I got promoted to Senior today
Tags: career, devjournal
Published: 2021-06-20 12:14:56

I got promoted to Senior today. For some time I kind-of expected it. I had entered the process and all parts were aiming towards a yes: I got all good feedback, a good craft assessment and my tech director liked me.

I got a little bit worried when the panel asked me some extra questions. I wasn't expecting those. And if they had questions then that could mean that the case wasn't clear enough, which meant that most likely I wasn't going to get it.

I realised I was gonna get the news today because my weekly meeting with my Team Lead included my manager. And managers were always there for the news. Although mostly only for good news. Which meant this was most likely good news. Yay.
After some nervous hours my suspicions were confirmed: I got the promotion, Yay!

I told my significant other right after I got the news. I also told my friends, we keep each other updated on those sorts of things.

I went right back to work after that, some meetings forced me into it, but also I didn't really know what to do about the news. I got distracted during the day and the next one spending some time with my boyfriend, so I didn't give it much thought afterwards either.

I don't know, I don't feel necessarily proud. It doesn't feel like an achievement other than an achievement at convincing some people to pay me more. I don't necessarily feel like I've earned it either. Much of the good feedback and recognition I got were for things I did not enjoy, I did not necessarily excelled at, I just endured and were not really part of my job expectations. So it's weird. I want to be recognised for other things I personally value more. But as usual we keep forgetting that more often than not, our values don't always align with the companies we work for. And I don't mean the written values that are displayed in nice graphics and people keep repeating back to each other as if to shield themselves from their personal influence (it's not me saying this, it's the company). I mean the values that decision-making people act on and sometimes express  but more  often they use proxies for what they really believe in.

This is making me sound super cynical and ungrateful. I don't think I should feel grateful. "The company" is not some all giving entity that distributes its grace upon the worthy  people. It's a business, run by some folks that try to make the best of it and mostly themselves. And sometimes you get the carrot, and sometimes you get the stick. If you are shown to be valuable and push the right buttons and tick the right boxes, you'll likely get a nice price. If not, you'll likely end up a bit miserable like most people on this earth.

It's a bit upsetting to me that we can't acknowledge that and instead have to play the charade of patting ourselves in the back and making never-ending conversations on the "skills" that allow you to "grow" your "career". At the same time, acknowledging the game behind it all won't make anybody happy. As usual ignorance is a bliss. But it doesn't work with wilful ignorance. I can't fool myself.

The usual next logical conclusion whenever this comes up in conversation is "just go with it, make good money, and find fulfilment outside of work". Which just seems a bit cruel to subject people into spending most of their time in something that is acknowledged to be unfulfilling.

At the same time I have to remind myself that it's a luxury  to be sad about fulfilment, when most of the planet is struggling with more basic and urgent things that I give for granted. But that doesn't help. I don't think gratitude is for me. It doesn't feel genuine. Yay I have food in the table. It's cruel to people that don't. But I can't feel happy about it. Sorry, I just can't.

Jesus this was supposed to be a nice writing about work and career and now it's turned into a depressing self-sabotage, self-demeaning, self-indulgent crap. Fun.

How do I get out of it? Maybe get back to the point.

The point is: I got a promotion and I'm somewhat happy about it, somewhat anxious, somewhat relieved.

I covered the happy part. Why anxious?

Well I know that what comes next is meeting the expectations of my "new" role. Which are of course vague, and that's part of the reason why I struggled to get it. In the end though I didn't really focused much on the specifics of that definition, and ended up getting the promotion anyways. So maybe if I do the same, I will eventually meet the expectations as well.

I had a brief conversation with a colleague who has been a senior for more than a year now and I've watched his journey and is someone I can have somewhat candid conversations with.

Anyways, he told me "with great power comes great responsibility". But the focus of the conversation was power. I would have a bit more power. It shouldn't necessarily be that way and bla bla, but the reality is that my voice is gonna have a different weight. My actions are gonna have a different weight, my decisions, etc. People will start coming to me for advice, questions, involvement. And they will expect me to answer like someone in my role: with confidence, but also allegedly as representative of the company. I'm not just a leaf in the tree, I'm a branch. People expect support from me. And I'm scared I might not fill those shoes very well.

A lot of times people ask me what I want to do with my career and what I keep telling people is that I don't want to be a people manager. I can probably do a decent job at it. But I don't like it. I don't care about people enough. And if I do, I resent it, I dislike it, I don't enjoy it. Is part of the reason why I don't want to be a mother: I am super not gonna enjoy it and I know it.

Yet I have inadvertently put myself in a position where I'm gonna have to care about people. I think back towards my "mentors" and of course I've always judge them. I kind of knew that they were just colleagues doing their best and probably didn't know any better than me. But that didn't matter because the first thing on my mind was wether or not they were meeting my needs. And it was unfair. And it's gonna happen to me.

But, what do I care? I'm gonna try to do my best, and if with all the information and capabilities I have I still end up failing that person, well... I mean, tough. There's not more I can do than the best I can do. It's a bit pointless to be scared of this. As long as I don't end up being racist or sexist or x-ist, then I guess I can just do my job and hope for the best.

I've been thinking that I should start reading/educating myself on some of these softer leadership skills. Some are bullshit (a lot of them are), but I can't deny that some people truly know how to handle humans better to get the best of them. It may be all natural talent and charisma, but there's probably a trick or two that us normals can pick up to do a better job at it ourselves. I don't really know where to get these things though. And I'm a bit embarrassed to be caught reading or citing  some low level self-help book with a provocative yet naive title like "9 - 5 Hero ninja manager" or something.

Was I lying then when I said that I don't want to be a people manager? Here I am, thinking about reading leadership books. That doesn't sound like an autistic tech-only professional.
But a lot of the profession (and most professions) ends up being mostly about people. I keep telling people, we code for humans, not for computers. Sure the computer ends up interpreting the thing and doing some calculations for us. But at the end of the day we write quasi english text for us to read  and others to read, to help other people do things with a computer. Pesky humans are everywhere when we code!!! They are there when we choose variable names, when we modularise our code, when we test it, when we ask for a merge request review, when we monitor live usage, when we get user feedback, when we get bug reports, when we get new requirements, when we have to plan for those requirements, etc, etc, etc. It's all humans, very little machines. I think my sociology majored best friend has a higher machine over human interaction rate than I do.

So who am I kidding? I'm gonna have to care about people. I already do. I just need to stop self-hating myself for not being good at it by my own standards and just try to be better.

That's all we can do. That's all I'm gonna do. Try to be better.