> what would you like to differently, or what would you like to learn?" That's often an opening to getting someone the kind of work they'd prefer to do, but are reluctant to bring up.

Just to give insight into why some ICs don't respond to this question. I asked my manager for promotion, he kept stringing me along. One of the reasons for said string-along was that the kind of stuff I want to work on is not big enough. Why couldn't he tell me this 6 months ago? I have no clue.

But I have learned to never trust managers with this experience. Managers will have to work hard to earn my trust.

There’s an art to discovering mutually beneficial arrangements. If an employee loves working at their current role, is good at, wants to keep doing basically exactly that, is at the right level for the work they’re doing, but wants a promotion, there’s a conflict. Maybe some of that six months was the manager trying to figure out if there was flex anywhere to find a solution that worked for both sides.

There sure is an art to finding mutually beneficial arrangements, but there is sometimes also a point where you need to recognize no such arrangement exists. It seems equally likely to me that the manager may have realized right away that there was no (or not enough) flex in the situation and decided that instead of the team member leaving immediately they could perhaps be strung along and provide value to the company for a few more months.

Some of the situations where no real flex exists are:

- promotion wish where there is no place. For example, someone 1 level below the CTO wishing to be promoted to CTO will not be able to get their wish unless the current CTO leaves. If they don't, promotion to the desired rank will not be possible without changing companies.

- salary demands that can't be met from the budget. Most middle managers do not have significant say over how much budget for raises they are allotted for the year. If one persons raise demand is bigger than the total then not all of it can be met.

- As in the GP post, the things the employee wishes to work on do not fit in the wider strategy of the company and/or will not provide value commensurate with the salary received. In this case, depending on how insistent both sides are, sometimes no compromise is possible.

100% agree. I look back to several situations in my own career as a manager where I did have this case arise and went looking around the org for other opportunities that might give my employee what they wanted. Some of those worked out, but many did not. The ones that did not would be indistinguishable to the employee from a manager just "stringing along" the employee to get a few more months out of them. (There are other cases where I was able to be more upfront as there was an obvious mismatch analogous to your CTO's direct report case.)

That wouldn't work if their primary discontent is with their salary.

If they're honest (including with themselves), it's as easy as saying something along the lines of "I'm happy with my role, my responsibilities, and what I'm learning every day, but I'm not content with my salary."

Sometimes the answer is just to give them a raise. Sometimes it's "you're already at the top of your pay band, sorry."

Not even at the top of your pay band, but "we simply don't have the budget for it". Very much the case for startups trying to compete with well-established companies, let alone FAANG-tier