Chase competence, not titles

Promotions, titles, and performance ratings are unstable, political, and often detached from actual competence. Internal motivation (the drive to master your craft, solve user problems, be trusted by others, and act conscientiously) is what creates sustainable career growth.

Early career engineers do need direction and milestones. But being a senior engineer isn’t the same thing as being titled Senior Engineer; a rose, by any other name, is just as hopeless at building software.

You want to build a career on something sturdier than whether or not your current organisation deems it worthy to pin any particular badge on you.

Why External Motivation Backfires

When you fixate on external rewards such as money and titles, you shift your behaviour. Like any metric, external measures of your career can lead you to optimising the metric instead of a goal that actually matters to you.

You will end up doing things that often harm both your own growth and your company’s success, such as:

prioritising visibility, over impact
competing with your peers, instead of growing together
burning energy trying to impress, when that’s not what drives promotions
burning out when progress up the ladder is slower than your ambition

When you put too much stock in rewards and recognition doled out by others (e.g. your manager) then you are giving control of your career to someone else. At an extreme, you give up your right to feel proud of yourself and your work; you give up your autonomy and identity to a person or system whose primary interest is not you.

These systems are not designed with the employee as the primary beneficiary - they are designed for the business, first and foremost. It doesn’t mean they’re evil, or unfair, or deliberately controlling - it’s just important to recognise that the primary purpose of performance frameworks is as a pillar of the operational strategy of the business, and are not a good way to define you or your career.

What Is Your Goal?

You will likely be in your career for a long time. If you want to have a good, long career that’s sometimes happy but always valuable, then you need to try your best to set these things to the side.

You need to find a goal that’s not measured in numbers like no. of 0s on the paycheck or square metres of office space; a goal that says what change you, uniquely or not, wish to make in the world.

It’s not that remuneration and recognition are unimportant, it’s that they should be less important to you than this goal.

Promotions and money will come when you are already trusted at a new level. This doesn’t mean don’t ask - asking is how you get what you want - but growth isn’t something you often can actively push. Growth happens when you’re resting, and it takes time and patience.

If you try to force growth and push for promotions, titles, more money, you will end up tired and empty.

Instead, if you focus on your goals, then you will ideally be grounding your daily life in values-aligned internal motivators which will leave you content and fulfilled (even if you’re still a bit tired!).

How Internal Motivation Works

Internal motivation means aligning your career with your internal value system. For almost all of us, there are two key things to think about:

Service. We are wired to help each other - when you feel a lack of purpose, you often lack the feeling you are being of genuine service to another person.
Responsibility. We want to own things - when you feel a lack of meaning, you often lack the feeling the group relies on your for something, or that your contribution is redundant.

The thing that underpins both of these is competence - in order to take on more responsibility, and therefore be of more service, we need to increase our competence. And that’s where career growth lives.

Organisations promote people who they can rely on; people who are both competent and consistent. The overly ambitious types who are constantly jockeying for a level-up are almost always passed over for promotion. Why? Because it signals that this person is more interested in themselves than the group; it’s a pretty clear sign of immaturity. This is not someone you want responsible for other people’s work and growth in your organisation, and - whether you are a manager or not - that’s what seniority means.

Be First, Ask Later

You either know what a good senior engineer is, or you don’t. If you don’t - that’s fine - keep working and growing, seek out good mentors, coaches and managers where you can, and one day you will understand.

If you do, then stop asking how to get there and just be a senior engineer. If you know what a good senior engineer is and looks like, just start being one! Once you are one, then you should ask to be called one. Working the other way around is bad for you and bad for your organisation.

So, how do we “just be”:

Define your goal. This doesn’t need to be set in stone, but define a goal that allows you to judge its success, e.g. “I want to learn unit testing” or “I want to take on a big, complex project”. Focus on service and responsibility for bonus points.
Seek out responsibility. Instead of asking for promotions, first ask for work. Ask for projects and work that align with your goal/s.
Just be. Take on the responsibility; do the work; complete the project. This is the new level - it’s not something you do to get a promotion, it is the promotion.
Ask for recognition. When you’ve been performing at that higher level for a minimum of 6 months, consistently, provide evidence and ask to be recognised with promotion or payrise - whatever is appropriate. Keep asking - don’t give up. If you are convinced you’re at that higher level, consistently, and still not recognised after asking a few times then leave. Find a new organisation that will recognise your value.

This system works at all levels, and you should reassess and redefine your goal/s every 6-12 months, if you can. They might not change - and that’s ok! - but it’s good to reflect periodically because it’s very easy to get stuck on the treadmill. Sometimes for literal decades…

If you are a junior or mid-level engineer, then learning and practicing this approach is going to have a huge compound benefit to your career. Not only will you find Senior Engineer, but you’ll blitz right past it into the great beyond, because values-aligned goal setting is what separates good, solid engineers from great, world-changing engineers¹.

What have we learned?

In summary, external recognition and reward is not worthless - don’t let your work go under-recognised or under-rewarded.

However, if you want a strong, resilient and meaningful career then prioritise values-aligned, internally motivated goals, and treat external reward systems as secondary.

Remember, you want to actually be a senior engineer, not just be called one.

Say what you want about Jobs (I don’t idolise the man, personally) - but it’s hard to argue he hasn’t changed the world (lone genius myth notwithstanding). ↩