren’t doing yet. Find out what it is instead of guessing for five years like I did.</p><p>Asking costs you one slightly awkward conversation. Sitting back and waiting to be noticed can cost you years.</p><p>—Brian</p><h2><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-generated-scientific-papers" target="_self">I Used AI to Fake a Scientific Paper. Here’s What Happened</a></h2><p>Don’t try this at home: To better understand the risk AI slop poses to scientific publishing today, <em><em>IEEE Spectrum</em></em> contributor Benjamin Skuse put IEEE’s research integrity checks to the test by submitting two entirely AI-generated papers. “Science has a spam problem. And the spam filter is getting clogged up…”</p><p>Read more <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-generated-scientific-papers" target="_self">here</a>. </p><h2><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/engineers-lobbying-congress" target="_self">Why Engineers Should Brave Capitol Hill</a></h2><p>Policy change doesn’t just come down to paid lobbyists—lawmakers want to hear from working experts, too. One engineer shares what he learned from his first two visits to Capitol Hill. </p><p>Read more <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/engineers-lobbying-congress" target="_self">here</a>. </p><h2><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/community-college-semiconductors" target="_self">Community Colleges Put New Workers Into Semiconductor Jobs Fast</a></h2><p>Could community colleges help fill the coming talent shortage in the U.S. semiconductor industry? Alternatives to four-year university degrees are a promising option for the technicians who will be needed to run new fabs. </p><p>Read more <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/community-college-semiconductors" target="_self">here</a>. </p>