[mtlynch]

Yeah, I found a mentor at the beginning of year 4, and they were very helpful. There were a lot of things happening on my team that I didn't understand, and my mentor was able to recognize them as political patterns that were somewhat common.

I realize I maybe came across as naive thinking that I could get promoted without thinking much about career strategy or politics, but that's how the first few years of my career had worked out.

After undergrad, I worked for Microsoft for three years, and I got promoted twice without ever thinking about career. I just did the projects my team needed, and did a good job. Same thing when I worked for NCC group: promoted after a year and was on track for more.

One of the big differences in other companies was that they gave me opportunities to demonstrate aptitude in my day to day work rather than needing to see me launch something big and shiny. I invested a lot into peer reviews and building repeatable processes, so managers at those companies were able to see that impact my team even if it would be hard to prove measurable results to an external promo committee.