[oh_sigh]

Ex-amazonian here. Another problem is if your manager doesn't want you to get promoted. For whatever reason, sometimes people don't click, and I've seen the careers of some extremely talented developers be hampered by a bad or non-relationship with their manager. It didn't matter that their entire team, and other teams viewed these people very highly, and sought out their advice and consultation on a number of matters - they still couldn't get promoted unless their manager signs off on it.

[mrjatx]

I worked for a fairly large company that previously required your team manager to approve of you moving to another team. You could spin wheels all you wanted, but if they didn't like you for whatever reason they could immediately stop any lateral movement. This wound up pushing a lot of employees out, they'd eventually quit because they were miserable. Couldn't get shifts they wanted, bootcamps, training, unfairly poor reviews, etc.

It was one of those "who.. thought of this?" ideas. I believe they recently removed it.

[mwfunk]

Variations on this are pretty common, although what I've seen more is that you're obligated to inform your manager before seeking a position on another team- your manager has no power to prevent it from happening.

I don't know why a manager would want to prevent this from happening though. If I were a manager, and one of my employees said they wanted to switch teams, the last thing I'd want to do is force them to stay on my team knowing that they didn't want to be there, even if I was feeling vindictive towards that employee.

I've heard that the policy requiring informing the manager was motivated by a desire to allow employees to switch teams if they wanted to, but at the same time to dissuade managers from actively poaching employees from other teams in the same company. Also, it gives the manager a chance to possibly make things right with the disgruntled employee, instead of just losing that employee with no warning.

It's not a perfect system at all, but I can at least understand the rationale. It totally doesn't make sense that a manager would be able to prevent it from happening though.

[taude]

I feel this same thing happens at almost all companies I've worked for. I had to leave one of my favorite jobs at a company doing really well because I was never going to get to work on what I wanted, in the group I wanted...

[phillmv]

It's amazing to me how much money companies can waste hiring new people - albeit a not unwelcome redistribution of profit from shareholders to developers - yet once you're hired you're stuck in that role unless your manager signs off irregardless of other internal opportunities.

I wonder if having a more liberalized internal labour market wouldn't be beneficial; it's destructive in so far that being undermined by more popular projects keeps siphoning off your best talent, but if the alternative is "quit and find another job" it strikes me that keeping that person within the organization may be more beneficial overall.

[snorkel]

It's not so much manager doesn't want to promote you as manager has no role to promote you into. Sometimes you can create a role and demonstrate to your manager that you are willing and responsible to manage that topic, and perhaps it needs added investment to grow that topic (more money and more people) which you will manage ... in other words don't wait for your manager to create the role to promote you into. Most managers are happy to team leads with this kind of initiative and will support them.

If you create the role but still your manager is unsupportive about it then you're probably in a team with a very narrow scope and there's just no further room to grow in that team, so time to move on.

[MrBuddyCasino]

I've heard that at Google, the team votes for the person they would like to see promoted. This seems to be a pretty good idea from the outside - can someone comment on this? There must be some Googlers lurking...

[munificent]

Googler here.

If you want to seek a promotion, you can nominate yourself or others can nominate you. When that happens, a packet is assembled for you. It includes your self-review, and reviews from a number of your peers as well as your managers.

That packet goes to a committee likely made up of people who don't know you who then reach a decision about your promotion.

That's a simplification, but that's the basic idea. Your manager has a large influence on your success: to get promoted you need to show accomplishments, and that depends on you being given important work to do. But, compared to other companies, the process is much less biased by your manager. Your peers have a huge influence on your ability to get promoted.

[KurtMueller]

So if I was a Googler, I'd apply for a promotion just to see what my manager and my peers thought about me - both pros and cons - and use that to improve my performance.

Does that happen in the company?

[nostrademons]

All the time. Conventional wisdom at Google is that you should always apply for a promotion, because the cost to you was zero and the benefit was potentially very large.

...that said, I didn't apply last cycle, because the form was changed so that promo candidates have to fill out a more in-depth self-assessment and get more in-depth peer feedback, and me and my peers were heads-down on a deadline at the time. I suppose one way to deal with the externalities of everybody always going up for promo is to make the process easier on people who don't.

BTW, there are regular performance reviews at Google - you can (and should) get your peers' feedback without actually going up for promotion. I did every cycle until I made senior, then I stopped caring quite so much. Promotions beyond senior have a large "impact and leadership" component to them, and so you basically know what you have to do to get promoted, you have to lead a major project that succeeds.