#46 “ ‘…the only thing holding my promotion back is that I am too quiet and the process needs me to be more outspoken and assertive.’ ”

“At Amazon, my manager (later my skip) kept telling me that I am already operating at the next level in terms of the technical bar required, but the only thing holding my promotion back is that I am too quiet and the process needs me to be more outspoken and assertive. I was told to go talk to the Principal Engineer frequently because their vote during the promotion deliberations mattered the most and it was important that I should be ‘visible’ to them. I felt that it was unfair to ask me to showcase my work to someone in person when the system I built was already in production and serving customer traffic. I still went ahead to get a 1:1 feedback from the Principal Engineer and they too told me that I am already at the next level but ‘the timing is not right’. Throughout this experience, I never received any actionable feedback about the gaps in my technical skills. While my manager acknowledged that the system was broken, I did not see any efforts to change this broken system, and after giving three years of what I could, I decided to leave the organization.”