Career Growth Speed, Deconstructed | by Carlos Arguelles | Geek Culture | Medium
I was recently lurking on linkedin and noticed one of my favorite Senior Principal Engineers at Amazon had gone from Intern to Senior Principal in a decade. That’s an astonishing growth by all accounts (promoted every two years). For the longest time his work profile photo was from the intern days, so I imagine that was very confusing to people who just looked him up. Some engineers grow glacially slow (or not at all); while others grow through the ranks at neck breaking speed. Usually this is a combination of individual skills, leadership support and situational luck. I wrote about some of this already (The Fallacy of the Self-Made), but this article today is a deeper dive into times in my life where I did one or the other, and why. The 3 companies where I worked the last 25 years (Microsoft, Amazon, Google) have slightly different names for the levels, slightly different bars, and slightly different distribution, but the high level concept is common across all. There’s an entry-level
Career Growth Speed, Deconstructed At times I grew exponentially, at other times, glacially — Why? Carlos Arguelles 10 min read · Apr 10, 2022 -- 7 Listen Share Press enter or click to view image in full size I was recently lurking on linkedin and noticed one of my favorite Senior Principal Engineers at Amazon had gone from Intern to Senior Principal in a decade. That’s an astonishing growth by all accounts (promoted every two years). For the longest time his work profile photo was from the intern days, so I imagine that was very confusing to people who just looked him up. Some engineers grow
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