Joining promo sessions
In (big) tech companies, promos are decided by a promo committee. These committees exist to make sure promotions are based on facts and are fair across the company. If you can join a promo session, you should – especially if you have never done it before.
Different companies have different requirements for who can be part of these committees – the common rule I’ve seen in our industry is that you have to be 2 levels above the candidates, so if you do a L4->L5 promo, you usually have to be L6).
The reason to join these sessions are:
- You have a chance to better understand how promotion works, what committees are looking for and how artifacts are weighted – this means you can better mentor people, but also better grow yourself
- Maybe compared to common expectations, ICs are also present in committees – they are here to help better evaluate technical contributions or aspects of a promo packet
- While your company likely has a formal eng ladder, this is usually a bit of leeway – and this is your chance to help steer your engineering org to a better place. For example, if you can help promote engineers who display a certain value, engineers will likely get better at it.
Joining these promo sessions is time consuming and work, but I have always found these very interesting – I’ve always learned a lot of these sessions. Ask your manager/director to join one if you can (even if you cannot vote)