From junior to senior level, promotions depend mainly on meeting the proficiency bar for technical skills and communication abilities. But after reaching a senior level, whether your next step is toward Staff or Manager, clearing the proficiency bar alone isn't enough—there must also be a clear "business need." Positions typically become available when your company expands, someone leaves, or new initiatives emerge.
Betting on the right horse
The "business need" means that advancing beyond senior relies not just on you but also on your company's circumstances. This makes getting promoted in companies that aren't growing much harder because new roles or opportunities are rarely created. And when a new senior role does open up, many internal candidates will compete for it.
This is what makes growing companies attractive. They constantly need to find new ways to capture more market share, resulting in frequent hiring, formation of new teams and initiatives, and consequently, more senior+ roles.
If you want to accelerate your career growth, consider joining a rapidly growing startup. You'll likely have greater opportunities to handle significant challenges and rapidly develop your skills. The trade-off is usually stability and possibly a lower salary.
How to know if a company is growing?
Before accepting a new role, take the time to research the company's growth trajectory. Publicly available metrics such as headcount growth, Glassdoor reviews, funding rounds, and media coverage are good indicators of a company's health.
For larger companies, you can also assess their long-term potential by reviewing customer experiences on Reddit or other forums. Generally, satisfied customers point out a positive trajectory for the company.
Being the CEO of your career
It's important not to take a passive approach to your career advancement. There's a well-known saying in Western culture: "The squeaky wheel gets the grease." In conversations with friends who mentioned deep frustrations at work, I would often ask, "What does your manager say when you discuss it?" Surprisingly often, they had never even brought it up.
Ideally, your manager should initiate conversations about your career development at least every six months. Unfortunately, many managers never discuss career development, meaning you'll likely need to be the one to bring up the discussions.
Nobody is more invested in your career than you — Be explicit about your career goals during your one-on-ones with your manager. Doing so enables more relevant feedback tailored to your desired path and helps identify skills to focus on.
If your current manager understands your goals for advancement beyond senior, they can more effectively mentor you by highlighting relevant lessons from situations that arise. Without an awareness of your aspirations, they may miss opportunities to provide valuable context or guidance.
Proactively seek opportunities with your manager to learn essential skills relevant to your desired path—whether it's interviewing candidates, running meetings effectively, strategic thinking, or directly interacting with customers.
If possible, schedule occasional skip-level meetings with your director. These conversations offer insight into the company's higher-level challenges. It also doubles as a opportunity to know and build rapport with someone who could potentially become your future boss.
Showing signs of leadership
Senior leaders generally know exactly which individual contributors (ICs) on their teams are fully prepared to step into higher-level roles if needed.
Typically, these people are highly competent senior ICs who teammates naturally approach when they need help. They're effective communicators, strong mentors, and skilled at analyzing business requirements alongside technical tradeoffs; this makes them "go-to" advisors for their colleagues.
Another invaluable trait senior leadership looks for is curiosity, essential when offering feedback constructively. For instance, if a colleague takes an unusual approach in their work, instead of calling them out directly, ask why they chose that method rather than the accepted 'ideal' approach. Framing your concern as a question demonstrates trust in their abilities and encourages them to reflect and learn.
Force multiplier
One of the most powerful actions you can take if you're seeking career growth is to position yourself as a "force multiplier." Although this concept often goes unnoticed, it significantly impacts a project's success. Force multiplier is work that once completed, enables others on the team to deliver faster and more effectively.
Whether you aspire to become a Staff-level engineer or Manager, becoming a force multiplier is an essential milestone you'll need to achieve. Staff-level leaders don't necessarily do 2–10 times the direct work of a senior individual contributor. Instead, they identify the most impactful opportunities, remove critical roadblocks, or improve infrastructure, making their teams significantly more productive.
For example, if frequent production bugs constantly stall your team's progress, implementing critical automated testing can be a significant multiplier. This ensures improvements can safely ship and saves hours of debugging later.
Another scenario could be a situation where shifting requirements frequently force team members to redo their work repeatedly. One individual who effectively communicates with stakeholders and creates comprehensive specifications before the team's efforts begin can save many hours of redundant work.
Force multiplier efforts increase everyone's efficiency. Imagine you reduce your teammates' task times by 5 minutes each, and they complete around 3 tasks per day. Across a 5-person team, you've effectively added up to **375 working days per year** to your team's productivity!
Identifying possible multipliers can be challenging since they're often highly specific to a particular context or team dynamic. However, common areas worth exploring include:
* Overly complex processes or architecture forcing team members to duplicate effort across multiple areas, introducing errors.
* Lack of robust quality checks that slow team efforts due to manual testing and debugging cycles.
* Outdated or inefficient tools complicating maintenance and hindering effective troubleshooting or productivity.
* Non-technical process inefficiencies, like unclear task definitions or ineffective planning meetings which add unnecessary overhead.
The greater the number of people impacted by your improvement, the stronger the multiplier effect.
Look proactively for gaps within your team's workflow or processes. Your manager can help you spot these bottlenecks, but as someone actively involved in day-to-day work, you're perfectly placed to notice inefficiencies firsthand. Asking your teammates directly what they like or dislike about the project can also yield valuable insights.
Getting your foot in the door
Strive to progressively take on additional responsibilities through incremental trust-building with your manager and teammates. Promotions to Staff+ roles appear to happen overnight but take months of gradual progression.
Like many others, I started as an individual contributor at a growing startup, and my responsibilities gradually shifted—from technical tasks to hiring, mentoring, planning, and client interaction. Eventually, I found myself spending most of my time guiding and leading rather than executing individually.
When it became clear that I was essentially doing the higher-level work without official recognition, I approached my senior leadership about it. Shortly afterward, I received the official recognition and title, along with greater strategic responsibilities.
Finally, even if promotion opportunities don't happen in your current company, the skills and experiences you develop make excellent talking points when interviewing elsewhere.