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There’s a phrase that gets tossed around in promotion conversations that makes engineering managers somewhat uncomfortable: “You need to demonstrate you can operate at the next level first”.
It sounds reasonable. Promotions shouldn’t be speculative. You want evidence someone can handle increased scope before you formalise it. Fair enough.
But in practice your engineer spends a year doing next-level work, assumes they’re on track, and then discovers - often in a performance review - that they were missing something you never told them about. A specific type of project. A visibility requirement. Something that seemed obvious to you but was completely invisible to them.
And now they’re frustrated. Maybe even looking for a job elsewhere. Not because they couldn’t meet the bar, but because nobody showed them where it was.
The invisible promotion criteria problem
Most companies have some version of a levelling framework. Job descriptions, competency matrices, maybe even a fancy rubric. On paper, the path from senior to staff looks clear.
In reality, it’s anything but.
The written criteria tend to be vague by design - “demonstrates technical leadership” or “drives impact across teams”. These phrases mean different things to different people. More importantly, they don’t tell you what actually gets someone promoted at your specific company, on your specific team, in your specific political context.
What gets people promoted is usually a combination of:
Completing a sufficiently visible project
Having the right people notice and advocate for you
Timing (budget cycles, headcount, your manager’s own standing)
Documentation that tells a compelling story
Your engineers probably know about the first one. They often don’t understand the other three. And unless you’re actively teaching them how the game works, they’re going to assume that doing good work is enough.
It isn’t. You know that. They don’t.
Why managers stay vague
I’ve been guilty of this myself in the past. You avoid giving specific guidance because:
You don’t want to make promises you can’t keep. Promotion decisions involve committees, budgets, and factors outside your control. Saying “do X and you’ll get promoted” feels like setting yourself up for a hard conversation later.
You’re not entirely sure yourself. The criteria change. What got someone promoted last year might not work this year. You’re pattern-matching from limited data, and you don’t want to give bad advice.
You assume they’ll figure it out. They’re smart. They’ve been watching others get promoted. Surely they understand what’s required.
Your uncertainty becomes their confusion. And confusion, over time, becomes resentment.
When an engineer is operating above their level without progress, they don’t think “my manager is navigating a complex system on my behalf”. They think “my manager is either incompetent or stringing me along”. Neither interpretation is good for your relationship or your retention.
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What promotion guidance actually looks like
The fix isn’t complicated, but it does require you to be more direct than you might be comfortable with.
Start with a gap analysis. When someone expresses interest in promotion - or when you think they should be considering it - have a concrete conversation about the delta between where they are and where they need to be.
This isn’t “keep doing great work and we’ll see”. It’s: “For the next level, the committee is going to want to see evidence of cross-team technical influence. Right now, your impact is mostly within our team. Here’s a project that could give you that visibility, and here’s what ‘success’ would look like for your promotion case.”
Specific. Actionable. Connected to how decisions actually get made.
Name the non-obvious requirements. If your company cares about self-promotion documents (brag docs, promotion packets, whatever you call them), tell your engineers early. If certain stakeholders need to be aware of their work for it to “count”, say that explicitly. If there’s a timing component - “promotions typically happen in Q2, so we need your packet ready by January” - make sure they know.
Be honest about what you don’t control. You can say “I think you’re ready, and I’m going to advocate hard for you” while also acknowledging “but I can’t guarantee the outcome because here are the factors outside my influence”.
Engineers can handle uncertainty. What they can’t handle is being kept in the dark.
“Prove yourself first”
Here’s a nuance worth examining: the expectation that someone demonstrate next-level performance before getting promoted isn’t inherently unfair. You don’t want to promote someone into a role they can’t handle.
But there’s a difference between “show me you can do this for a quarter” and “do this for three years while I figure out if I want to go to bat for you”.
If someone has been operating above their level for an extended period, you have all the evidence you need. At that point, continued delay isn’t careful evaluation - it’s either bureaucratic failure or passive exploitation.
Ask yourself honestly: if they left tomorrow and you had to write a job description for their replacement, would you be describing their current level or the level above? If it’s the latter, you have your answer.
The conversation to have this week
Find the engineer on your team who’s been doing next-level work without formal recognition. You probably already know who it is.
Set up time with them - not in your regular 1:1, but a dedicated conversation about their career trajectory. Come prepared with:
Your honest assessment of where they are relative to the next level
The specific gaps, if any, and what would close them
The timeline you’re working toward, even if it’s approximate
The factors outside your control, named explicitly
This conversation might be uncomfortable. You might have to admit you don’t have all the answers. You might have to acknowledge that past communication hasn’t been clear enough.
Do it anyway.
The engineers who leave over promotion frustration rarely leave because the answer was “not yet”. They leave because the answer was “keep doing what you’re doing” - and that turned out to mean nothing at all.
Your job isn’t to guarantee promotions. It’s to make sure the people on your team understand exactly what they’re working toward, exactly what success looks like, and exactly where they stand. That clarity is the bare minimum of good management.
Everything else is just hoping your best people don’t figure out they could get more clarity somewhere else.
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See you in the next one,
~ Stephane