Work Hard, Stay Busy, and Stay Exactly Where You Are
Busyness feels productive, but without creating space for initiative and higher-impact work, you’ll stay stuck at your current level.
Welcome to the Scarlet Ink newsletter. I'm Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. Each week I write a newsletter article on tech industry careers and tactical leadership advice.
Free members can read some amount of each article, while paid members can read the full article. For some, part of the article is plenty! But if you'd like to read more, I'd love you to consider becoming a paid member!
We just came back from a family car camping weekend trip. Car camping is relaxing camping. Backpacking has a weight and volume challenge to it. You sit there and stare at your fleece long sleeve and debate if you can get away with just wearing your puffy jacket on chilly nights.
When car camping, you just need your stuff to fit in your car. And considering I recently bought a (used) Tacoma with a 6-foot bed, we can mostly bring everything. For example, I had various chairs to choose from since I’d just grabbed everything that folded from our garage.
We pull a travel trailer so that we can really be excessive with our luxury at the campsite. Unfortunately, last time we went camping (a couple of months ago?), we discovered that the kitchen sink had mysteriously stopped working. Not a huge deal, as our trailer has a small (working) bathroom sink, and we carry a 6-gallon extra water tank in our vehicle because why wouldn’t we? So we had plenty of water, and it was just a minor annoyance.
Last time we came back from camping, I’d Googled the issue and read probably 20 threads on various travel trailer forums. They mostly wanted me to go under the sink and check various valves and pipes for issues. That dang sink has like 6 inches of free space with a tangle of tubes and pipes. I couldn’t figure out how to maneuver in such a tiny space. So I procrastinated and promptly forgot about the problem altogether.
This last weekend we were reminded that our kitchen sink still didn’t work. Back to the 6-gallon water tank. So when we returned yesterday from our trip, I decided to take another swing at figuring out the solution. Except I’ve been using AI more frequently, so instead of Googling for a solution, I asked ChatGPT. I explained the situation, and it gave me a short checklist to look into. The very first item on the checklist was the solution (clogged aerator). ChatGPT kindly gave me the exact steps to fix it.
I guess it shows my age that I jump to Google when I have issues, and I read humans talking about the problem rather than asking AI for a solution. But I’m learning.
Ok, on to today’s topic.
A reader asks a question!
I like it when a reader asks a thoughtful question. When I talked about AI and writing, I mentioned that my hardest job is choosing my next newsletter topic. After writing next week’s article, I’m usually thinking about my next topic already, trying to find something that strikes my fancy.
So when I get a question, and my response starts to get awfully long, I get excited. It’s a new article!
The reader had recently read this article:
“13 Tech Career Misconceptions — Things I Wish I'd Learned Earlier”
In misconception number 4 of that article, I said this in regard to promotion-worthy projects:
“I think in almost all cases, with almost no exception, there is scope worthy of stretching you, and quite possibly moving you towards promotion. You just need to find it. And your inability to find it is why you’re not promoted yet. Because that’s a legitimate leadership skill gap you need to solve first.”
The reader asked (in more words), “What does ‘getting better at finding scope’ look like on a Tuesday afternoon when you already have a to-do list? I’m curious if you have a [way] to operationalize this idea.”
Well, that’s an interesting question! Because many people really do struggle with this concept. And this is a life-changing skill, so it’s worth thinking about what steps are involved in doing this well.
Baseline assumption: You can’t do more.
If you’re cutting out after 6-hours of work a day, perhaps you can do more. But most people I know are doing as much work as they’d like to do. And as the reader asked, what does it look like to ‘find scope’ when you already have a to-do list?
Because I think the biggest blocker a lot of people run into is that they try to find promotion scope without reducing their existing scope.
Imagine you’re working 9 hours a day as a software engineer. You’re in your randomly scheduled meetings, fixing bugs, doing your on-call work, and working on a moderately important project.
You feel like you’re spinning your wheels. Because you’re doing your work well, but not making clear progress towards your next promotion.
Then Dave, your manager, walks into your one-on-one. Oh no, Dave can be a troublemaker.
Anyway, you tell Dave that you’d like to be promoted to principal engineer. You’re doing your projects well, you’re doing your on-call well, you’re fixing bugs well. Just across the board, you’re doing things exactly like you should.
Dave nods. “Yes indeed, you’re doing quite well. But you’re not necessarily working like a principal engineer. I’d like to see you take some initiative.”
You politely smile, but you’re feeling super annoyed on the inside. Because Dave is clearly being a tool. You’re working 9 hour days already. How can he expect you to step up and take initiative?? Stupid managers.
I totally get that feeling. And while I’d like to believe that I’m more thoughtful than this manager, I could see a situation where an employee had the same feeling. Because in this story, Dave might have been thinking about 17 other problems, and he’d just like you to solve this one on your own.
And that’s what we’re talking about here today.
What is the first step in taking initiative? How can you get ‘scope’ for your promotion when you already have a to-do list?
The first critical step is to create personal free time. Because you can’t create your path to promotion when you’re 100% busy on other things.
And I don’t want to make this sound weirdly artificial. “Dave says that to get promoted, you need to clear your calendar and come up with a project.”
Instead, I’d like you to think about it like this: You’re doing something wrong. If you’re too busy doing what other people have asked you to do, you’re literally doing the job you have. You would rather not do the job you have, because you want a better job. One that has higher pay. One more respected. You get that job by acting like a person at that next level.
What does it take to be at the next level? What differentiates a higher level from your level? Frequently, it takes being more innovative. More proactive. Identifying problems rather than being assigned problems. I’m giving you the steps to do this. It just sounds like a weird, artificial process, because breaking out of your current behavior pattern is hard.