> one of the positions was actually only posted for someone internally

This is extremely common. A company can't allow for nepotism or favoritism, so it requires a public posting for any open position. Qualified external applicants see the posting and apply. The managers hire the internal candidate they wanted to hire anyway. It's all a huge waste of everyone's time. I'd bet that a large percentage of job postings are insincere in this way.

It's even more fun in public institutions, e.g. universities, where a higher amount of perfunctory humouring of external candidates is required in order to create a somewhat more convincing appearance of an equitable search.

It's the natural consequence of a world where performance is difficult to measure, people are largely fungible, and next to nothing that you personally do will move the needle in whether your employer will be successful.

In that situation, why wouldn't you hire and promote your friends? All of the incentives are aligned for doing just that.

How much of it is "hiring friends" vs just hiring someone you have better information about? A lot of people interview exceptionally well but it's always something of a crapshoot how well they will do in the actual job. But for an internal candidate you should have a lot better information on how well they performed in other roles. You can have actual frank conversations with their managers/coworkers instead of getting BS references from people the candidate themselves chose for you to talk to.

Yeah, there are a few jobs I could recommend a specific person for because I know they are very good due to past experience. When opening come along though, they are usually not looking to change. But if they were... some would say I just recommended a friend, which happens to also be true.

And full-on nepotism is known to be bad. My bet is that blind recruits would perform just as well or better as the family and friends of the recruiting manager would if you'd run the experiment.

That may well be true, but I would not necessarily equate "hiring internal candidates" with "hiring family and friends".

I think this is an overly cynical take. Reputation and VERIFIABLE track record are what is being selected for here. If a hiring manager views this as known for a candidate, there is basically nothing someone else can do to complete. The hiring process simply isn't sufficient to do this fact finding.

In my org, managers aren't really friends, but they do have trust. A strong recommendation is impossible to overturn.

Trust is really the main motivation in a lot of these situations. Imo, the value of “networking” in business is building trusting relationships with other people. I’ve gotten jobs by referrals from others, and helped other people get jobs via referrals. In those situations the referred candidate had an enormous advantage over the candidate off the street, but it’s not a system of buddies looking out for each other. It’s a system of people who’ve spent time establishing trust with each other.

It's the same reason why friends set up friends for dates. If you go "public" with apps, you can be setup with literally anyone. It often doesn't go well.

> why wouldn't you hire and promote your friends?

Furthermore, do you want your colleagues to be motivated by loyalty or by competition?

Loyalty, obviously. Competition means focusing on competing with other employees and not focusing on the company's goals.

Loyalty means hiding miss-steps, cronyism, and incentive to make your boss look good no matter what. That is orthogonal to the company's goals.

Competition means hiding miss-steps, sandbagging your co-workers, and optimizing for looking good. These are also orthogonal to the company's goals.

What's funny is when it backfires.

ie, there's an alumni who now works at a top 5 lab in the field and is now looking for an opportunity to move back to his hometown (for whatever reasons). Job description was obviously written with someone within the institution in mind, but then this person shows up.

I wish I remembered where I read this so I didn't have to post it unsourced and lacking so many details, but I heard about something exactly like this happening: some government agency conducted a search with a tailor-made job description, intending to hire an internal candidate. Along comes an external candidate who also happens to tick all the boxes, but also has slightly more experience with one of the skills. Since they were required by law to hire the "most qualified" applicant, this presented a problem.

So, what did they do? Close the search without hiring anyone, then open a new search with the same job description, adding another skill that only the internal applicant has (I think it was fluency in Italian).

The moral of the story, if there is one, is to never underestimate the ability of people to get a desired result by exploiting the system in an unforeseen way (i.e. hacking). :)

I have been that external candidate. I saw a random job on USAjobs a few years ago that really seemed to fit all of my experience so I figured I would apply for the heck of it. Within a few hours the listing was withdrawn. Weird. Then the same thing popped up again and again over the next couple of weeks and I would apply and it was immediately withdrawn again.

Good to know what was really going with that now.

I experienced this when a job req was opened specifically for me. It was odd having to interview knowing good and well I was getting the job. I used the time to talk with the professors like a real interview and then used the last 15 minutes to ask for advice for how I could interview differently in the real world.

Sometimes that ‘favored’ person has done a lot of work to create the opportunity that they are going to fill.

(For instance that person might have done a lot of work to get a grant, or convince higher ups to make money available.)

I've been on the other end of this. The person in charge of hiring me took my resume and qualifications and used that to template the job posting, so I would be the most perfectly qualified candidate too.

Ditto. I've had my a set of requirements that generalized one level of abstraction over my niche resume so it wasn't nearly as obvious. The org wanted to hang on to me because they knew I'd leave if I didn't get a significant raise and no good mechanism to give me raise except advertising a new position at a higher starting salary (my raise) than closing my old position. Their retention strategy worked and I stayed another 2.5 years.

I went through hiring committies and even had to recompete for my own position, of course the cards were stacked in my favor.

Hiring processes are a joke across the board. I feel sorry for anyone who applied to the position wasting their time. I'm confident I've been on the other side of this before where a position matched so well the chances a real competitive qualified candidate that wasn't already targeted seemed low considering how good a fit I was for the role.

For my first ever job, I was hired from an internship, and one of my last tasks was to write the job description I'd be applying for, such that I would be the only viable candidate. What a pointless exercise. I think that might have been my introduction to how dumb the world of working for a living was going to be!

> I think that might have been my introduction to how dumb the world of working for a living was going to be!

If that's the case, then maybe it wasn't a pointless exercise. Just an annoying and silly exercise.

This just happened to me. Recruiter reached out, asked for my resume because he had a job that looked good. I gave it to him, and 2 days later he called back saying that while they liked me, they were going with an internal candidate. Why bother with the whole charade if you're going to go with an internal person anyways?

> Why bother with the whole charade if you're going to go with an internal person anyways?

My understanding is providing a nice song and dance for legal reasons.

One of many ways that what the HR function has grown into simply adds overhead and friction with no actual value. An HR leader could argue that they are adding value by protecting the company from lawsuits or other risk by instituting this "fair" hiring process. But if everyone knows it's a sham, and that the internal candidate is going to get hired regardless, there is no protection in fact. It slows things down and increases costs, and does not truly reduce risk, improve results, or anything else it might be claimed to do.

> A company can't allow for nepotism or favoritism, so it requires a public posting for any open position

It's not even just a feel-goody policy by dysfunctional HR depts. The US DoL literally requires a company to advertise a role for a position that is currently filled by a PERM labor certification applicant (which is required for green card applications).

Many parts of the USG require "veterans preference" for most positions, meaning they have no choice but to hire one. You can see the reasoning for it, but it limits your abilities to hire who you want.

I had a boss once the said “nepotism will get you everywhere “. I didn’t agree with his philosophy, but his candor was refreshing.

In Ottawa the federal government is required to post jobs publicly like that and people were still gaming it by opening the posting for just a short period of time and telling the preferred candidates when to apply. Now there's a minimum number of days they have to be up.

Usajobs.gov, is that you?

"The managers hire the internal candidate they wanted to hire anyway"

I was surprised how common that is. I've seen that dozens of times happening at Amazon (also for keeping external contractors, when the whole teams fled; the whole hiring process is pretty much bs btw)

If the team is growing and getting more work, then these are most likely genuine. If not, they're quite likely insincere. The "insincerity quotient" will rise depending on level :) . So, for internal staff/sr. staff positions, the decision has already been made or the candidate pool has been narrowed to 1-2 people even before the position is posted.

The far more common scenario (At least at the companies I have worked at) is that an external applicant is desired but because US laws require a posting, one is made, even though that posting is there only to comply with the law and the company is basically already in the process of hiring the external candidate.

> because US laws require a posting

US law does not generally require a job posting before hiring an employee. There are exceptions, however, including government employers, some government contractors, and employment of foreign nationals (e.g., H1-B visa workers).

I was definitely talking about these cases and they are very common.

Immigration law also requires it too, which is sometimes why some job postings are hyper specific; they’re tuned to fit literally one person.

If you’re still on the fence at all, apply elsewhere today. If your current employer isn’t fulfilling your personal goals, you have zero obligation to wait around until they do. It’s just a job. If your current management would react poorly to you acting in your own interests, you probably don’t want to make a career with these people. If opportunities or rewards are only handed out under threat of an external offer, again—you don’t want to work with these folks.

If you can’t get promoted internally, try getting promoted externally :)

Believe it or not, it can be easier. Often you're seen as a certain type or level in your current job. They can't imagine you doing a different one. Plus, if they promote you, they just have to fill a lower position. A new company doesn't have any of these biases.

A friend in night school said he fully expected to have to move to a new company to get promoted. His current boss didn't see him as someone with a masters-level intellect.

Of course it's not always this way. Etc. Etc.

Yeah, as far as I've observed, this is one of the key reasons for consistent short (1-2yr) durations working at companies in the tech industry. You get a raise by getting hired at a new company. Personally for me, each time taking a job at a new employer has resulted in far greater compensation increases than if I had stayed at the same place and waited for a bonus/raise.

And even if you manage to convince your manager to consider you for the promotion/transfer often they'll ask you to start doing the new job on the side for a bit to prove yourself. Now, how good are you going to be at something new that you are doing part time with nobody taking you seriously and supporting you? It's much easier to get the title first and grow into the job afterwards.

There's the perception, yeah. I've also been told that I was so productive in my current role, they saw it as a loss to move me to my target role. Of course, they lost me entirely...

There's a place for that: just because someone's a good engineer doesn't make them a good leader or manager, for instance. But such stiff attitudes really hurt an org, IMO.

As someone who has never been promoted internally, and has been promoted externally on about half my new roles , I can tell you that taking a job elsewhere is the easier path.

I wonder if anyone with success getting promoted internally can chime in on what are some good tactics/resources?

This may not be helpful in the context of Fortune 500 companies, but here it goes. I started at my current small company as a designer in 2011 with minimal formal training and a couple of years of self-taught experience. In the past ten years, I’ve been proposed to Sr. Designer, Consultant, and now Sr. Consultant. Moving from $10/hr to $95k/year in the process. The line of work is AV consulting and programming for commercial architecture.

Let me contrast this with my job experience immediately preceding this, circa 2007 to 2011. I worked as an IT Manager at a University Law School. I started as a student help desk and eventually managed the AV systems in the classrooms. I couldn’t get promoted because it was part of a sprawling organization with super rigid job roles. I’d get in trouble for going above and beyond my job role. I wanted better pay at one point, so I applied for the tiniest move-up at a different school on campus and made it through a bunch of interviews until I met with the CIO of that school. She figuratively spit on my resume and told me to get fucked. I swear that she had a chat with the CIO of the law school, and they plotted her performance with me.

My educational background is a BA in music, so I don’t have rock star credentials. Well…I have very modest rock music credentials, but hiring managers don’t give a shit.

So what happened with my current job? It’s a small company. 10-20 people for most of the time I was there. Everything that pissed off the university delights the small business. I was able to wear new hats and jump into little side projects and demonstrate the value of my intelligence and enthusiasm. Also, I can’t overstate this; I work for the best boss I can imagine. She assumes the best in everyone and has a mental growth trajectory for all that isn’t marred by fuck ups. She sees the mistakes as learning, as they should be.

I’m far enough along in my line of work where I can see that I’d need to change companies if I wanted a quick and easy promotion or a 20% raise. However, I can build/grow the position I’m in. My ambitions are more tied up in my family and personal wellness and growth lately.

Of course. I'm not going to spend all that time updating my resume and going through all the interview hurdles not to get better paycheck. I'm going to keep applying until I've accomplished getting that better job I'm ready for.

This is very very hard to do if you want to go from software engineer to manager. Almost impossible - I have tried sending out hundreds of resumes over periods of years. You need to be promoted internally - but that is impossible unless you know someone. The internal job postings are a sham. I absolutely HATE software development but have been stuck in this role for 15 years and 5 years since I genuinely started loathing it. But there is no escape unless I want to go work in Tescos. I've not seen a promotion into management in my 15 years in the industry across 7 different companies. For all intents and purposes it does not happen and if you go into software, you aren't getting out.

Are you working at a large org? If you want internal mobility, particularly for IC -> manager in software eng, I would highly recommend moving to a startup. My experience at startups has generally been that the company can't convince enough of the engineers to move into management so the transition is extremely easy for those who are willing.

Or even just a smaller company that is not a start-up. In my experience, smaller companies are always looking for a way to become larger companies, and at their size, a single hire can make a significant difference. In fact I'd say the odds are better than in a start-up, because a start-up often has tons of cash to burn up along the way of learning which people could be additive.

Even large orgs can be like this, as long as they (the whole company, or more likely just the small part you work for) are growing. It’s usually much harder to hire managers. Just go anywhere that’s growing, prove you’re a competent tech lead by organising/coordinating your IC work, and you’ll get the manager twisting your arm to become a lead.

Ask how many reports the hiring manager has, and how many it was a year ago. If it was 10 and now it’s 20, that hiring manager is probably desperate to hire a lead to take care of some of the people managing.

I’ve seen this at Facebook and Google, so it’s not just small companies.

With startups, it’s much easier to determine if the team hiring is growing, because the answer is yes.

Edit: typos

Is this a UK thing? I think I’ve read this before on HN, “getting promoted from software engineer to manager is hard”.

It seems to be a cultural thing. In the US, the manager is not seen as “superior” necessarily and many people actively do not want to be promoted (and a bunch of kids pouring into the field every year) so getting a management position is not particularly hard, even if you’re under 30.

I'm in the UK and at you wouldn't have any issue where I work(big AAA games publisher) - very very very few people want to be managers, so if someone expressed interest in managing they'd be given all training and support to make that happen, probably would get them promoted within a year or less. In fact I'd say that with some seniority under your belt you have to start actively avoiding management roles if you don't want them.

I don't believe it - have you seen it happen? If someone actually tries to follow that path, they get managed out rather than promoted, I bet you.

>>I don't believe it - have you seen it happen

Yes, I have gone exactly through this myself, and now that I'm a manager I've helped several people become managers themselves, and it always starts with people expressing interest in the path. It's generally very encouraged where I work.

>>get managed out rather than promoted, I bet you.

That's a pretty wild bet to make, given that you know, I'm actually talking from experience.

Maybe it's a cultural thing but my experience has been the exact opposite. As a software engineer you have to actively avoid taking a management position after a few years at any given company.

Exactly. I’ve been dodging management positions for the last 21 of 23 years. I’ve had to leave two companies to do so.

I agree its true but its easy to change your resume to make your current job a lite manager. Put the title in and list all the responsible stuff you've done. With a bit of exaggeration you've been some kind of middle manager the last 5 years I'm sure.

7 companies in 15 years is a lot of moving around, maybe this has something to do with it?

I went contracting after the last permanent position turned out to be another dead end. Now I've given up and just work enough to pay the bills so I can avoid programming as much as possible.

Yeah, you don't go straight to director. Absolutely not externally for that matter.

First, you start out with "team lead" then work your way up after showing enthusiasm and reliability. Get the Fournier book, The Manager's Path.

On the flip side, companies tend to hire management for outside perspective; especially in my field, data engineering, companies build up but get to a point where no one internal knows how to proceed properly and so are better off hiring externally.

I agree that doing so can be a mistake, but at times it's necessary, and likely less of a risk than promoting internally.

Does no one know how to proceed properly or are existing management just not willing to listen to the rank and file?

I'm watching this happen right now as a third party. The C-suite have brought in a bunch of expensive contractors who run perennially late and have done nothing but regurgitate generic flavour of the month blog posts rather than engaging with the people involved in the process that have actual experience of what's going wrong.

At my own place there are no outside contractors but again the people who actually do the work know exactly what could be done to improve the company's processes, getting anyone in management to listen is like pulling teeth.

Believe me, I've been in your shoes multiple times. I suppose I've resolved that instead of being frustrated as I have been in previous roles, I should simply take advantage of it and be aware of those biases if the situation arises for me.

> Working at a fortune 100 top 10 company

Isn't that the Fortune 10?

Apparently not; the Fortune 100 is a sort of curated list, and there is no shorter list. The 10 at the top are referred to as the "Fortune 100 Top 10". https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fortune-100.asp

I guess it's seen to be a little gauche to whittle the list down beyond a certain point, i.e. the Fortune 3.

When Walmart was the most valuable company, a friend who worked at Walmart.com said he worked at a Fortune 1 company.

Only if you had a math teacher that harped on you to reduce your fractions.

Aren't folks unhappy at their current roles likely to seek other roles internally before looking externally? It sounds like they are more likely to (a) already be unhappy (b) become extra unhappy when a transfer is denied and (c) that leads to them setting off into the sunset.

I suspect that these aren't the folks companies want to keep in the first place.

On average of course, there will be exceptions. Not trying to imply anything about you, OP.

> I suspect that these aren't the folks companies want to keep in the first place.

Why not?

Apologies for the delayed response. My thought process at the time was that if they were the kind of folks the company wanted to keep they would have been able to make the transfer. I could be wrong.

How long have you been looking internally? Promotions at huge companies usually aren’t just a matter of checking boxes, your manager really has to push for you using both the formal and informal routes.

Also, do you trust your manager? Just because they checked some boxes in some system doesn’t mean they are actually advocating for you.

It sounds like you probably need to understand the process better.

Look for other positions early, not later. Interviewing is a skill that is learned through practice, things like resumes benefit from continuous improvement and refinement.

No just that but the interviews are a good chance to learn what skills and attitudes are valued by the places that are hiring the positions that you are interested in.

Simple reason is if they hire someone internally they just get another open req to fill.

Turns out they have another req to fill anyway, with hardly any notice too.

This is giving me flashbacks.

Years ago I applied for a C-level position at a company I worked for, somewhat to my surprise sailed through the interview process, and was officially offered the job.

A few days later the CEO stopped by for a chat and told me they weren't going to offer me the job. He seemed surprised when I told him I'd already been offered it despite that everyone involved in the process had met and agreed to offer it to me.

Cue shenanigans, partly self-inflicted, because I really wanted that job.

Turns out they had someone else in mind they wanted to give it to (I'm not sure at what point they'd realised this) so they added some additional selections stages that were basically engineered to ensure I'd fail so they could give the job to this other person.

With hindsight I should have quit there and then, and sued them for constructive dismissal.

I didn't do that because a relative with whom I was close was terminally ill and I didn't think it was a good time to act in a way that felt rash with everything around that going on. I was also concerned about having to deal with a potentially protracted legal case in the midst of all this, and how I'd keep paying my mortgage with no income.

Still, this was a mistake. I should have done it. I'll explain why below.

I ended up staying for about another year, although I'd obviously made the decision that I was going to leave at the first opportunity. For part of that year I worked for the person they'd given the job to. It was shit. For the rest of it I was in a different team, where I actually worked pretty hard, but that work was targeted (by me) at skilling myself up to enable myself to find a new position. I'm not saying it didn't benefit the company, but any such benefit was very much a secondary objective.

As you can imagine, this was by far and away the most humiliating episode of my career, and I came away from it extremely disillusioned, and with my confidence in tatters. Even all these years later, typing this now and in some limited form reliving the experience, I find myself surprised by how angry I still feel. The one positive is that it's had a profound impact on the way I choose to deal with people, and obviously particularly when hiring. A key lesson is know what you're looking for and be clear about that.

After I left - with nothing else lined up - I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I ended up contracting for about two and a half years, just because the money was decent and I just couldn't tolerate the thought of being somebody's employee. I got over it eventually.

I'm now a CTO at a growing company that's maybe 30% larger than the company where I was originally offered/de-offered a C-level job was at that time, and have been since the beginning of 2020. For political reasons my role in 2019 was an EVP position, but you could squint and say I've been doing this role for getting on three years.

Nonetheless, that episode, and particularly the decision I made not to quit and sue, probably cost me 5 - 7 years in my career. That's time and money I won't get back. And it was, I think, that decision (or perhaps lack of a decision) more than anything else that led to the loss of confidence and disillusionment, because what I was mostly disillusioned with was myself. If I'd acted I think I would have felt quite differently because, even though the situation would still have been deeply unpleasant, showing that agency would have made it easier for me to own the outcome.

All of this is a very long-winded way of saying that if you're not progressing the way you want to with your current company, don't mess around: find a role with a different company where you can progress the way you want to.

Sorry to hear about your unfortunate experience. I bet everyone would get shaken up after getting an opportunity like that taken away, AFTER it was already confirmed that you're getting it.

One thing I'd like to touch upon is you saying that it cost you 5-7 years of your career. Is that really the case, though? Hear me out. I've been employed in a couple of workplaces where I've had similar experiences: employer dangling a shiny thing in front of me in the shape of a promise. "You're nearly there, it'll come soon enough. You just have to work hard." As you can imagine, the shiny thing never reached the palm of my hand. The first time it happened, I worked insanely hard with my rose-tinted glasses on. Took me a while to realise that I'm wasting my time. Once I made the decision to leave in search for better things, I was well equipped to jump higher than before. I already had the skill set AND the internal bullshit detector was calibrated. The second time it happened, I didn't waste any time. Jumped ship, got employed at, what I consider, a dream job.

The point I'm getting at is that you never truly waste time unless you're coasting. The experiences you've had add up to the person (professionally and personally) you are now. It might've taken you longer to achieve what you've set out to do but you got there in the end. You must be happier that you're the CTO at the company you're in now rather than the one you mentioned anyway, right?

The ol' cliché "the journey is the best part."

> One thing I'd like to touch upon is you saying that it cost you 5-7 years of your career. Is that really the case, though?

My decision not to sue certainly was. Note: my decision. I'm taking responsibility, not blaming the company. I'm not going to get into more detail simply because I've gone over it quite enough for this decade in my previous post.

Do recruiters get the same commission or bonuses if they hire internally? If not then there's your answer.

I mean it sucks, but your boss gave you solid advice: If you are looking to get promoted internally in a massive technical bureaucracy, one of the best things you can do is get an external offer.

It’s the same where I am. We’re a fortune 4 and the number of people who create jobs for their friends is outrageous.

Surely Fortune 100 firms want a docile workforce. People who will stay with the firm even when passed over for promotion and opportunity multiple times. These people tend to be easy to manage badly. You are better off finding your next job at a new firm and that firm being grateful you accepted versus staying at your current firm and you being grateful they promoted you.