It's worth mentioning that career conversations with your manager are always bullshit. How could they not be? Your manager's incentives are to keep you around, keep you productive, and keep you inexpensive. It's ridiculous to think that helping you build a successful career, which likely doesn't involve them or your current employer for very long, is something that they would do. Why would you reveal any information about your long term plans to such an adversary?

If they realize that the company cannot provide what you are looking for then they may not want to invest more resources in keeping you around, or keeping you happy. If they realize that you find some sort of intrinsic reward in certain work, then they might put you last for raises, because the money could help them more when spent on other people.

It's best to selectively reveal only your immediate short-term goals, only at the current company, and only as part of an ask. Always make them pay for information, if you are going to reveal what you want, then they need to reveal whether they intend to help you or hinder you in getting it. Slow answers, non-answers, pushing to next quarter, etc. All signal that they intend to hinder. It's rare to get an honest, fast "no".

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hnthrowaway121 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I’m careful like this to a point, but you can establish trust with managers. Most decent cultures don’t favor hoarding good employees how you’ve described.

> It's ridiculous to think that helping you build a successful career, which likely doesn't involve them or your current employer for very long, is something that they would do.

This is a very short term perspective. If I am a good manager to you, you are much more likely to stay because that’s an important relationship & you are benefiting. If it means you move on because I helped you gain the skills/confidence you needed, great, maybe sometime down the road you can help me when I’m looking for me next job or refer my next awesome employee. But who cares, at least neither one of us had to be miserable.

You always have to be _cautious_ but don’t let relentless cynicism keep you from good useful professional relationships that can actually help you.

	▲	alphazard 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> but you can establish trust with managers. This is technically true, but metaphorically false. Most readers, especially the younger crowd, are likely to be too trusting and not correctly recognize fundamentally adversarial relationships, like with their boss, with HR, with lawyers whom they don't pay personally, etc. Especially when those people present the relationship with a faux version of the same naivety that they intend to prey upon. The only people you can trust at a company, are people who have demonstrated that they value your relationship more than the company's relationship. That's not impossible, but if they really need the salary, then the odds are stacked against you. It's certainly nice to pretend that everyone is nice and trustworthy. In fact, most people will hold it against you if you don't sufficiently pretend to be trusting. Universal insincerity is part of the human condition.

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thenoblesunfish 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Comments like this make me feel very lucky to have the job and manager I have! If the situation is as adversarial as the one you're describing, are you perhaps missing out on the fact that when people trust and genuinely support each other it's not zero sum? That you and your manager are actually on a team (assuming you're in a big company), basically at the same level in terms of power and influence?

	▲	alphazard 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> when people trust and genuinely support each other it's not zero sum This is a clear non-sequitur. Whether or not the situation is zero-sum is dictated by the situation not by the actions of people, or how they feel about each other. If the situation is zero-sum, and one party doesn't realize, or is too trusting of other parties, then they just lose. And they might not even realize that they lost, or that the situation was zero-sum to begin with. > basically at the same level in terms of power and influence? Obviously not true, unless you can truly ignore your manager and still be successful at the company, then they have power over you. If they control more resources than you, or have more face time with people who do control resources, then they probably have more influence than you as well. This whole comment reads like a sucker who doesn't know they are being scammed.