#127 How to get promoted in UX design
38:18 Share

When there is the market crisis, there is always an opportunity. So what I'm seeing today is that if the companies are constantly restructuring their teams and changing their organization, changing the priorities, changing whatever, this enables a space for teams to be reshuffled. And sometimes people who actually in a very short amount of time were able to be effective

bring the actual impact of the company might be promoted in a very short amount of time. So if, again, in a traditional space, you need some time, you need years to build a case, you need strong relationship with your manager. In the spaces where it's constantly reshuffling, you can actually use this as an opportunity to create growths with, let's say, one or two successful cases, get a chance to be promoted from the senior designer into elite space. ♪

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Honest UX Talks. My name is Anfisa, and I'm joined today by my lovely co-host, Ioana. And today we are beating to talk about a very juicy topic, which is called how to get promoted. And it's a funny topic because we actually just established in the previous episode, we personally have never been truly promoted as in like

classic way, but we definitely observed how things are going when you're getting promoted. Like what are the signs that you're going into promotions and how do you pave your way to do that? All righty. So we will probably be reflecting and talking about our observations. And we really hope that those, our notes or observations will help you out to also understand how to get promoted. But before diving into today's episode, I also want to send a quick shout out to Vic Studio for sponsoring this episode.

If you're a web designer, product designer, freelancer, building sites for clients, you know the struggle. Balancing creativity with deadlines, budgets, and of course, clients' feedback. If that sounds familiar to you, I have good news for you. VicStudio is built for pros like you. VicStudio is basically an intuitive platform for designers and agencies to craft exceptional websites with full-stack solutions, multi-site management, and AI-driven features that make everything go smoother.

These four tools will give you flexibility, precision, and control so you can bring your vision to life without the usual headaches. Plus, VIX Studio is packed with management and growth tools to help you or your client to scale. Basically, it keeps you creative without getting lost in a mess. Go ahead, check it out at vix.com, and I hope this could come handy for your next freelance project. And now, let's go back to our usual episode. I also wanted to ask you, Anna, if you have any updates in your journeys. Yeah.

Not that many this week. I'm doing a lot of offers and talks with my consultancy studio and I'm preparing to go to Japan next week, which is very exciting. Yeah, that's it in a very condensed nutshell. How about you? Anything you want to mention? Yeah, I guess I'll only mention that the good updates or cool updates I'm very excited about is that last month we have been doing a really huge change in the community, in the job or I guess portfolio community that I'm running in the last year.

past year. And what we did, actually, we have introduced a new co-host in our community, which is fantastic because finally we get an outside perspective. And not only me with my whatever perspective, right? But also we got somebody who has been hiring

thousands of designers in their career. We have added a new co-host to the portfolio community, who's Chris Abbott. He's an ex-director of the Google. He also worked at Square as a VP, and also he worked in the user testing. So it's crazy. His career has been fascinating so far, but also he has been reviewing a bunch of portfolios, and now he will be reviewing portfolios in the community. So that's very exciting. As well as we have moved to a different platform.

We used to be on school. Now we're in Circle. Circle is supposed to be the place where we could much better communicate, talk, create our own events. So instead of everything being moderated, where me as a host creates the tools for people to start growing, we kind of wanted to move the dynamic into a more collaborative space where people can work with each other, talk to each other anytime, have chat rooms, have calls, have coffee times, et cetera, right? But my goal was to make the community space a bit more

collaborative. And that's the goal. We will see how it unravels. I'll definitely be reporting back on how it goes, but I'm very excited. I'm already seeing kind of the structure getting much better. I'm already seeing people are much more willing to talk to each other. We will see how this goes. So the transition period was kind of slow. It takes time to inform people. It takes time to prepare. It takes time to move, report, analyze, communicate, prepare the links, not mess any

up, continue nudging people, communicating. It's a long, long story. So I've been working on that for the whole last months. And we are kind of almost at the end of this. By the end of the month, we're actually going to completely move out of school and move to Circle.

First of all, congratulations on all the work you're putting in the community. I think it matters more than ever because we all feel so lonely and lost and confused about everything that's going in the world and in the design industry. And I feel that just bonding in communities is more important than ever. And I do want to mention that I'm

redesigning my newsletter as well. So talking about community reminded me that I'm running a newsletter for designers to stay up to date with AI. This week, I decided based on everything that's going on in the world and the speed at which AI keeps evolving, I am overwhelmed. And I realized that personally, I need this kind of very tangible, quick plan to stay up to date. I don't have

40 hours per week to read all the AI articles. I need the essence just for myself. And so I realized that probably that's what everybody needs. So starting this month, I'm going to send a monthly or bimonthly, depending on how many things are happening, newsletter where I go through the same structure again and again, which is the most important articles you need to read, the tools you have to experiment with alongside scenarios for how to play a

them. So going hands on into tooling and understanding what is worth testing like cursor or replit and so on. And then podcasts, the relevant news, just a very small selection of news and the notable ideas we should be reflecting on as designers. And there's a small dictionary word of the month at the end this month's worth is

Agentic AI, what does it mean? And I just sent out our newsletter yesterday. So we will link it in the show notes if you want to subscribe. And so, yeah, I think that's it. We can move into the topic of today. Yay, amazing. Sounds good.

But somehow, interestingly, our podcast is always talking about the most important topic that are happening today in the industry. How do you land jobs with the current crazy landscape, but also how do we keep up with the AI? So I'm happy we are still on those topics and try to kind of go through them and at least deliver some value. All righty. Talking about how do we get promoted? And I think this topic is very tightly connected to the word growth.

what it actually means for us moving forward. How do we shape our careers? How do we navigate our careers? How do we take charge of our careers? And obviously, how, as a result of that, we get promoted. So I guess I will start high level for people to try to understand the context in which we operate today as designers. Let's talk about the frameworks.

and sort of the structure in which we operate today within the business context that impact the way we are getting promoted. Obviously, there are different companies, there are different frameworks, there are different career ladders. Some companies have the career ladders. Some companies don't have the career ladders. Some companies have performance reviews. Some companies are just somehow randomly emotionally promote people based on

on some achievements, recent achievements, right? So sometimes it's more rigorous, sometimes it's more flexible. It really depends a lot on, I would actually say two things. First is probably UX maturity of the company. So how rigorous, how structured, how organized it is. And second, of course, it is impacted and very strongly correlated with the company product growth stage, right? Where they are right now in the journeys at startup, scale up, organization, et cetera.

And I guess I would love to start from us reflecting on the general structures in which we operate today. And what do you think are the factors that impact our promotions and growth today? Any thoughts to start from?

I want to build on top of some of the points you've mentioned. So the way promotions happen is very closely linked to the company design maturity, not just design maturity, but organizational maturity, if you want. It's not about design necessarily, but it's also the product org, the engineering org, and especially HR, how well it kind of defined the platter.

and the framework in which people get promotion. So the bigger the company in terms of maturity, the more evolved, the clearer it is what you need to tap into to get promoted. And so where there's a ladder available, you can simply go and check the next step

layer of seniority, right? So let's say you're a senior designer, you want to get to stuff, go and check the Excel file where the stuff attributions and expectations and responsibilities are described and try to move towards those. It's as simple as that. But in reality, it's not as simple as that because many other factors come into play. So promotions are obviously the

dependent on your performance, but they're also dependent on your relationship with your manager in terms of the clarity that you two are able to bring to the table. So manager and leadership in general, your performance, and then also there's that aspect of kind of perceived

performance. So I think we're talking about some co-existing elements that come into play, things such as your visibility in the company, your contribution to the design team, how active you are in shaping the culture. There's also this difference between the result of your work in terms of metrics, but also the success in terms of emotional perceived

success, right? I've been reading this book at some point in my life. It was called Convinced, and it showed that people can fail again and again, but they can be perceived as successful, and people can be successful again and again, and they can still be perceived as underperformance. So there's this difference between the reality and how people perceive it. And that's a space where you go and communicate yourself and present yourself.

And that's also part of the design role, right? So to come back to the essence of what I'm trying to say is that there's actual performance, but then there's also the relationship with your manager and how well you set expectations and a career plan and so on. There's the way you do the other things pertaining to your role, like promoting yourself, visibility, involvement in the design team. And so there are these three things that need to come together. And to your also earlier point, company performance is...

Sometimes, especially in smaller companies, promotions are tightly connected to the new funding round or the company reaching, I don't know what business objectives, right? So especially financial rewards can be tied into these business objectives.

So it feels like it's a very fuzzy road to walk on, the road to getting promoted. But in reality, there are a couple of aspects that you can perpetually take into account. But the key here is putting them on the table with your manager. So if you're expecting a promotion, you should make that clear to your manager.

even to HR, if that's the case, the culture in your company. But all these kind of, let's say, frameworks and the path to promotion needs to be transparent and agreed in a way as a career plan, right? Ideally, at least. But yeah, I'm going to stop here, give you the opportunity to kind of interject a

and build on any of the points I've made if you want or continue on a path and let's see where we go. I love this. I think you're very nicely put together. Like those are very important and also prioritize those

factors that come into play when a person designer is setting up to be promoted in the next cycle. I think it's important to know that most of the time those performance reviews and promotions, they are connected to tax calendars. We work in quarters. Sometimes we have different structures like agile.

cycles. But most importantly, there are like all those quarters, especially if the company is public, if the company is bigger, an enterprise company with some, you know, background history. So your promotion is also very connected to how this company is dealing today on the public market, right? If their stock is growing, okay, then the company suddenly has an extra cash and they could use this cash to also motivate people and give promotions and give bonuses, etc.,

If the company is not doing great, and today in the market it's really tough, so we know that most of the companies are in this less successful space, it's not so bad. If you think about the companies reporting today in this technocrat landscape we are kind of getting into this year, it might look slightly different, but the real question is really how the companies are going to use this free cash. So there are a lot of macroeconomical factors as well that I'm trying to kind of bring up here. Now, if you zoom into the company you're working at and the typical structures like

one I was establishing. I'm also going to say that, again, the market is so volatile today and unclear, unpredictable, that if I look into the past year, I think I've realized that at least from what I'm seeing from my colleagues or people I know on the market, there are also two other cases. So there is this traditional past when you are set to be promoted, you're talking to your manager, you're building your case, you're preparing all the business impact, whatever cultural impact

stories and trying to pitch yourself and make sure that the manager you're talking to is really confident that you are the right person to promote so that they could bring this to the leadership and obviously get the budget and actually promote you. So obviously that's like a traditional story, but with the context we're working or operating in today, in the current year, I guess, 2025 and the crisis that is going on today, I've also noticed two other things that are happening on the market.

First, you have to be in the company long enough to understand that in the context of being a valuable player, sometimes you could bring the fresh perspective and that could be refreshing and helping the team. But then at some point, you really need to have enough context to be fast and provide on the impact. So sometimes it is a matter of time. For example, if you're working in a company that is fast-paced, let's imagine scale up.

And sometimes your managers are shifting because there are restructuring, there are changes in the organization, whatever. Things are moving really quick. And so sometimes you have lack of the structure to help you or enable you to actually get promoted. So very often what happens is that in the less structured spaces, you might have change of the manager and maybe you started building a relationship with this manager, right? And you started building the case, but then suddenly there was a restructuring.

and your manager was changed again. Boom, you have to start over and build a case again, build relationships, try to explain how you're helping the team and everything else. And it becomes more challenging for you to get promoted if you are in the company less time, but also the company is constantly shifting. So that's the first factor. Another case when I've noticed people are getting promoted, at least these days in the market. So if you know, like when there is the market increase

crisis, there is always an opportunity. And it is applicable not only in the world of, let's say, investments or something like that. Or for example, if you think about the previous economical crisis since like 2008, a bunch of products were built out of the crisis. And we moved into a peer economy, I think it was called something like that in 2008. Now the things are changing again. But the point here is that it's the same principle that we could apply in the company's

So what I'm seeing today is that if the companies are constantly restructuring their teams and changing their organization, changing the priorities, changing whatever, this enables a space for teams to be reshuffled. And sometimes people who actually in a very short amount of time were able to be effective

bring the actual impact of the company, might be promoted in a very short amount of time. So if, again, in a traditional space, you need some time, you need years to build a case, you need strong relationship with your manager. In the spaces where it's constantly reshuffling, you can actually use this as an opportunity to create growths. And obviously, again, with, let's say, one or two successful cases, get a chance to be promoted, get a chance to become, for example, from the senior designer into a lead designer.

So that's something I also noticed happening. But also on the other side, it might also let other people who are eager to get promoted

stagnate a little bit more because again, their manager are constantly changing. So it's becoming more and more challenging to become promoted. It's also, by the way, one of the reasons I personally have never been promoted. I've been in the companies either less than one year or about one year or two years or something like this. And then I was leaving for maternity leave or whatever. And then in another company, I was constantly shifting the managers. It never really happened to me. And I know that

That's the case for another designers in my team. So it's tricky. So it's very hard today sometimes to be not only in the space where you're happy to be designing, love to have your work, you know, have a great team, but also have a stable economic microclimate that allows you and enables you to be promoted in, again, predictable way.

With this established context, Ioanna, we just established that companies are having these more predictable cadences and then some companies have a bit more chaotic cadences. And we also discussed all those factors that might come into play when you're actually interested in getting promoted.

Let's talk about the tips. How can designers in this different context get promoted, actually? Do you have maybe some ideas on how to succeed in these different contexts? I actually do. But I think it's a very complex conversation. So I'm trying to reduce it to the essential as much as possible. So like this...

Let's say I'm not a fan of recipes, but let's go with it for the sake of the exercise. A recipe that should work in most of the environments you're in. Of course, some environments will not make it available for you, and that's not something you can control.

But most of the times it kind of comes down to a couple of things. So if I were to tell someone, let's say my mentees or my daughter, she wants to get promoted in design. The plan somebody would have to keep in mind is...

coming down to the same kind of foundational aspects. And the first one is defining what the promotion means. Like it's reflection exercise. It's the exercise of talking to your manager and together consulting the latter, if that's available.

Consulting opportunities, so expressing your intention of being promoted and also asking them what is expected from you, like what are the things that you need to prove or demonstrate as new skills in order to get there.

And then together make an assessment of the gaps, the points where you're not meeting those requirements and what is the way in which you could get there. Maybe make a plan that supports you. Maybe you need some resources. And so that's the first step. Like, what does it mean to get promoted in this particular company? And let's have a conversation with my manager about that and come up together with a plan. So I think that's pretty much universal.

The second one is the impact of your projects. So there are companies that make it a rule in their promotion framework that your project had to impact multiple products or you need to have cross-functional impact team.

your work if it's impacting just one area of the business then you're not up for promotion so it's it's a really tricky one right i've seen it in many large companies so there's this condition that your work reflects into let's say improvements or progress in multiple areas of the product and company so making cross org impact that's pretty tricky because you can't control it

But you really have to consider the impact of your work. And maybe you want to make a case for it. So documenting all the, let's say, metrics around the design decisions that you've made. So being able to build a case for here's what I did and here's how that impacted positively, hopefully, the business, right? Or find big problems that you want to volunteer to solve.

work on and drive engagement and stakeholder buying towards that goal, right? So you really have to prove impact and high stake projects, especially after a point in your career, like when you're moving from senior to staff or staff to principal, you have to show that kind of

across company impact. And then also across company, you have to become a leader in your team and outside your design team. So become a champion of good design practices, become someone who mentors junior designers or takes on the role of leading critiques or

is very good at collaborating and engaging stakeholders, right? Product managers or the engineers and so on. And you advocate for good design and you're essentially recognized as a leader, even if you are not a manager, you're just an individual contributor. But that is seen as someone who is influential in their company. And you can do that at any career level.

stage, but it's mandatory. Again, once you want to move beyond senior, you have to be able to kind of demonstrate leadership beyond your very close circle, like the product triad and the immediate team. And also this ties very closely into my fourth piece of advice, which is to make your work visible. So I've seen in my work at Miro, at UiPath, some of the most

talented designers didn't show their work. They didn't communicate their work. Nobody knew they were doing amazing things in their day-to-day work because they weren't extroverts in a way, right? They weren't the people to talk about. They were more introverted. They were shy. They were, I don't know, just didn't like that kind of attention. And they were missing promotions because they

nobody was considering them because nobody knew. People are busy. They don't have time to think about, make a very thorough analysis of everybody on the team and understand how deep that person's contribution or work goes. Nobody has time for that. It's like a perception game at some level. So these people, because they weren't showing their work, they were just not considered. Who's making an impact? And then when you're asking the question, who made an impact?

some people pop up because they were more active on Slack, or they were more active in critiques, or they ask more questions, or they talk more ideas and share resources. And so it's also a visibility game, which is unfortunate, but it's how the world works in general. So it's just a reflection of the capitalist world we live in, right? So you really have to think about that as well. The last point is gather evidence, right? So just

document your work, build a case study, show the contribution, show the outside of your responsibilities work that you've been doing, like, I don't know, mentoring or organizing coffee Friday with designers or bringing in an external guest that educates the team and improves the team culture and so on. So build your case, right? Fight for your promotion. And yeah, fingers crossed that my five-step plan, right?

Will work for you. I've seen it work for other designers many times. And my promotion from non-designer to design, this was my, let's say, biggest and most critical and most important thing that happened in my career. I was not doing UX design and I fought to become a UX designer for a

over one year and nobody wanted to give me a chance because they were looking for senior designers and they were like, we don't need a junior designer because it's too much of a complex product. And so I really fought for that transition so badly that I can speak to having to be very vocal and visible. And I think it also kind of reflected into the next stages of my career. So yeah, that's me. Anfi, I'm going to give you the stage now. What would be your tips and tricks?

I love this. I think you did touch a lot of great points, which I only can build up on. So first of all, I felt empathetic when you said fought for the transition. I personally have not fought for that, but I feel like a lot of people today are burnt out. And so fighting for the promotion might just feel heavy sometimes. And so I just wanted to say that if you don't really need to fight for the promotion, if you don't think it actually is

bringing value to your career moving forward. Just wanted to leave this with people who feel like, oh my God, there's just so much things to be done. There's always so much noise, so much priorities to be working with. And so, yeah, I think one of the questions you might ask yourself, and probably I will switch the table right now and start talking about other things that get into promotion, but also what are the things that

could help you out in your career, even if you were not to be promoted in this particular cycle or upcoming cycle. Fighting for promotion, I think it starts with the question whether you personally need that promotion and why. Why is it important to you? What will it bring to your table? Do you feel like you're stagnant? Do you really need that next challenge? Do you really need to ask

spent on the impact areas? Is that the real reason? Or is it more of the ego thing? It's just an honest question to yourself. Honestly, we all have to ask this question. Is this just that you feel like you haven't been growing for the next five years? Because for example, I know I've been in a senior shoes for six years, but I've never got this official promotion. And I also constantly ask myself, am I actually ready to fight for the transition? What will it give me? How it will enhance my career?

And I know that also I honestly have to answer this question and say, I'm not ready for that. I know that my life is right now. I do a lot of things and I have a baby and I'm trying to be present in all of those fronts. And I'm just unable to get into that promotion cycle and build the whole case. So honestly, start by asking yourself what this promotion gives you. And are you really up for that?

Because obviously with a new promotion comes a bunch of new challenges. It's a new space to figure out how to solve the problems, new dimensions, new relationships, new complexities, et cetera. More responsibilities, obviously. So always start with like, am I in the right place to get into that promotion cycle? It will take a lot of energy. You will have to build a case. You will have to obviously pitch yourself, go through the cycles and really know what you're up to. Is it something that brings value to your future?

I also wanted to mention that, so all those promotions, they are very connected to the performance reviews, right? So the performance reviews typically happens on certain cadents for the company, as we have established earlier. So we have usually either every half year or once a year, there's this promotion review cycle.

And I know, for example, in my company, how we do this, we do this every half a year. And what we do, we have like this kind of three-week cycle where first week, the designer reflects on their past growths, case, whatever, like they're building their case, essentially. The next week, the design manager is reviewing the designer and kind of leaves their notes. And then the third week, there is, as far as I understand, there is like talks with the leadership, with the HR team, et cetera, to try to understand who is up for the promotion, et cetera, right, based on this case that

the designers were building, contributing, and promoting themselves in. This promotion period cycle, depending on how structured is your team, sometimes, again, you're working as a solo designer in the small company, small startup, then it's a bit trickier. And I think there is not so much of this rigorous promotion cycling unless there is a salary increase or maybe, I don't know, extra responsibilities increase that contributes to your salary promotion in a way

And that's kind of it. But if you are more in those structured organizations, when you have letters, et cetera, then you probably would have those cycles. And so when you have those promotion or performance review cycles, then I think it's not only the opportunity for you to jump ladder.

also to reflect on your past half a year at the moment I know I'm not after a promotion I'm not looking for that but I know it's opportunity for me to reflect on my past half a year and be honest about myself first of all by asking the questions like how do I market myself what are the things I have achieved which things I did well which things I haven't done well enough what am I known for let's

What's my impact in the team, in the business? And there are multiple dimensions you can reflect on, right? First of all is obviously direct product impact. Like, did I help the business to move the needle? Also, there is like a cultural impact that you want to mention. Like, do you help the team to grow? Do you help and support and nurture and help with the feedback of the team? Do you bring value? Do you bring the company to the better UX maturity stage or not? Those are the two most important pillars, I would say. There are also other pillars like external company branding,

There's multiple things, to be honest. I know, for example, in my company, we reflect on three areas. We have those ladders and those Excel sheets where you have to reflect on different areas. But these are very related to the company values, I would say, mostly. Okay, so these performance reviews are the opportunities, essentially, to ask yourself, honestly, the questions. How did I do in the half a year? What was my branding? If you think about it, it's almost like your branding within the company looked like

So what am I known for? What am I a go person to? Who are my partners? Who are my allies in the company? How do I help myself being impactful in this company, essentially? What are the skills that everybody tell me I'm great at? And also, what are the things that I feel like I could still grow in? Other than that, I think another great point about the performance reviews is this is your opportunity to reflect on your portfolio as well. Because when the market is shaky, you just never know what's going to happen next.

So it's a good opportunity for you to actually look into the work you did. You have to write down some sort of explanations about what's the work that you did in a half, six months, or year, depends on the cycles. This is your opportunity to look back into projects you did and focus on the impact you have provided.

Right. It's always helpful to make notes during the project, like Joanna mentioned. So when you are working during the project, you have some sort of documentation, structure, reporting, cycle, reviews, the classic design process. But making notes during this process is super, super helpful because those notes can then feed into your performance reviews and you can then focus on the impact.

And it's almost the same exercise that you would need to be doing anyways for your portfolio. Because if tomorrow you would have to put the case study for the portfolio, you would have to, again, look into all the checkpoints you did in this project and understand what was this story about? What were my obstacles in this project? How did I overcame those obstacles? What did I learn? And what was the impact for either the team or the product, right? It's the same questions. So you still have to reflect.

I personally love the performance reviews today only because it's an opportunity for me to look back into how did I enrich my portfolio, if you will. What did I learn in the last six months? I feel like sometimes performance reviews feel annoying, corporate, you have to go through this, but try to frame them. It's like you're being paid to reflect on your portfolio. And that's already great because you're getting salary and the company tells you, you have one week to reflect on your portfolio, basically. And obviously that's something you will have to do sometimes.

We'll still have to do this anyways in different contexts without job or with job. All right, Fiona, I have maybe the last question for this conversation. What would be your tips or advices for the designers who feel frustrated for not being promoted

Or those designers who actually don't even have those promotion cycles. What could the designers working in a smaller organization do today, but also if you are not promoted? What to do with this frustration? It's a tough one. Of course, that can be due to a lot of reasons. One is company maturity.

We've all experienced this changing of managers and constant restructuring in smaller mid teams. And it's tricky and it's difficult and it's frustrating. And I think the most frustrating part is when you don't really understand why that's happening. So I think the first step is to try to clarify that with your manager.

And sometimes it could be as simple as you don't have a very good relationship with your manager and it feels like it's something personal and it feels like, right, that person may not work in your full support and maybe they're not a good manager and maybe they don't see all the work that you're doing. But even if you have a tense relationship or not ideal or they're not the best manager in the world, you still have to start from that place. Try to ask questions.

Very directly, look, I've informed you and everyone that needed to know that I won this promotion. It didn't happen. Let's talk about the why. Typically, when there's a ritual, right, that includes performance reviews, performance reviews should clarify that.

should surface that. So that's one thing you really have to figure out why that's happening. And then when you have that conversation, you could maybe have conversation with other peers as well. So maybe you're not getting promoted because you're not considered a good, strong collaborator with the product team or the engineering team. And so maybe that comes from other places that you need to kind of improve your relationship with. But in case things are going well and

You're checking all the boxes and it's still not happening. Maybe that's just a company problem and you could consider starting looking for roles outside of the company. But you could also explore a lateral move. So if there is a possibility in your company to maybe switch teams, join new projects, do different things, and you feel stuck and you realize that, OK, I'm not going to go from senior to staff. I'm not going to go from junior to mid. I'm stuck here. My manager won't support me or they think that I'm not...

ready for it and I've done everything I could to be ready for it. Maybe you want to explore joining other teams, other parts of the companies, other projects, even if you're not getting promoted, moving laterally to a place where you might perform better. And then the absolute extreme version of what you could be doing is escalate this.

But I don't really recommend it if you've done everything in your possibility to improve your work and to meet and exceed expectations and you still don't feel appreciated. Maybe you want to take it to HR or your manager's manager. But that's a bit, you can't really go back from that, right? Once you do that, your relationship with your manager is obviously officially a problem. You should do that only in extreme cases where you feel like it's...

completely unfair and you have a strong case for it and also documented with evidence and so on. And I personally have been in the situation where I was under someone who was not a good people person at all. He was very anxious. He was very unsure of himself. He was in his first important management position, so he didn't have that kind of stability and internal responsibility.

He felt easily threatened by everyone under him. So he kept kind of reducing our autonomy, reducing our space to be creative, come up with ideas. And he was at some points edgy and a bit aggressive. And I did my best to kind of switch teams because I wasn't thriving in that team environment.

And it's funny that this person came back years later and told me that they're sorry that they were like in such a bad place in their professional identity and they reflected on it and they were wrong. And that was very healing. But my point is, sometimes it's just bad environment or a toxic spot and you might want to explore moving around. And yeah, sometimes it's just not your fault, but you really have to make sure that it's not you before you go on the path of war. Yeah.

Yeah, that's my last piece of advice. Do you want to add anything to that?

Yeah, I love this. Your story also brought up my story because I didn't realize this until now. Or I did realize, I just didn't think about it in the context of this conversation. But indeed, I not always was in the best position to be promoted. I do remember myself being in a team or the company, actually, where I just didn't align with leadership. And it was a question to myself, honestly. Every organization is a political organization. You want it or not, if you want to get promoted, you need to be aligned with your direct unit department leadership.

Because at the end of the day, they are promoting you, not some people outside of your department, essentially. It could sound like you're still working in the bubble because at the end of the day, your direct career ladder growth impacted a lot by your leadership. And if you are not aligned with this leadership, that could really stagnate your growth if that's important to you. And so I like the point that you might need to consider if you're willing to move to other departments, but if the leadership is not changing, they're

Then, unfortunately, the only way to go forward from this right now would be to either stay in this company, just not get promoted, but just basically do whatever you can do if you're not feeling threatened moving forward. Or start thinking about switching careers, switching teams, switching companies, etc. Like really start thinking about it this way.

I like that you mentioned, Ioana, that you'd really probably don't want to take it to HR because in the HR case, it could become much harder for you to recover from this. It's like you will need to become your own advocate. And if you're ready for this, I mean, we are creatives. Not always we want to do the advocating work, but it's the part of this job, right? If you were getting the case to the HR, you'll have to become an advocate. You have to have evidence, etc. So it's tough.

And so, yeah, very often we work in the organizations that are political. You want it or not. A lot of the things are done based on the relationships. The visibility is very important as we established today. But the context is also very important. And also asking yourself, am I up for the growth? Am I up for the promotion and the challenge? And it's honestly okay to say no to it.

It's not only about your ego and being growing visibly in LinkedIn, but really it's about you and your life and will your life become better out of this promotion? So think about those questions. Think about how you can market yourself within the company because branding is a big, big factor, not only outside of the bubble in the market, like you don't have to be influencer,

But also, it's the branding within the company you're in. And so your growth is quite related to whether your impact is visible, your relationship are great, and if you're aligning to the leadership or not. And if some of those pillars are not well established, it could actually stagnate your career growths and impact the next promotion cycle. Okay.

think those are a lot of the thoughts that we have shared today. I hope it was helpful. I hope all of our thoughts are sort of raw ideas about where the promotion happens and how you can take some of them as opportunities, but also some of them as a reflection exercises and take advantage of that for your own career, take charge of your career moving forward. If this

conversation was helpful we would really appreciate if you could rate us on your favorite podcast platform it helps us moving forward it helps us to create more of those episodes and share our thoughts and also if you have any suggestions for the next episodes please don't hesitate to find the link in the show notes and drop your ideas there we're here to help you out to succeed in your design careers right hope it was helpful and we will see you on the next episodes bye everyone