| I'm a line manager and tech lead at a big company. I have both direct reports and mentees that don't report to me but I'm helping with their trajectory who have that attitude ("I'm fine where I am") and it's mostly fine with some caveats. One: you may actually be doing really well and deserve a promotion (or it would be relatively easy to get) but your imposter syndrome is blocking you from realizing this. Two: you may not even be doing that well at your current level- promotion is out of reach, but we actually need to make sure you don't get out on a PIP or something. Not everyone is good at recognizing this in themselves. (Similar problem of metacognition, I suspect to point one). Three: there is usually not enough L+1 work to go around on any given team, especially one in big companies that have been slowing down hiring juniors (if all the level 1 get promoted to 2 and not replaced, eventually the system will be too heavy). So this is mostly good, but if you don't communicate active interest in promotion to your manager, you're likely to get the least interesting (for some value of interesting, let's say at a minimum least promotable) work. You may be fine with this, and as a manager I'm okay with it- someone has to do it and if I have some reports who aren't striving but are still solid, I can give them stuff to do and worry about the promotability of the reports who are likely to leave if they feel their trajectory is slowing down. EDIT: the fourth caveat is, I'm just a line manager at some place. I don't speak for leadership (they may want to lay off all the non strivers, who knows) or even other managers. |