There’s a conversation that happens in quiet corners — or on Slack, if that’s your office. What do I actually have to do to get to the next level?
I’ve given every team I lead the same advice: the best way to get the job is to do the job.
It sounds like a catch-22. How do you do a job you do not have? You start doing the kind of work that job exists to do, from the seat you already occupy. A promotion is not a lottery ticket. It is usually the title catching up to work you are already doing.
What this is not
Done badly, this advice produces burnout, turf wars, and people who cannot be promoted because the team would fall over without them.
Hours are not impact. Exhaustion is not evidence. A person who is always empty is a liability, not a hero. More volume of the same work is not a case for a bigger job.
Do not get the title by making everyone else smaller. Hoarding information, stepping on toes, solving things in a way that requires you to be the hero — that is not leadership. It is a solo in the middle of someone else's piece.
Do not become the bottleneck. Being the only person who can fix the system feels like job security. It is the opposite of promotable. The organization cannot move you without the thing collapsing. You capped your own growth.
What it actually looks like
Learn the next job before you have it. Do not just read the posting. Ask people in the role what their week is actually made of. A senior is not a faster junior. They are thinking about the system, the debt, and the people around the code.
Start solving those problems now. Automate the tedious thing. Clarify the requirement that keeps causing rework. Onboard someone so the team has more capacity. That is leverage. It is not more nights.
Make yourself easier to replace in the work you already do. Document it. Teach it. Share the thing you just learned. The person ready for the next job is the one whose absence would not sink this one.
If the title ever arrives, it should feel overdue, not surprising. You were already doing the work.