{"id":5888,"date":"2024-01-23T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-23T01:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/?p=5888"},"modified":"2024-02-08T21:48:07","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T11:48:07","slug":"career-progression-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/career-progression-1\/","title":{"rendered":"#24 &#8211; Growing as an SRE (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Episode 24 [SREpath Podcast<\/strong>]<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"gb-grid-wrapper gb-grid-wrapper-dd778dc5\">\n<div class=\"gb-grid-column gb-grid-column-8c51a9b1\"><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-8c51a9b1\">\n\n<iframe style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/5Cf7fMw4jrAyCNqYOBeeRd?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameBorder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>My dear SRE friend,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You &#8211; like many other SREs &#8211; want to progress into more senior roles in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is known as <em>career progression<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Successful career progression in Site Reliability Engineering means <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">constantly growing<\/span> your ability to handle a wider scope of responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But <strong>there are 3 lesser-known truths about SRE career progression<\/strong> because people in this space rarely talk about them openly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you are not already where you want to be in your career because growth hasn&#8217;t just &#8220;happened&#8221;, keep reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve broken down my analysis of these truths into a 3-part&nbsp;series that I will cover. You will get the first truth in this email&nbsp;\ud83e\udd73<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;ll start with&nbsp;a quick overview of what is career progression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then I will demystify&nbsp;1&nbsp;of the 3&nbsp;unspoken (and lesser-known) truths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In later&nbsp;parts, I will&nbsp;also:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u27a1\ufe0f  give you advice on how to&nbsp;<em><strong>plan<\/strong><\/em>&nbsp;your SRE career progression \u2014 hint: you should do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u27a1\ufe0f  share links to progression frameworks from 2 well-known tech companies: Dropbox and Gitlab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u27a1\ufe0f  give you&nbsp;a ridiculously simple 8-step process you can use to plan and drive your career advancement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s begin&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"what-is-career-progression\">What is career progression?<\/h2>\n\n\n<p>The idea behind <em>career progression<\/em> is that your current job is only the starting point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You will be working toward higher levels of pay and complexity for your role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You will need to manifest this through better technical abilities and non-technical abilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But here\u2019s a funny thing: progression can happen without advancing in either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><mark style=\"background-color:var(--base-3)\" class=\"has-inline-color\">You\u2019ve probably seen people pull it off through office politics.<\/mark><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This kind of work requires skill in the dark arts of brownnosing, throwing colleagues \u201cunder the bus\u201d, and winning at favoritism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If that kind of work is not your forte, you better continue reading this guide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moving onward and forward&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The tech industry has broken <strong>career progression down into 2 distinct tracks<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol>\n<li>technical leadership and<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>people leadership<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>Most SREs I know are interested in the former, aiming to one day become Principal SRE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that\u2019s where I will try to focus as I write the rest of this guide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Technical leadership implies that you become increasingly more responsible for broader and more strategic technical work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It requires not only acquiring technical skills but also being able to see a system more broadly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You have to see it as a marriage of people, processes, and technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I will highlight this kind of technical leadership later as I differentiate junior SREs from more senior SREs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the way, people leadership is a beast of its own with many thought leaders working on developing engineering managers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s not in the scope of this guide.<\/p>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"lets-address-3-unspoken-truths-about-career-progression\">Let\u2019s address 3 Unspoken truths about career progression<\/h2>\n\n\n<p>You need to know a few truths about career progression in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE).<\/p>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"truth-1-you-dont-get-promotions-with-tenure\">Truth #1 \u2014 You don\u2019t get promotions with tenure<\/h3>\n\n\n<p>There was a time when people used to get promotions based on their length of service to a company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know absolutely <strong><em>no<\/em><\/strong> <strong><em>organization<\/em><\/strong> that gives more senior roles to SREs based on tenure rather than merit or competence or good old brownnosing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Peter Principle applies in this situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>The Peter Principle suggests that individuals are often promoted to positions of higher responsibility until they reach a level where they are no longer competent or effective in their roles.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Promotions based on tenure alone can overlook one absolutely critical factor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that is whether an SRE has actually acquired the skills and qualities to excel in a more advanced position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More importantly, have they even tried?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Getting promoted this way can make you feel overwhelmed, develop imposter syndrome, and eventually burn out to continue the charade of \u201ccompetence\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So you and I can agree that you are not a sociopath, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You want to keep a good relationship with your coworkers, be fair to them, and let your work show your merit, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In that case, working on your skills and abilities is the most effective way to attain career progression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Career progression that you can handle. None of this Peter Principle business for you!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" style=\"margin-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--large);margin-bottom:var(--wp--preset--spacing--large)\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Stay tuned for the next&nbsp;part&nbsp;of this series on&nbsp;<em>Growing as an SRE.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And if you are a friend who cares, share it with your SRE friends&nbsp;\ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Episode 24 [SREpath Podcast] My dear SRE friend, You &#8211; like many other SREs &#8211; want to progress into more senior roles in the future. This is known as career progression. Successful career progression in Site Reliability Engineering means constantly growing your ability to handle a wider scope of responsibility. But there are 3 lesser-known [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[53],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5888"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5888"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6373,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5888\/revisions\/6373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}