Waxing Asymptotic in Career Velocity

There's a terminal level for everyone. When would you like to reach yours?

If you grew up in America, you’ve probably been told your whole life you could be an astronaut, that you could be anything you set your mind to.

This is patently false.

America is indeed a land of opportunity with more social mobility than many other countries. But you most definitely cannot be an astronaut just because you set your mind to it.

In the US, we’re used to being told that we can do whatever we want, we can become whatever we want. This optimism is a great strength in that we attempt all sorts of things more cynical people wouldn’t. But one needs to be careful lest it becomes a disillusioning belief in one’s ability to experience perpetual career growth.

This sounds obvious when I tell people, “You won’t be the CEO of a multinational company.” But what if I said, “You won’t be a Principal Engineer at Microsoft?” When I worked at Microsoft from 1998-2010, around 20% of engineers were Principal level at a time when the median age at the company was 37.

Would you believe me if I said you wouldn’t reach Principal by the time you’re 37? If four out of five of you would, then this article is useless. But just as 73% of Americans think they’re better than average drivers, I bet far more than 20% of engineers think they’ll reach Principal by 37.

There’s always a ceiling to every rocketing career. Most people blame construction materials like glass and bamboo, but in my experience, the most common ceiling is one’s own talent and willingness to change.

Plateaus and Peaks

It’s important to differentiate career plateaus from career peaks. If you’ve been at the same level a few years, that’s normal. Most people’s careers are punctuated equilibria alternating between periods of high growth and periods of being solidly competent.

But it’s also important to recognize that by the time you retire, there will have been some level which was the highest you ever reached in your career. Pertinent questions include:

• What do you realistically think that level is?

• At what age would you like to reach that terminal level, accepting that in all subsequent years, you’ll remain at that level without promotions ever again? Or even drop below that level, as I have?

I encourage you to pause here and really answer those two questions with actual numbers attached. This exercise alone would have saved me years of grief and career disappointment. If you think never getting a promotion again feels depressing, trust me when I say being leveled downward, as I have, feels far worse unless you’ve come to terms with the rest of this article.

Patience Increases Happiness

Let’s take a typical Mag-7 company which might have engineering levels starting E3 and peaking at, say, E9 (“distinguished engineer”).

This is a total of only six promotions from the most junior possible level to the most senior.

You will work perhaps 43 years in industry if you retire at 65. That means even if you’re going to be one of the rare nosebleed-level people who will one day be a distinguished engineer, you’d spend an average of seven years in each level to get there.

“But Philip,” you say, “the early levels go more quickly!”

And you’d be right. Let’s suppose you go from E3 to E6 in a blistering three years the way some superstars are known to have. This leaves a remaining 40 years for you to get to E9, averaging more than thirteen years between promotions.

“But Philip,” you say, “I plan to reach E9 via one promotion a year after college… so by the time I’m 28.” In which case you either don’t need this article because you’re a once-in-a-generation superstar, or this article won’t help you anyway because you’re hopelessly self-deluded.

The point is this: you will be very dissatisfied with your career if you expect a promotion every 2 years. Very simple math would say you’re setting yourself up for decades of disappointment.

I was promoted once a year at Microsoft for my first seven years after college (L59 → L66, or E3 → E6). I was crushed — crushed! — when I wasn’t promoted from L66 → L67 within a year. What had gone wrong with my career?! Was I sputtering out?! I had many conversations about this topic with what in hindsight were incredibly patient managers of mine. I had never once considered the implications of my delusional mental model, since an algorithm of “get promoted once a year or you’re stalling” would mean I’d reach L102 by the time I retired. Microsoft VPs are L70.

Dangers of Peaking Early

The problems of being a child star are well-understood. It’s hard to stay well-adjusted when you hit huge successes early in your career because — let’s face it — the bigger your successes, the less likely, statistically, they are to repeat themselves or be topped by even greater successes.

Annie Dillard was 29 when she won a Pulitzer for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Getting to the absolute pinnacle of your profession at such a young age is a curse unless you are preternaturally grounded with realistic expectations for the remainder of your life. Almost nobody is.

Happiness comes in the rising, in the forward motion of our lives towards a goal. Do not be the dog that caught the car. Save some growth for later.

I’m not saying to slow-play your career progress deliberately to peanut-butter promotions evenly throughout your life, culminating in your final time-released promotion at age 63. I instead suggest that speed-running a career may not be the wisest thing if you’re optimizing for happiness; or that if you find yourself progressing faster than peers at a young age, set realistic long-term expectations for yourself in order to not experience decades of disillusionment and disappointment.

Stasis kills happiness. Leave room for realistic aspirations and hope. Rushing towards slamming into your terminal level is foolhardy.

Growth Always

Not to say growth shouldn’t be a lifelong pursuit. In fact, if you’re doing things right, you should feel yourself growing personally year after year.

It’s just that career growth in the form of visible promotions can’t possibly continue throughout your life — at least if you’re like most of us. There will no doubt be several of you who will get endlessly promoted until the day of your retirement, just as there may even be one or two real astronauts reading this post. But it’s important to recognize that the overwhelmingly likely scenario is you’ll hit a career peak some time mid-career and need to wrestle with the reality of having gotten the last promotion of your life.

Despite that, personal growth can go on forever. We can strive each year to be better than the last: better at our jobs, better at relationships, better at adulting. This form of growth, available to all of us, can be a source of happiness as long as we don’t let unrealistic career growth expectations overshadow the personal growth within our control.

Remember that career levels are a way to determine how to compensate you relative to your peers. They are not some sort of oracular proclamation of your ultimate worth. To confuse or equate the two leads to unhappiness.

Ending Before the End

I’ve spent most of this post trying to convince you to set realistic expectations for your career growth. Now I’ll say something that might sound opposite.

Most engineers level out in their careers way below their full potential.

In order to grow to the next level in your career, you need to be:

• Willing to do what needs to be done

• Able to do what needs doing

• Exposed to opportunities where a business values that work

• Capable of doing it better than others or willing to work harder than others to get greater results

Most engineers stall at premature plateaus in their careers because they’re missing one or more of the above. I cover this more in my post about feedback.

So while it’s important for one’s happiness to acknowledge one’s realistic peak career level, most of us have room to grow beyond what we might feel are permanent limitations.

The Paradox of Contentment

Fireside True Story™ Time: While still young and ambitious, I had a chance to meet one-on-one with the Corporate Vice President of my team in Microsoft Windows. It shocked me when he said, matter-of-factly, he had reached the highest level he’d ever reach in his career.

It was not false humility. He was genuinely saying he had appraised his potential and decided his current level represented the peak of his lifetime ability.

At the time, my unthinking ambition had assumed career growth should be forever, that one should always be growing towards the next promotion. I was startled to hear those words come out of the mouth of someone at a level beyond even my own ambitions. For the first time in my life, I considered whether I had a career asymptote, a terminal level.

Years later, after I was demoted from E9 to E7 at Meta, this conversation with the Microsoft VP resurfaced often in my reflections as I wrestled with how I should think of my career ahead.

On one hand, E9 is likely the highest level I’m capable of reaching in my life. It’s a level most engineers will never reach in their careers, so I’m indeed grateful to have ever had the opportunity to do work at that level. However, I reached that level over ten years ago, and have another 20 years left in my career.

It’s sobering to think I likely peaked early. I continue to struggle with accepting that it’s likely, when looking back on my entire career after retirement, I’d say my top-performing year was at age 38, that the 30 years afterward never reached the same heights again.

I continue to aspire for the contentment and tranquility of my VP in Windows. I hope this post helps you reach yours.

A special thanks to Ryan Peterman of The Peterman Pod for suggesting this topic!