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Ask HN: EM to Director

20 points emthrowaway123 | 1 comments | 12 Mar 25 16:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.293s | source

How are you all thinking about your careers and making this move?

I'm going on 10 years of management with another 6-7 years of IC experience. I'm starting to see directors at big tech companies that are not only younger than me, but with far less management experience. Granted, I did get a few unlucky breaks - first startup got acquired and the parent company brought their own execs in, second startup promised me a director role but wasn't a good fit, and my current role is in a bigger tech org and they're not promoting from within and all recent hires are from the C-suite's previous company.

I could probably go to a smaller company and be a director, but that would be a step back in terms of scale and money.

A lot of companies aren't hiring in the US like they were, so growing organically seems like a poor strategy.

Is there a secret I'm missing?

1. anoojb ◴[13 Mar 25 18:03 UTC] No.43355798[source]▶
If you want to get to Director-level at a large tech company...it's a pretty binary process, you either strike gold on a high business impact project OR you follow the algorithm that's in the career guide and have people who can document and attest to the impact at the level.

Striking gold is a low probability medium impact event. Following the algorithm is a low probability low impact event...because you make lots of trade-offs on quality of life, generalizable skills, and personal goals. There's also lots of competition along the way. So it just depends on which game you want to play.

If you have any semblance of personal goals/interests you need to stop worrying about following someone else's career advancement algorithm and maybe consider adapting it to incorporate your own heuristics. This is where I've settled in my approach to career goals. But it's highly specific to where you are at with other parts of your life.