Getting Promoted: The Boring Work You’ll Need to Do

I keep seeing advice articles on how engineers can get promoted. Some of them wallow in office politics and bitter stories of unfairness. Others advocate a set of general engineering virtues that would overwhelm Aristotle. And I often see advice to move up by moving out, aka “job-hopping”.

I don’t want to pick on these writers. But I feel like most of them don’t really understand the companies they’ve worked for. It’s like listening to frogs give lectures on how to escape boiling pots. They understand water, pain, freedom, and a few other…