#81 - The Best Way to Get Promoted as a Software Engineer (Replay)
Here is a 5-sentence summary of the podcast:
The document discusses the concept of a documentation, which is a running list that software engineers keep of their accomplishments, successes, and value they provide, in order to better advocate for promotions or raises. The notes help ensure no one forgets or overlooks your contributions, prepares you to make the case for your impact, and allows you to track personal growth. The document recommends regularly adding technical work, projects led, mentoring experiences, overall leadership, interviewing contributions, public speaking, brand building, and learning to your notes. It's important to frequently update it, keep it simple, and share it with your manager to aid transparency.
[Music] Welcome to the Develop Yourself podcast, where we teach you everything you need to land your first job as a software engineer by developing yourself: your skills, your network, your habits, and more. I'm one of your co-hosts, Peter Albom, and today we're talking about the single best way I found to get a promotion as a software engineer. So let's go ahead and get into it.
Our topic today is the best way to get promoted as a software engineer. So, I'm going to tell you about the technique that I used to get my last two promotions when I had a job, and I think it's the best way to get a promotion. You may be wondering if you're a new engineer, and even if you're not, what are some of the best things you can do in order to get promoted? There are things that are more obvious than others, like for example:
But there's one area where a lot of people fall short, and because of that, it means that you have an opportunity. And that brings us to what the technique is that I use to get promoted, and it is called a "hype do." So, what is a hype do? I didn't actually call it a hype do for a while, and I'm taking this term and also the definition from a blog post from the company Square, which you may be familiar with. They make those kiosks that you check out with an iPad and a bunch of other stuff as well. But Square has this great blog post that we'll link in the show notes where they describe this thing. So, by their definition, a hype do:
"Is a running list of all your accomplishments and successes. It's a place where you keep track of your growth and regularly jot down things that you're proud of doing. A hype do isn't a resume or a promotion packet or a formal self-assessment, but it's certainly helpful when filling those things out. While you can and should share your doc with others, the primary audience of your hype do is always yourself. It's for you to know what you're doing and why it matters so that you can present yourself well."
So yeah, basically, the hype do is a running list of what your accomplishments are. That could be either in the Notes app on your Mac or it could be in a Google doc. Really, whatever your preferred note-taking system is. The point is that you have this list of what you've been doing and the value you're providing, your successes, as I said in that definition.
So, this is a very powerful technique, and it seems simple, and it is simple. But as I mentioned, this is an area where a lot of people fall short, where a lot of people don't do this, and I think that is a detriment to them and not only their growth but their chances of promotion.
Because of that, let's talk about why the hype doc is powerful.