Career Growth Advice for Individual Contributors (ICs)

After my post on my interview experience 23+ years ago at Amazon and my post on Twitter about my career since then dozens (ok, two) people asked me to cover how to grow as an individual contributor (IC). Who am I to ignore my adoring fans (ok, fan). How do you know when to stay where you are vs switching internally vs switching companies/careers? What makes choices more or less likely to be successful long-term?

First, let’s start with the fact that success is never a straight line

Then, I want to acknowledge that even thinking about this topic means I (and you) have a lot of privilege. Most folks just need the job they have to stay alive, feed their family, etc. They don’t have the ability to think about lofty goals like self-actualization. I have many thoughts about income inequality and power dynamics of modern employment, but we’ll save those for another time…

First, I don’t believe in mass-market self-help advice such as “first, you must find your happiness where you are!” or “manifest your feelings and the universe will provide” or “trust in karma, the system will work it out” or “Who Moved my Cheese”. To me all of that stuff is either not actionable, or designed to reinforce that you can’t make things better with action and downright dangerous to your career…

Now, if you’re depressed, sick, or physically in a place that makes day-to-day basic life satisfaction difficult, obviously you need to take care of those things first. I know for me 20+ years ago when I had gained 25+ lbs in 3 years working too much at Amazon, and wasn’t working out or sleeping, I wasn’t in a position to think straight about anything else. Self care, eating better and exercise really got me in a space to think in a clear-headed fashion about what I wanted to do with my life…

First, some ground rules

Your employer is NOT your family, and they’re not your friend. They don’t love you. I have many thoughts about why companies need you to believe this, but you shouldn’t. None of this means a good employer won’t respect you, or need you, or reward you. Or that you shouldn’t feel connected to what you are doing and respect what your employer has accomplished in the business world or what they’ve given you in terms of opportunity. I know I’m thankful for my current role and proud of what we’ve achieved at AWS (as I am of what I achieved at Zynga and Fred Hutch before that).

You may have a lot of friends at work. This is fantastic. There is nothing wrong in enjoying your time and feeling connected to those around you (peers, bosses, etc). Studies I’ve read show having even just 2 (dos, deux, shtayim) “close friends” at work is a key contributor to your work satisfaction. So develop those friendships! Go to happy hour or work events, etc. Life is too just sit at your desk all day…

OK, so how should you think about growing your career?

To me, while there are no guarantees, my odds of career success increase have increased when I think about it like cooking with a recipe — although it’s not as precise as baking. It requires a number of “ingredients” to be present, and in the right quantities. For me, the ingredients are, in roughly in equal proportions: Being personally engaged with the actual work (what you actually do day-to-day); The work having external value (growing field); The work being central to my employer’s success; My employer/line of business is growing/achieving its goals…

Then, in the best case I am also connected to my employer’s mission and can viscerally feel how what I’m working on furthers the core business we’re in. In the “worst best” case I’m at least temporarily aligned, like pirates working together on a ship under a common flag with overall respect for the skills each individual (myself, peers, boss, employer) brings to the current “mission”, but no long-term sense of greater loyalty…

When I look back at my early career I spent a lot of time chasing a “single better thing” (often pay or title) and while it worked in a limited sense, it didn’t lead to any persistent level of success “Somewhere around 2003 (thanks constructive criticism) I gained a better understanding what makes me tick, and since then have a mental checklist for what really gets me “in the groove.”

But enough about me. What about you?

Your ingredient list and your proportions might be different, depending on what motivates you. It’s up to you to figure that out, but I find this framework to be a useful way to think about the situation you’re in, and how to make it the best possible one for your self-actualization.

When you’ve got all ingredients in your recipe and in the right proportions, stay put! More than decent chance you’ll achieve your goals — be it monetary gain, promotions, recognition, internal sense of reward, etc far faster and in a more durable way than if you go “chasing” a single thing elsewhere (better title, pay, company name). This is especially important as you become more senior and your ability to grow really does depend on the confluence of factors, not just your individual performance/results.

If you’ve got none or few of these ingredients where you are, or worse, your employer doesn’t respect you — You should absolutely look around — Life is far too short to stick around where you’re not championed. Or if you’re disconnected, don’t enjoy the day-to-day the company isn’t growing, your work isn’t core to the company, etc — no “external signifiers” that exist (money, title), or things that motivate others are going to lead to greater success for you

But when you look — unless you’re on a sinking ship and just need another paying gig — think hard about whether all/most of those ingredients exist where you’re considering. Don’t leave for “just one better thing” …

The hardest decisions are when things are in the middle. Maybe you feel connected to your company’s mission, and like what you do day-to-day, but the work you do isn’t clearly core to the company’s success. Or maybe promotions matter to you and your org is shrinking but the company is doing ok. These are the circumstances where I advise looking around internally if you can — even if it’s just a different set of projects/tasks in your current area. Because decent chance by looking around you can find those “missing ingredients” to your recipe without starting over from scratch.

So what’s next?

Your homework is to create that recipe and the ingredients list by thinking about when you’ve really “clicked” with a job, and when you’ve felt down or persistently “meh” Don’t listen to what others tell you — this is YOUR list, and no one can tell YOU what matters short or long-term to you and yours.

As I’ve posted before — this approach hasn’t led to unadulterated success and I’m clearly no “Titan of Industry”. I haven’t gotten it all figured out, even now at my advanced age. But this approach has created guard rails that I can say have grown my career faster by all objective measures and lessened (generally) my subjective frustrations.

Additionally, this knowledge has made me more empathic as as manager and mentor, especially when it requires giving people nuanced feedback or hard truths that they should consider leaving/radical changes. Or at least that’s what people tell me from time to time.

Hope this was helpful and if you liked this and somehow made it to the end, follow me on twitter @joshuaseattle

As a Postscript: My thoughts on Gen Y and Gen Z career development

Gen Y/Millennials (25–36) and Gen Z (5–24) are going to radically reshape the workforce and I believe HR/PeopleOps aren’t well prepared right now. There’s a perception that millennials are “kids” — but look at those age ranges. Before too long they’ll be the vast majority of the workforce and they’ll never have known a world without global opportunity, the ability/expectation to switch jobs, and never known a world with job security, pensions and non-computerized work.

What I see from Gen Y and Gen Z is that they think less even less linearly than us in Gen-X or Boomers about career growth. Title seems to matter less as an ingredient, where friendship and mission alignment matter more. I also see a big trend in expectations that companies actually take care of the “whole person” and the planet/environment.

Us oldsters can “pooh pooh” all this, but how is it really different than expecting 40+ years and a pension except in specific focus (personal/world well-being vs personal stability/retirement)?

This has implications for things like with whom a company’s does business or lobbying. See Tim Cook’s “Coming Out” article, or Microsoft suspending their PAC because employees were up-in-arms about donations to LGBTQ-unfriendly politicians being “at odds” with Microsoft’s “inclusivity” promises. Keep your eye on this one, managers!