Jul 17, 2026 · 43 min · 10 segments
Brandon & Arjay go into tactical details on exactly what it takes to land your first and second promotions as a software engineer in big tech
Brandon NguyenGuest
Arjay McCandlessHost
You're kind of thinking that it's time to get a promotion, right? A couple questions around this.
How soon before the promotion do you think you should start preparing? And then when should you tell your manager that you're like kind of looking for this? Yeah,
And I think like a lot of people have this mentality, especially like the mentees I work with, where it's if you're asking for the promotion and the raise the week before the performance review or like the cutoff is that that's already too late.
And I've come to many situations where they're trying to optimize for that last week.
When in reality, like that conversation needs to start like at minimum, like six months to a year before.
I think the thing I tell people, it's promotions and career growth is an everlasting conversation that you need to have with your manager.
Like pretty much like right when you kind of start working with a manager, whether it's like in a new company or is working with a new manager.
Kind of setting the expectations of where you want to go in terms of your career and kind of like the concept of managing your manager.
All that needs to happen early so you can like have that game plan and that roadmap.
Because the last thing you want to do is blindside your manager the week before performance review.
Be like, hey, like, where the hell is my raise at? Or like my promotion? Like, that's just not going to happen, bro.
So then that when performance review comes around, like they are prepared to have that conversation and kind of talk to like the directors and the other managers be like, oh, like I've been working with this person for a while.
And this is something that they've been focusing on and we have like proof and evidence that they're worthy of a promotion like if you do that too late like the week before they just don't
You're kind of thinking that it's time to get a promotion, right? A couple questions around this.
How soon before the promotion do you think you should start preparing? And then when should you tell your manager that you're like kind of looking for this? Yeah,
And I think like a lot of people have this mentality, especially like the mentees I work with, where it's if you're asking for the promotion and the raise the week before the performance review or like the cutoff is that that's already too late.
And I've come to many situations where they're trying to optimize for that last week.
When in reality, like that conversation needs to start like at minimum, like six months to a year before.
I think the thing I tell people, it's promotions and career growth is an everlasting conversation that you need to have with your manager.
Like pretty much like right when you kind of start working with a manager, whether it's like in a new company or is working with a new manager.
Kind of setting the expectations of where you want to go in terms of your career and kind of like the concept of managing your manager.
All that needs to happen early so you can like have that game plan and that roadmap.
Because the last thing you want to do is blindside your manager the week before performance review.
Be like, hey, like, where the hell is my raise at? Or like my promotion? Like, that's just not going to happen, bro.
So then that when performance review comes around, like they are prepared to have that conversation and kind of talk to like the directors and the other managers be like, oh, like I've been working with this person for a while.
And this is something that they've been focusing on and we have like proof and evidence that they're worthy of a promotion like if you do that too late like the week before they just don't
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