Developers, Do Not Get Promoted
During my first performance appraisal meeting (sometimes 18 years ago), I was asked by my manager: What are your next year’s goals?
Almost scratching my head, I asked for specifics. To which, he offered: “Would you like more responsibility, or would you like some more pieces of training this year…Like the one in COM/DCOM (Microsoft’s equivalent of React in those days) ?”
To me, there wasn’t a choice. After all, why would one prefer responsibility against training? I expressed my choice. With a frown, he acknowledged. I came out of the chamber.
When I asked my colleagues why he may have frowned, they laughed at my naivety.
“Who wants a sitting duck who wants to learn and not deliver?” They said. “You are getting a duck in this year’s pay-raise”
I defended my choice by weighing in the pay-range we were eligible for vs the benefits of learning a hot technology. Online learning wasn’t a thing in those days. In fact, Google was in the cradle.
I lost every argument, because in IT world, any rise upward, even if it was 1%, was more beneficial than being an expert. Learning could bring me to places, yes, but my current pay would always be the benchmark of my next one.
