The Job Journal: Your Secret Weapon for Unstoppable Promotions
This is second article of my promotion topic series. If you haven’t read the previous one, I would highly recommend you read that for accelerate your promotion process.
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Anecdote
When I started as a software engineer at Microsoft, a mainstream giant in the software industry, in 2018, I was unaware of the processes, ecosystem, and work I would be doing.
Microsoft has a performance evaluation process called "CONNECT" that occurs every six months. This is the time when you're expected to highlight the work you've done, the business impact your work has made, your contributions to the team, and how you've helped improve processes.
I was enjoying my work, new learnings, and involvement, but when it came time to put things on paper, my memory betrayed me. I couldn't add all the important tasks and contributions to my CONNECT evaluation with adequate information.
This oversight ruined my chance of getting a promotion in the first year cycle. Why? Not because my work was bad, but because I didn't effectively showcase how good it was.
I learned something important: in tech jobs, your work matters a lot. But you also need to effectively communicate your achievements to others. This article is about how you can do better and secure that promotion, no matter where you are in your career.
This incident opened my eye about, how important is to keep journaling your work with specific format and detail, so that you never get rejected for your promotion because it was not on paper.
If you are like me in 2018, This article is for you.
If you are in the same boat, I am sure many others are in your network. Please like, re-stack (Substack) and re-post in Linkedin.
Since 2018, I've been keeping a journal of my work in all my jobs. Every Friday, I take 15 minutes to write down what I've done that week while my memory is fresh.
Here's why I do this:
I never miss anything to show when it's time for a promotion.
I can give this record to my manager when they need to make a case for my promotion. This makes both of us happy!
I can keep track of what I've done and what I still need to do.
If I see that I'm missing some types of work, I can ask my manager for those category tasks.
In big companies, information can get lost during team changes or transfers. My journal helps me avoid missing out on a promotion because someone doesn't have all the information about my work. Trust me, this happens a lot!
What to Track and Why in your work Journal?
Use a Spreadsheet: Google Sheets works well for me. You can use any other tool which is available to you.
Columns to include in your work sheet,
(1) Date
(2) Team Name
Importance: This helps in re-org, team change, manager change, internal transfer situation. You can keep track of your work to get the promotion.
(3) Work Category (Feature/Epic/User story/Task etc)
Importance: This helps in identifying a pattern that which size of work you are doing/assigned more.
If you are mid-senior and trying for senior promotion, you should keep tab on this and see you are not working on small user story and tasks.
Ask your manager to give you promotion worthy features and Epic to lead, so you can prove your worth in your promotion case.
(4) Theme (Product, Security, Dev-ops, Infrastructure, Research/Spike work)
Importance: This helps in keeping track that what kind of work your manager assign you more and you are not doubling down in particular category which can harm your promotion.
Always try to take work from different theme, so you can be considered as all rounder in full stack software engineering world.
(5) Work Description
Include the work detail with goal, scope etc.
(6) Business Impact (MOST IMPORTANT)
Importance: This is one of the most important thing which is considered for promotion in your case.
Whatever hard/smart work you have done but if that cannot generate any business impact then it is no use to company and your career.
Ask your Engineering manager, Product manager about the business impact of the feature/work you have done or about to start. This gives you detail impact in terms of customer urgency, business importance, customer usage level, money wise impact, performance wise impact etc.
Use Numbers: When you can, show how your work helped with numbers. For example, "I made the website faster by 40%."
Write Down Cross Team Work: Keep track of times you worked with other teams. This shows you work well with others.
Save Nice Things People Say: When someone says you did a good job, write it down. This can help during reviews.
Link to Company Goals: Show how your work helps the company's big plans.
(7) Related Docs
Importance: You are adding links of related work item, design documents, Pull requests etc as proof of your work.
In the world of information, your work related docs can be buried under lots of other documents and work items. You must track all your work and related docs to showcase in your promotion.
These can show your design style, coding style, how your defend your idea etc.
Example Worksheet
What Kind of work you can include?
This list can be anything depend on your work nature. Below is the things which I usually include but not limited to.
Features (UI/Backend)
Compliance work in Software such as GDPR, Accessibility, Gov Cloud etc
Security Related work
Dev Ops work
Infrastructure work
Cross team work/negotiations
Mentoring work for the team
On-call related challenging work
Some major customer investigations
Helping team member in some capacity
Conclusion
If you keep journaling your work and show it the right way, people will notice what you do. In tech jobs, doing great work is important. But it's also important to help others see how great your work is. Start keeping track of what you do today. It will help you get your next promotion.