TL;DR: I led the rewrite of one of my company's most critical apps, and it shipped with almost no critical bugs.
A colleague who was better at communication got promoted for it, and I heard in a team meeting, days after others
knew. Ten years in, I wasn't short on technical skill; I was short on presenting and politics. I didn't fix that. I
took my strength where it gets paid: two months of preparation, 40–60 applications, one 40% raise.
The announcement
A colleague's promotion was announced in a team meeting. I'll call them X. The project behind it was one I'd led.
X was in the same room as me, with others dialled in on the phone. More than six years on, I don't remember the exact
words. I remember working out, somewhere in the middle of that announcement, that it had been known for a couple of
days. Others had heard. I was kept in the dark until then.
On the technical side, I owned it end to end: a full rewrite of a very complex, high-visibility app, one of the most
sensitive in the whole enterprise. It shipped with close to zero P0 issues. Moving it to microservices made it over 50%
more efficient, and many of the old version's pain points were eliminated in the design phase itself.
X was good at communication and at getting the ducks in a row. X got promoted.
It felt like my work had been stolen.
Ten years in, and stuck
It wasn't the first time. I'd watched others move up the career ladder ahead of me, and it wasn't always the strongest
engineer who went up. I was about ten years into my career and had only grown to Staff level.
I wasn't short on technical acumen. I was short on presenting my work in an interesting way, talking to non-technical
folks, and playing the political games. Someone had hurt my ego, and I was frustrated.
The usual answer to a moment like that is to give the job more of yourself: more hours than it asks for, and wait
your turn. I believe you need grit instead, and the nerve to question the rule that says you stay and wait. Most of
what stops you is in your head: what Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga's book calls the courage to be disliked.
The 11-year-old I'd lost
When I was 11, I helped my dad tally his numbers every day. He did it religiously, and he couldn't sleep peacefully
until every tally was accounted for. Around then I fell for computers and anything electronic: calculators, digital
watches, Walkmans. Then BASIC, C, C++, Visual Basic, Java.
Somewhere along the way that kid got lost in comfort, responsibilities and grievance. Looking inward, and finding that
11-year-old again, is the best thing I did. I reinvented myself around what I'd always loved.
My dad never went to sleep on a tally that didn't add up. I decided I wouldn't build a career on one.
Two months, on purpose
So I set a goal: a better job, somewhere else. From the end of January to the middle of March 2020, I put 15 to 30
hours a week into three things: data structures and algorithms, system design, and cloud architecture. I had support at home, and
I'm really thankful for it. When lockdown arrived in March, it even handed back the hours I'd been losing to the
commute.
- The LeetCode grind.
- Mock interviews with friends.
- System design mocks on my own, with scenarios prepared in advance: the questions to ask, the assumptions I'd make, and how I'd justify each one.
- Applications on LinkedIn, non-stop.
The funnel: 40 to 60 companies applied to, 10 interviews, 4 final rounds, two offers I went back and forth on, one yes.
2% or 40%
Pushing back from inside would have fetched me another 2% raise. At best, 5%. I left with a 40% raise.
I didn't fix my weakness first. I took my strength to where it gets paid.
That was my rebellion: not fighting the people who decided who moved up, but refusing to wait for them. Living well
really is the best revenge. It also pays better.
If you can't leave this quarter
"Just leave" is easy advice from someone it worked for. Maybe your visa, your family or the market says not now.
You don't need permission to prepare. Leaving is the last step; getting ready is the first, and nobody can stop you
taking it. In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne calls it a simple choice: "Get busy living or get busy dying."
Either way, you'll get busy.
So get busy on purpose, this week: one mock interview with a friend, one system design problem worked out loud, and a
date on the calendar for your first application.
The promotion went to someone else. What I got back was the 11-year-old who loved this stuff, and a 40% raise.
Six years later, I'm building my own company.
Has your work ever been credited to someone else? What did you do? Tell me in the comments.
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