Doing good work isn’t enough to get you promoted, says Ryan Peterman, an engineer at Meta. You also have to make sure everyone knows about it.
“If you go and build this amazing feature that nobody knows about, it doesn’t matter how good it is, you’re not going to get any recognition for it,” Peterman said during a talk at UCLA. “And so, how do you advocate for yourself after you’ve done great work, which is the hard part?”
Peterman worked at Instagram for six years, climbing to staff software engineer before changing focus to AI training infrastructure at Meta. He’s also the author of The Developing Dev newsletter, which offers career advice to engineers without their own mentors.
Making your accomplishments as public as possible is the key “last few percent” of climbing the career ladder, Peterman said. That can be as simple as writing a social media post or mentioning your success in a meeting, he added.
“I think a lot of people miss this, especially if they’re more introverted or they’re more quiet, just taking that last step on after the good work,” Peterman said.
Overperforming in your current position isn’t enough, Peterman said. He gives the example of a junior engineer who’s “doing 10 times as many features” as the rest of their peers. Though they’re likely to receive a positive performance review, they haven’t proved that they’re ready to take on senior responsibilities — only that they’re extremely competent at tackling their current workload.
“When your manager is looking to fill out like the rubric for the next level, for instance, none of the things will be checked off,” Peterman said. “There’s nothing about initiative or doing anything that’s expected of the mid-level.”
Ideally, he added, you’ll have a solid grasp of the “behaviors” exhibited by engineers at the level you’re looking to reach — and will look to take on projects that allow you to showcase them. If you’re lost as to what your organization might be looking for in more senior engineers, Peterman suggests talking to your supervisor.
“I was really, really eager to get promoted, and so I was constantly talking to my manager,” he said. “As soon as I got promoted to one level, I was like, ‘Okay, what’s the next level? What can I do?’ Maybe that was annoying for my manager, but he was really helpful in teaching me what were the things that I needed to pick up.”
Above all else, he added, it’s in your best interest to be as visible as possible. In the course of his time at Meta, Peterman has taken on five interns — those who stood out were just more willing to be bold.
“When I think about the ones that were rock stars, they had the audacity to propose improvements,” he said. “Even though obviously I’m the more senior person, they had the audacity to ask questions, propose improvements. Sometimes they weren’t right, but I could see the logic — but many times they were.”
