[giantg2]

I sort of agree.

My company makes a big deal about this in 1-on-1s. It seems that none of the talk amounts to much. Like the only impactful stuff is when a manager says stuff like "I know people throughout the company. If you make me happy I can get you promoted to one of those teams". Although I despise this because it's basically backroom deals full of bias instead of focusing on promoting/hiring the best people. Maybe I'm just disillusioned from the idea that meritocracy was supposed to be the major part of that process.

Anyways, what can managers actually do to help us achieve our aspirations?

[ochronus]

I'm sorry it's like that at your place :(

I have a different experience, thankfully - both when I was an engineer and now as a manager.

A good manager (in a company with the right culture) can help you streamline your efforts. In a proper company a manager doesn't "get you promoted" but helps you demonstrate that you're on the next level.

[giantg2]

Do you have more info on what that looks like? I guess I'm just lost.

[ochronus]

Usually you have a tons of directions you can grow as an engineer. Some examples: you can become a subject matter expert in one stack, you can get good at multiple stacks, you can do public speaking, blogging, open source contributions, you can become various kinds of a tech leader (from leading projects to driving engineering principles in the org), you can mentor others, etc. - while this is all growth, it's nearly impossible to do all at once. Your manager can help you in at least 3 ways:

1. help you realize what is personally interesting for you from all this (you'd be surprised how many people don't know this!)

2. help you filter this list by what's currently important for the team/org, so basically find the intersection of what's interesting for you AND recognized in the company

3. help you find effective ways and support. This comes in many forms, e.g. pointing you to opportunities (hey, do you want to lead the next project?), finding you mentors or mentees in the org, coaching you directly (e.g. in leadership), getting you a tech writer to help you with blogging, connect you to people, etc.

About the promotion bit: you own that part. Your manager can tell you 2 things:

1. If you want to get promoted, which growth directions and actions to take

2. Whether they think you're ready or not

[giantg2]

My experience is that managers just tell you what to focus on for what the team needs. They don't care about the person's needs. They certainly don't offer very good career advice (the new model are DCLs that are basically just senior devs that spend 60% of their time leading people). I guess I have bad managers.

For example, I switched to the current team a little over a year ago and it's just non-stop context switching. I'm expected to work in and know multiple and technologies (java, python, DB2, Dynamo, all manner of AWS stuff, and a bunch of vender products like Splunk and Tableau). Subsets of the applications that we own have turned over and shifted around twice in this time. I'm constantly being pulled off of one story to work on another because something broke or the business has an urgent need.

I'm told I'm slow. My manager and I even agree that I'm slower than I was in other teams because we didn't have that much context switching. They said there's nothing they can do about context switching. So I said it sounds like I should move to a team with less context switching that that would provide a better environment to succeed. They immediately tried to talk me out of it. I'm not sure if she was actually dumb or if she was just playing dumb, but she couldn't even comprehend how being on a team with less context switching would be beneficial to me.

[ochronus]

Also, don't get me wrong, I struggle a LOT with figuring out that overlap/cross-section I talked about... and I fck things up probably many times. I do care (a lot!) though for my engineers' needs and interests! Both because I relate to them as a person and both because this is the only sensible long-term strategy for having motivated people (and have them stay AND grow).

[ochronus]

I understand this is your experience and I think it sucks big time. It shouldn't be like this at all. Yet, this doesn't mean it's like that at all places with all managers.