Lets add some context. Amazon is the author's only job. 5yrs Software, 7yrs Senior, 4yrs Principal, now runs a YouTube self-help. Reading through there are multiple lines that collectively paint a picture of a difficult career.

"I had over 20 managers across my 18 years at Amazon", whilst this might be out of the author's hands, that's a wild manager history.

"..when I finally pushed for bigger scope at Amazon. My manager’s initial reaction wasn’t excitement. It was something closer to “But you’re doing so well where you are.”", most managers generally push their devs to always be doing larger pieces of work, if they aren't, that's weird.

"I was a passenger for the first 10 years of my Amazon career", which doesn't really line up, unless they're referring to their horizontal move to Prime in an effort to find promotive work.

"Not because I suddenly got better at my job, but because I started being intentional about which parts of my job were ... mapped to what the next level required.", which means the author worked out how to correctly market themselves internally.

"You know where you want to be in five years, and you’re actively seeking out the work that will get you there eventually.", again, they worked out how to find promotive work. This seems to be the key take-away they're dancing around.

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nicce 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> "..when I finally pushed for bigger scope at Amazon. My manager’s initial reaction wasn’t excitement. It was something closer to “But you’re doing so well where you are.”", most managers generally push their devs to always be doing larger pieces of work, if they aren't, that's weird.

From the business perspective, it may not be good to push. If they are really good at what they currently do, the manager would need to find a replacement, and there is no certainty that the old worker provides more value in the different job. When only the money is weighted, this will happen often. Seems to fit for Amazon's work culture.

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bluGill 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The problem is bored employees find a new job elsewhere. Employees who feel they are not valued find a new job elsewhere. If you can find them a new job in the company you can have them train their replacement - years later the replacement can ask "do you remember why you did...". It also means if the old project has an emergency you have a bunch of people who can jump in much faster - to some extent this adding people to a late project won't make it latter (only some extent, it isn't perfect).

People also get old and retire (or die). By moving people around a bit you ensure that your training plan still works because you are using it. This also means there will be openings to move up the ladder, make sure you get the people on them. (There are stories from my company where after a big layout they got scared and hired almost nobody for the next 20 years, then those who made it passed the layoffs started retiring and there wasn't a mid level of engineers following to promote).

	▲	addaon 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The problem is bored employees find a new job elsewhere. But this one didn’t. 20 years at one place, at least 10 with minimal support. Maybe all those managers were bad; but maybe they realized this individual wasn’t a flight risk, and had a reasonable strategy for maximizing what they got out of them, since they knew they didn’t have to guard against departure.

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giva 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

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wiseowise 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> most managers generally push their devs to always be doing larger pieces of work, if they aren't, that's weird.

Now weird at all, and maybe that's "most managers" within your career? I've seen my share of complacent managers who were fine with status quo.

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lo_zamoyski 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I think most managers prefer the status quo; why wouldn't they? Charitably, you can think of it as an assumption on the manager's side that you're fine with the way things are, because you haven't said anything. Similar things can be said about salary.

I don't know why people assume managers are interested in increasing salaries and distributing promotions. Every incentive and preference works against those things. If you want change, you have to ask for it.

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wiseowise 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

From my experience it is futile to ask for any meaningful salary changes. Bands are usually fixed. Unless you're severely underpaid, they won't increase your salary by much. There are only two ways to increase your salary: leave for bigger salary, or threaten to leave and stay for bigger salary.

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bluGill 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That depends on the company. Many companies rate their managers on how well they do useful things for their people.

	▲	ryandrake 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I've seen companies that do and companies that don't. I've actually had managers try to dissuade me from growing my scope of work or growing my career. "I don't know why you'd want to be promoted to manager, just stay an IC" was a common phrase to push back against my expressed desire for career growth. Definitely happens. Lots of companies erect career-ceilings over you.

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8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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