What's going on with promotions? It was always hard to get ahead at this place but now it seems literally impossible. And it's not even that I'm being skipped over for somebody else, people are simply not being promoted at all. Has there been a promotion freeze that I haven't heard about?
10 replies (most recent on top)
Promotions are happening but kept to a minimum. With Newco and Covid, it would be hard to speculate when each org's promo practices return to normal.
Are you part of the IN group? I’ve seen VP’s handed out in Q1 to people who should not have received them, except for their IN crowd status.
Yea be careful what you wish for. I too was promoted then RA'd within 6 months. They must have had a quote to meet at the higher band level.
Promotion followed by RA!
You don't get to decide that you want to be promoted. It doesn't matter how much work you do or how much value you add, if it's not in the cards, it's not in the cards. To make matters worse, the OP is wrong. There are plenty of promotions per quarter. Just not you. Your manager had decided (probably 5 years ago) who wins and who doesn't. And, if not your manager, his or her manager.
It's not just promotions. Here's an experiment. Work your a– of for a year and produce a really, really good piece of software. Make it do what it is supposed to do. Make it bullet proof. Test every angle. Since FLMs/SLMs are fairly brain-dead, you're not getting an OTA for that. But the mo–n who did 100 PowerPoints will.
IBM has a better idea. Instead of raise they give you more work to do.
On top of that, some managers will give the work they should be owning.
Then when you finally quit or get RA'd the next guy walks into a sh!t storm.
Typical IBM
If you have not realized it yet... IBM does not want you to work here...
Time to take your business somewhere else.
The only people that get promoted are the useless ones that wear brown lipstick.
Do they focus on promotions when there’s resource action? And I’m pretty sure you’re asking the question before RA phases(s), correct. The only promotions I have heard have been around individual making a shift or change of departments.
My last band promotion brought me a 5% salary increase. It was not worth the added expectations and responsibility. If they offered me another band promotion (which they may), I would probably refuse it.
As -qgk said, work on your resume and external interviewing if you are interested in promotions.
Forget the ibm promo, stop chasing and start preparing for external interviews.
Join the app called "teamblind" or look at levels.fyi to see how much (more) other tech companies are paying.
Ibm promo will will most probably increase your pay by 20% if you're lucky and shove so much more work to you.
You can walk into 50-100% raise at other companies.