How should you handle a potential promotion?
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During a meeting with a manager, I mentioned that I would like to work towards a slightly different role, and take that role for our team. He has told me that a position has opened up and I can move towards that role and it would likely lead to a bump in pay level.
The role I wanted to work towards was cloud architecture design. I'm currently doing cloud engineering and building solutions. After the solutions are built I train an operations team on how to use them and provide documentation. Then move on to design the next build and implementation. The type of things I design are IaC to deploy immutable resources, scripts, service accounts, Docker repository management, helm charts, etc. Basically every single component of an application all designed with zero trust in mind.
Currently I'm able to make some nice changes within a handful of applications and continue to improve these applications without doing any of the day to day maintenance...
Sorry for long back story, but I wanted to understand my current role so you can understand the new architecture role.
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My manager has said that this will likely lead to a promotion, but what I'm finding at job postings show this role at my current pay grade
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Should I consider taking the new position of my pay grade stays the same?
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If I do not increase my pay grade now, how difficult will it be later? I'm guessing very difficult
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What are gotchas to consider when moving into a new team or new role?
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@RandyBlevins said in How should you handle a potential promotion?:
If I do not increase my pay grade now, how difficult will it be later? I'm guessing very difficult
Likely pretty difficult, yeah. This is the "trigger point." If this doesn't trigger the increase, what would?
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@RandyBlevins said in How should you handle a potential promotion?:
Should I consider taking the new position of my pay grade stays the same?
Sure, but consider that it means a need to move to a different employer to get that increase in the future most likely.
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@RandyBlevins said in How should you handle a potential promotion?:
Should I consider taking the new position of my pay grade stays the same?
I think this is one of the big questions.
Is the new role something you would enjoy more irrespective of a pay bump?
Or would the only enjoyment or benefit of the new role come from the pay bump and not the role?
Would the new role be worth more should you take the role for a year or two with no pay bump, but result in like a 20% base pay increase at a new company later? Maybe that would be worth it. Maybe the new role would give a slight pay bump at your current company, and lead to more bonus/equity/etc, and/or more pay raises there too.
What do other companies pay for that new role now? What might they pay in two years? Maybe in 2 years of having this new role, you could at a different company get hired at a higher level like Principal or similar, resulting in a few hundred $K more total comp per year.
You could answer these best, but may help to point them out.
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@Obsolesce said in How should you handle a potential promotion?:
Is the new role something you would enjoy more irrespective of a pay bump?
Or will you do it with the PLAN to move on once you are comfortable and mature in it? That's okay, too.
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@Obsolesce said in How should you handle a potential promotion?:
@RandyBlevins said in How should you handle a potential promotion?:
Should I consider taking the new position of my pay grade stays the same?
I think this is one of the big questions.
Is the new role something you would enjoy more irrespective of a pay bump?
I'm not sure. It will be no more writing code and doing troubleshooting like I'm used to doing now. I will miss getting to do the technical work, but at the same time I won't miss working through the corporate labyrinth for millions of different things. Every time I need a firewall rule opened, kms key created, dns entry, ssl cert created , etc I have to open a ticket to another team. Every team is different and it's an annoying process. Much more annoying than doing those things myself, because if I don't give exact details on how to create what I need it isn't done right.
Oh and Monday access to manage compute instances dissappeared as our IAM team is constantly stripping permissions in search for true zero trust. It's great to try to achieve it, but man stuff breaks randomly and then I have to open a ticket, they close it a day later because it wasnt the right type of ticket, then I reopen again and they fix the issue finally after 3 days.
Or would the only enjoyment or benefit of the new role come from the pay bump and not the role?
Would the new role be worth more should you take the role for a year or two with no pay bump, but result in like a 20% base pay increase at a new company later? Maybe that would be worth it. Maybe the new role would give a slight pay bump at your current company, and lead to more bonus/equity/etc, and/or more pay raises there too.
Maybe. I'm paid very well for my current position. I spent alot of time targeting a specific salary that is higher than most for my role. It's very hard for me to leave and match just my pay let alone all the other factors that are nice to have in a recession like FTE, yearly bonus, paid training, conferences up to $10k a year, etc. Also, some very intelligent people at my company so I feel I can still learn.
What do other companies pay for that new role now? What might they pay in two years? Maybe in 2 years of having this new role, you could at a different company get hired at a higher level like Principal or similar, resulting in a few hundred $K more total comp per year.
I do job searches sometimes, and get alot of messages daily about jobs (many of them revealing salary). I've got to be on top 5% for pay I think for my role. FAANG and maybe some big time banks could do a little better, but overall I'm very happy compared to what I've seen being offered
You could answer these best, but may help to point them out.
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@scottalanmiller said in How should you handle a potential promotion?:
@Obsolesce said in How should you handle a potential promotion?:
Is the new role something you would enjoy more irrespective of a pay bump?
Or will you do it with the PLAN to move on once you are comfortable and mature in it? That's okay, too.
That's always a consideration especially if my pay is better than others are offering currently anyway.
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@RandyBlevins said in How should you handle a potential promotion?:
@Obsolesce said in How should you handle a potential promotion?:
@RandyBlevins said in How should you handle a potential promotion?:
Should I consider taking the new position of my pay grade stays the same?
I think this is one of the big questions.
Is the new role something you would enjoy more irrespective of a pay bump?
I'm not sure. It will be no more writing code and doing troubleshooting like I'm used to doing now. I will miss getting to do the technical work, but at the same time I won't miss working through the corporate labyrinth for millions of different things. Every time I need a firewall rule opened, kms key created, dns entry, ssl cert created , etc I have to open a ticket to another team. Every team is different and it's an annoying process. Much more annoying than doing those things myself, because if I don't give exact details on how to create what I need it isn't done right.
Oh and Monday access to manage compute instances dissappeared as our IAM team is constantly stripping permissions in search for true zero trust. It's great to try to achieve it, but man stuff breaks randomly and then I have to open a ticket, they close it a day later because it wasnt the right type of ticket, then I reopen again and they fix the issue finally after 3 days.
Or would the only enjoyment or benefit of the new role come from the pay bump and not the role?
Would the new role be worth more should you take the role for a year or two with no pay bump, but result in like a 20% base pay increase at a new company later? Maybe that would be worth it. Maybe the new role would give a slight pay bump at your current company, and lead to more bonus/equity/etc, and/or more pay raises there too.
Maybe. I'm paid very well for my current position. I spent alot of time targeting a specific salary that is higher than most for my role. It's very hard for me to leave and match just my pay let alone all the other factors that are nice to have in a recession like FTE, yearly bonus, paid training, conferences up to $10k a year, etc. Also, some very intelligent people at my company so I feel I can still learn.
What do other companies pay for that new role now? What might they pay in two years? Maybe in 2 years of having this new role, you could at a different company get hired at a higher level like Principal or similar, resulting in a few hundred $K more total comp per year.
I do job searches sometimes, and get alot of messages daily about jobs (many of them revealing salary). I've got to be on top 5% for pay I think for my role. FAANG and maybe some big time banks could do a little better, but overall I'm very happy compared to what I've seen being offered
You could answer these best, but may help to point them out.
Maybe a bump in pay isn't what you want then, just a job you find more fulfilling and maybe some more clout or latitude.
