Some things to remember about promotion processes
Perhaps it’s the time of the year, or perhaps just another manifestation of the ever-present anxiety which is working in Tech in 2025, but I’ve had several conversations this past fortnight with friends, former colleagues and coaching clients about promotions, and the mysteries of being - or not being - promoted. I figured I would write here a version of what I’ve said to all of those people in the hopes it might be useful to you too.
The first thing to say is that promotions are not logical. They are not the result of consistent, well described, rigorous processes. They come about in all sorts of ways, are blocked for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes after all the effort to get one, end up being a poisoned chalice.
Some things to keep in mind:
Performance & Promotion processes are always mid-refresh - Promotions tend to happen in an annual or bi-annual cadence in most large organisations, and at any given time the processes and parameters which define promotion eligibilities are either being rewritten, being implemented afresh, or are stagnant to the point of being ignored by at least part of the business.
Promotions are first-and-foremost a budgetary decision - Performance processes are primarily constrained by the amount of money available to uplift salaries and bonuses in line with the pay scales. You might’ve had the most phenomenal year of consistent over-performance, but if the company can’t afford (or won’t prioritise spending) the extra money required to promote you, you aren’t getting promoted. Obviously no one is ever going to give you this as the reason for not being promoted, you’ll be given development points and they may well reflect real areas of potential improvement, but it doesn’t always mean these are the reasons you didn’t get a bump in level.
Different disciplines value different things, and these differences become points of competition - As we’ve covered several times here previously, once promotions and performance reviews go into cross-disciplinary and cross-departmental calibration, designers are weighed against other disciplines who are likely better understood, better represented and more easily measured from a bottom-line perspective. This will often mean designers missing out because the finite pool of promotion cash will go towards these simpler cases.
Sometimes, it is personal - As much as organisations work hard to remove biases from these processes, it is impossible to remove the human - and therefore inherently biased - perspectives from these processes. It’s probably healthier to reconcile this than to try and overcome it, a manager who likes you is always going to be a better sponsor than one who doesn’t, and an exec who values design is always going to be better going in to bat for you than one who has only a cursory understanding of what it is you do all day.
Be careful what you wish for - Even if you are fortunate enough to be promoted in the current chaos of our industry, it isn’t always sunlit uplands on the other side of the title change. With that promotion will come greater scrutiny, heightened and more vague expectations, more meaningful bonus and salary adjustments, and more pressure. Some people thrive on that kind of situation, others most certainly do not. You do not need to continue climbing the ladder to the point where you promote yourself into failure, burnout, or just being miserable every morning at the prospect of opening your laptop.