Post #675268

2026-03-15 13:56 UTC

I spend a lot of time thinking about who gets promoted in tech orgs. This isn&#39;t just academic. Promotion practices are an architectural pillar of the full system. One principle I see repeatedly violated, but which I would never sacrifice: Nobody should be named CTO or CIO of a tech org without a deep understanding of the principles of teamwork.

Replies (5)

@denzilferreira@techhub.social 2026-03-15 14:02

@elizayer the best advice I got on my career was: very rarely is someone promoted when they do a job super well. Promotions come when you don't fit anymore on the role you currently have on paper.

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@pdebruin@hachyderm.io 2026-03-15 15:45

@elizayer the higher the stakes, the higher the politics

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@knowprose@mastodon.social 2026-03-15 16:22

@elizayer in my experience, it changes in the scale of the organization. Startups have a tendency to import and usually there will have been so much churn no one knows anything (I was one that had a talent for writing things down and saw much of it). Larger more mature orgs generally promoted from within that the assumption that people did understand how things worked. Hits and misses observed. If you were irreplaceable at what you did, you did not get promoted in any of them.

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@brandonscript@appdot.net 2026-03-15 20:24

@elizayer I also love how people are encouraged to make product decisions based on the promotion scheme. @earth2marsh

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@ThomasPonnet@mastodon.nz 2026-03-15 23:50

@elizayer If all narcissists in management positions were to loose their jobs tomorrow we'd see several job openings and an increase in job satisfaction and productivity for the rest of us.

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