Here's some practical advice and steps on executing then landing a senior role by leveling up your skills and impact that should be relevant for engineers, product managers, designers, and most operators in general!

TL;DR framework on getting from junior to senior:

1. Start doing the job you want to get promoted to.

2. Don't be a task-taker. Be curious, proactive, and solution oriented.

3. Master your craft. Then become a doer, not a talker.

4. Communicate effectively for you and your team. Celebrate wins.

5. Build and improve your team's "operating system".

6. Build trust and manage upwards.

Just start doing the job you want to get promoted to.

The easiest way to get to senior: just start doing that job. Seriously. Don't ask for permission from your manager, your peers, or others. If you take on parts of the next role, execute, add value to your team, and prove you're already performing at that level, it'll be hard to build a case to not promote you.

If you're not sure what exactly to do, hunt your manager down and get your role's leveling guide. Get aligned with your manager on exactly which competencies you need to develop or prove, what projects that will map to those competencies, and ship them.

Not sure what a leveling framework is? Here's an overview.

Your team doesn't have a leveling framework? Even better. Work with your manager on drafting one for bonus points.

Don't be a task-taker. Be curious, proactive, and solution oriented.

The best operators are genuinely curious about what they work on. Whenever projects come your way, don't be afraid to ask "stupid" questions, recommend solutions, proactively take the lead without being asked, then ship creative and effective solutions. Rinse and repeat.

Julie Zhuo on being brave, curious, and asking dumb questions:

Worrying about asking dumb questions or saying the wrong thing leads us to bite our tongues. But managers usually think most highly of reports who proactively ask questions and share their perspectives. You have far more to gain than lose in using your voice.

Jason Lemkin on early actions of the best employees:

The best employees their first week point out something that could be done better. And ask if they could own it / fix it / improve it. Like almost always.

Ian McAllister on focusing on learning and impact as leading inputs into growth:

Career tip: Don’t confuse career development with promotion. Career development happens by focusing maniacally on learning and maximizing your impact for the company. Promotion is a lagging indicator of that growth, but shouldn’t be what you focus on every hour, every day.

Scott Belsky on going rogue:

the best designers i've worked with go rogue at least 10% of the time in every project, and that's how the product ends up better than anyone expected.

Master your craft. Then become a doer, not a talker.

The bare minimum of getting to the next level is inspiring confidence in yourself, your team, and your manager that you can reliably complete what you set out to do. Be methodical about mastering your craft. Do the boring things extremely well. Differentiate from others by gradually expanding your skills.

Sam Altman on how to succeed:

the way to succeed is to do the boring things extremely well

You're going to have to execute if you want to up level. Most people won't try:

Everyone wants to quit something, build something, be something, do something. Most people won’t. How many things have we wanted? How many opportunities have we craved? How many broken things have we wanted to fix?  And how many of those have we shrunk from. Hid from. Or, excused away. We’re not alone. Most people won’t. But every once in a while someone puts themselves out there. Makes the leap. Faces rejection or failure or worse. And comes out the other side. Better. Changed. Bolder. Most people won’t. Which means those that do change everything.

Scott Belsky on creating magic by expanding your skills:

a lot of the magic i’ve observed in teams over the years happens when the talent stack is collapsed - when a designer also codes, when an engineer has a growth hack skill set, when a product leader is great at copy.

Be a doer, not a talker. Regardless of the task, doers just get it done right. If they can't figure it out, no drama or excuses are made until they figure it out and get results. If you do this long enough, your team will ask you to step up. Let your actions and results do the talking for you.

Julie Zhuo on executing on your time commitments:

Bad execution: Saying "X will be done by Y date" means the person listening will do mental math (+30% or x2) to get a realistic estimate. Good execution: Saying "X will be done by Y date" is a commitment and the person listening will actually believe you.

Brad Feld on leaders being doers:

This person is a leader. They simply went out and did shit. They made it happen. They followed up. They did things that had a potential positive impact on my world. They didn’t ask me for more, but offered up plenty, which makes me want to do more for them.

Communicate effectively for you and your team. Celebrate wins.

Senior operators keep their teams, managers, and stakeholders aware of whatever is critical that is happening across projects. This includes what you and your team are working on, what's blocking progress, any changes to launch timelines, and wins. Celebrating wins is crucial for improving team morale and getting visibility from your leadership team on who is executing.

Julie Zhuo on good communication execution:

Bad execution: The full map of what's happening across the team only exists in fragments across different people's minds. Good execution: Everyone shares the same picture of what's happening because an up-to-date map is consistently maintained and distributed.

Lenny Rachitsky on over-communicating:

Over-communicate: Regularly share what you’re doing, what you plan to do, and what you’ve done with your manager. It’s nearly impossible to over-communicate. I suggest sending a simple weekly “State of The Me” email to your boss with (1) your current priorities, (2) things on your mind, and (3) blockers you need help with.

Jacob Espinoza on wins:

Celebrate your team's wins, especially the small ones.

Create value then be sure to take credit for your work. Don't be over-aggressive or obnoxious here but visibility and promoting you and your team's work does impact how you're evaluated. If your teammates do something incredible, shout them out directly and genuinely!

Self-promotion matters for evaluations:

Interviewer ratings and action recommendations were more positive in the combination condition, followed by the self-promotion condition, the ingratiation condition, and the neutral condition.

Build and improve your team's "operating system".

Senior operators and managers scale their impact AND visibility by improving the performance of themselves and their teams. Think of your team as a system that requires constant fine-tuning.

The key levers to fine-tune your team's operating system that you should lead:

• Retros: Identify root cause issues through retros using the Five Whys framework, ship changes, then never let your team make the same mistakes twice.

• Documentation: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." Anything repeatedly done should be either automated using tools or documented then trained so that others can jump in.

• Give feedback: delivering feedback improves performance and builds trust + transparency. Feedback is a gift. Ask to receive it and give it frequently.

• Onboarding: onboarding new teammates is ~2-4 weeks of time converted into years of support + trust shared. Invest in documentation, tools, and time here - it's infinitely more painful and costly to find new teammates than investing the time onboarding them well.

Julie Zhuo on driving team improvement:

Bad execution: Teams behave like one-dimensional characters, constantly erring in the same ways. Good execution: Teams only make the same mistake once. Their disciplined practice of post-mortems lead to constant improvement.

Master class notes from Matt Mochary, CEO coach for many founders, on giving and receiving feedback, which is critical for improving team performance and building trust in your peers and managers:

Matt Mochary's notes on giving and receiving feedback + full curriculum overall on being an effective executive!

Ryan Caldbeck on being the welcome party:

Be the welcome party- There is data that the first 14 days of someone joining a new team are vital for long-term success. Offer to be part of the welcome party. Don’t do it in political way - do it in a 5th grade “I want to help make the new kid feel comfortable” way.

AngelList sharing new employee reading list:

I do the onboarding for all new AngelList team members. Part of it is asking them to read the following (many candidates have read these before they even come in for an interview).

Build trust and manage upwards.

Your manager is your key advocate for getting to senior, so figure out the right systems to make their life easier when interacting with you. Execute on what you commit to, over-communicate along the way, and hold them accountable when they're not delivering on supporting you.

Ian McAllister on working with execs:

Tip for working with execs: Tell them what you'll do, giving them the option to respond. Don't ask them what to do, forcing them to respond.

Lenny Rachitksy on managing upwards:

Do great work: The better you do -> the more your manager will trust you -> the more freedom and influence you will have. If you feel micro-managed, and others around you don’t, it’s likely because you aren’t performing well. Do great work, and life will get better.

Over-communicate: Regularly share what you’re doing, what you plan to do, and what you’ve done with your manager. It’s nearly impossible to over-communicate. I suggest sending a simple weekly “State of The Me” email to your boss with (1) your current priorities, (2) things on your mind, and (3) blockers you need help with.

Set expectations: When taking on work, set realistic expectations around time, resources needed, and quality. Your performance will be judged based on how it compared to your manager’s expectations. Be ambitious, but also be realistic.

Prioritize and communicate: When asked to take on additional work, particularly last minutes prioritize it amongst your existing priorities and share your updated priorities with your manager. Ask them if they disagree, adjust if so.

Julie Zhuo on management trust killers (things to be cognizant of and hold them accountable to not do):

Follow-through Fail: overpromising/underdelivering "You're on track for a promo!" (but it doesn't happen) "Let's talk your career goals next time" but the next chat is about some immediate task Antidote: Apologize and rework a plan as soon as you know expectations won't be met.

Flip-flopper: their desires change as often as socks Pushing for "quality" one week, and "speed" the next week. Asking for 'blue-sky ideas' but then rejecting any that might fail Antidote: publicly set goals / priorities every X period. Don't change until the period is over.

I hope you’ve found these resources helpful and good luck on your journey! This post will be continuously updated as new learnings and material come on. If you have recommendations, please reach out!

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If you’re having an existential crisis and unsure about what to do with your life, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Most of us are actively figuring out what gives us meaning and what to do with our lives.

Truth is, there isn’t necessarily a "right" answer. Here's some helpful questions and perspectives that others have used to help guide them!

What gives life meaning and why it matters

There isn't a set definition on life's meaning. It's up to you to figure it out.

From Man's Search for Meaning:

It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly.

Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love -the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.

Steve Jobs on Connecting the Dots:

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

Life is short, time is precious, and it is important to make use of the time and life you do have.

From When Breath Becomes Air:

Death comes for all of us. For us, for our patients: it is our fate as living, breathing, metabolizing organisms. Most lives are lived with passivity toward death it’s something that happens to you and those around you.

The secret is to know that the deck is stacked, that you will lose, that your hands or judgment will slip, and yet still struggle to win for your patients. You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving. Even if I’m dying until I actually die, I am still living.

From Tim Urban on life weeks:

Sometimes life seems really short, and other times it seems impossibly long. But this chart helps to emphasize that it’s most certainly finite. Those are your weeks and they’re all you’ve got. Given that fact, the only appropriate word to describe your weeks is precious.

Identify what gives you happiness or purpose

Making money and being "successful" isn't everything.

In a post by Om Malik

The moral of this story is that money and success aren’t everything, and that you need to know what you’re aiming for before beginning on an endeavor. We often get caught up in false ambition and forget why we wanted to do something in the first place. That lapse of memory costs us the joy of something that got us started.

Today it is easy to learn about starting a business. You can get practical advice and to-do lists at the click of a button. However, what you can’t get from others is the understanding about why you are doing what you are doing and toward what end. If only I had heard this story earlier, I would have made fewer — or perhaps different — mistakes.

Japanese framework on ikigai:

Ikigai is a Japanese concept that means your ‘reason for being.’ ‘Iki’ in Japanese means ‘life,’ and ‘gai’ describes value or worth. Your ikigai is your life purpose or your bliss. It’s what brings you joy and inspires you to get out of bed every day.

The Westernised version of ikigai says you’ve found your dream career when your career includes these four qualities:

• What you love

• What you’re good at

• What you can be paid for

• What the world needs

Minimize regret.

Jeff Bezos on regret minimization:

I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, 'Okay, now I'm looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have,'" explains Bezos. "I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision.

ZipRecruiter ran a survey on most and least regretted college majors:

87% of journalism majors regret their choice, followed by 72% of sociology and liberal art majors. Computer science, criminology, engineering, and nursing were the least-regretted college majors, with 67-72% that would choose the same major again.

Finding what you're passionate in.

In Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You:

“Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.”

When you get better at something, you develop mastery and confidence in yourself. As you develop mastery and confidence, you begin to enjoy it and that's where passion comes from. Passion isn't something to be found or discovered but a byproduct of investing and getting better at something.

Figure out what problems in the world you care about improving.

Inspiring tweet by John Collison on where advancements come from:

As you become an adult, you realize that things around you weren't just always there; people made them happen. But only recently have I started to internalize how much tenacity everything requires. That hotel, that park, that railway. The world is a museum of passion projects.

Interesting repo from 80,000 hours on pressing world problems:

We aim to list issues where each additional person can have the most positive impact. So we focus on problems that others neglect, which are solvable, and which are unusually big in scale, often because they could affect many future generations — such as existential risks. This makes our list different from those you might find elsewhere.

Excerpt from Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance.

He points out that one of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask," Musk said. "Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask."

The teenage Musk then arrived at his ultralogical mission statement. "The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment," he said.

Post by Albert Wenger, USV. Why Are We Here?

For me the very existence and possibility of human knowledge provides the answer to the question of why we are here and what we should try to accomplish in life. We should endeavor to contribute to knowledge. Given my definition this can mean a great many things, including teaching and making music and taking care of others. Anything that either adds to or reproduces knowledge is, so far, a uniquely human activity and why we are here (“adding” includes questioning or even invalidating existing knowledge).

Experiment often and take risks

It's ok to pause and take time to figure it out.

From Taking Time on pausing:

It may be difficult to do, but if you don’t find your own way to make pause a thing, life has a way of doing it for you. You crash, or burn out. The joy of making pause a thing, is that it gives you something to play around with, in your own way, in your own time, for as long, or as short as you like. It is a very simple idea, but one that is worth spending a little time with.

Thread by Paul Millerd on "pathlessly" exploring:

When I left my job I thought I was having an n=1 experience. I became fascinated by how people make life shifts and talked to hundreds of people. I started to notice many common experiences and patterns and love helping people realize they are "normal".

Take risks and be bold.

Points from Vinod Khosla at GSB (YouTube)

1. Most people won't take risks

2. Most people will watch Vinod's talk, and still not take risks

3. Take huge risks and do things that really matter

Quote from Steve Jobs on death and decision making:

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Post by Chris Dixon on climbing the wrong hill:

But the lure of the current hill is strong. There is a natural human tendency to make the next step an upward one. He ends up falling for a common trap highlighted by behavioral economists: people tend to systematically overvalue near term over long term rewards.  This effect seems to be even stronger in more ambitious people. Their ambition seems to make it hard for them to forgo the nearby upward step.

People early in their career should learn from computer science: meander some in your walk (especially early on), randomly drop yourself into new parts of the terrain, and when you find the highest hill, don’t waste any more time on the current hill no matter how much better the next step up might appear.

Be intentional about designing your life.

Thread by Justin Welsh on designing an intentional life:

Here’s what I’ve landed on:

• Doing what I want, when I want, and with whom I want

• Doing very little of what I don’t like & more of what I do

• Being free of traditional full-time employment

• Having limited obligations

Thread by Dan Koe on creating a life of meaning, money, and impact:

Creation Hierarchy framework for gaining control over the outcome of your life, which includes setting Vision, Purpose, Values, Goals, Projects, Priorities, Intention, Action, Curiosity, and Alignment.

If it's not working, move on

If you get strong signal that something is wrong or not working, make those changes faster.

Andy Grove on facing reality and acting faster and Flo Crivello on Andy:

After all manner of gnashing of teeth, we told our sales force to notify our memory customers. This was one of the great bugaboos: How would our customers react? Would they stop doing business with us altogether now that we were letting them down? In fact, the reaction was, for all practical purposes, a big yawn. Our customers knew that we were not a very large factor in the market and they had half figured that we would get out; most of them had already made arrangements with other suppliers.

In fact, when we informed them of the decision, some of them reacted with the comment, “It sure took you a long time.” People who have no emotional stake in a decision can see what needs to be done sooner.

I also learned that strategic inflection points, painful as they are for all participants, provide an opportunity to break out of a plateau and catapult to a higher level of achievement. Had we not changed our business strategy, we would have been relegated to an immensely tough economic existence and, for sure, a relatively insignificant role in our industry. By making a forceful move, things turned out far better for us.

I often think of Andy Grove's observation that everyone wishes they'd made most of their big decisions 6 mos earlier — job changes, breakups, firings… The natural conclusion is that you should make the big changes extremely fast — shortly after you first think of them

If you don't create space to reflect and pivot, life will do it for you. Unpleasantly.

Post by Robert Poynton on Creating The Time of Your Life:

In the end you will have to pause anyway. A constant, incessant, invariant rhythm is effective for a machine, but unhealthy for living beings. Even single cell organisms have rhythms that ebb and flow. Cardiologists regard a completely regular, metronomic heartbeat as a sign of concern, not a signal of health.

It may be difficult to do, but if you don’t find your own way to make pause a thing, life has a way of doing it for you. You crash, or burn out. The joy of making pause a thing, is that it gives you something to play around with, in your own way, in your own time, for as long, or as short as you like. It is a very simple idea, but one that is worth spending a little time with.

If it's working, double down and become happier

Getting better at things on your own accord gives purpose and happiness.

Daniel Pink in Drive on Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose:

Money isn't the most powerful or effective motivator.  Back in the 1970's, psychologist Edward Deci ran an experiment showing how incentivizing students with money to solve puzzles actually made them less interested in working on them after being paid. Meanwhile, another group of students who hadn't been offered money, worked on the puzzles longer and with more interest. Deci’s work uncovered the powerful and significant difference between extrinsic motivation, the kind that comes from outside sources, and intrinsic motivation, the kind that comes from within yourself.

1. Autonomy: Our self-direction is a natural inclination. Pink points to the simple example of how children play and explore all on their own. We’re all built with an inner drive.

2. Mastery: We want to get better at doing things. It’s why learning a language or an instrument can be so frustrating at first. If you feel like you’re not getting anywhere, your interest flags and you may even give up. A sense of progress, not just in our work, but our capabilities, contributes to our inner drive.

3. Purpose: People can be inspired to meet stretch goals and tackle impossible challenges if they care about the outcome.

Some of your happiest memories will come from your hardest moments.

Morgan Housel on Overcoming Your Demons:

Inside of every struggle is the seed of some of the happiest moments of your life. The psychology of happiness tells us there’s less than a dozen things that bring people lasting joy. One of them is progress in what you’re pursuing. The more progress, the more happiness. And the most progress is possible in endeavors where you’re starting in a hole, deep in the red, with a big gap between your current position and the end goal of what’s attainable. It’s like having a lower cost basis.

Figuring out what to do with your life isn't easy and will be a lifelong pursuit, so trust the process and you’ll be in a good spot.

I hope you’ve found these resources helpful and good luck on your journey! This post will be continuously updated as new learnings and material come on. If you have recommendations, please reach out!

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