Week 11 of the year 2025

- 3 minutes read - 436 words

This Week’s Challenges:

Promotion nominations (Management)

This week was designated to finish promotion nominations. There are a couple of interesting points:

  1. All team members should be assessed for their readiness for promotion. This step is called a team review.
  2. People who are ready should be nominated (even if a suitable role doesn’t exist in the team at this moment).

The promotion nomination process:

flowchart TD
    S([Start]) --> TR[Team Review]
    TR --> R{Readiness}
    R --> |Ready| N{Nominate?}
    R --> |Not ready|Next
    subgraph Next[Log for next cycle]
        Rea[/Reason:
            1. Time in role
            2. Low perf rating
            3. Development needed
            4. Disciplinary action/]
        Rea --> Tl[/Timeline:
            1. Next cycle
            2. Next year
            3. Next 18 months
            4. More than 18 months/]
        Tl --> Act[/Actions:
            1. Development plan
            2. Plan stretch goals
            3. Assign a mentor
            4. Trainings/]
    end
    R --> |Not Interested| E
    N --> |Yes| Nomination
    N --> |No suitable role in team| Esc[Escalate to org level] --> Nomination
    subgraph Nomination
        Endo[Endorsements] --> MA[Manager's assessment]
        MA --> Nm[Nomination]
    end
    Nomination --> TPA[Tech Panel Assessment]
    TPA --> Cal[Org level calibration]
    Cal --> PA{Promotion
        approved?}
    PA --> |Yes| Promotion --> E
    PA --> |No| E([End])
    Next --> E

Team review

During the team review, a manager assesses promotion readiness for all the people in their team and makes some notes on why the decision was made in a certain way. These notes are extremely helpful in the long run to monitor people’s career trajectories.

Nomination

Endorsements

Manager collects endorsements from higher-level engineers and managers about their nominee.

Manager’s assessment

Manager assesses candidate’s readyness for the next level using compatency (or skills) matrix for an organization. Typically it has multiple facets:

  1. Technical competencies
  2. Leadership

Based on these data, the manager prepares a promotional case for the candidate. This case will be reviewed during the calibration at the peer level, and then at the leadership level. Typically, there is some sort of template that all managers follow, which makes sense for senior leadership since, at the end of the day, they need to deal with dozens of candidates. This template covers the most important aspects of the nomination:

  1. Reason for promotion
  2. Most significant accomplishments
  3. Skills that the nominee should develop to be successful at the next level
  4. Current scope of responsibility
  5. How the scope of responsibility would change if the promotion happens
  6. What business outcomes the promotion helps to achieve
  7. How new responsibilities would compare to the responsibilities of other associates at the new level
  8. How the nominee is involved in mentoring others
  9. How the nominee demonstrates effective communication, professionalism, and emotional intelligence

See also: