Only Design Managers get promoted to Principal?!
After several years at MS I’ve seen time and time again people with no experience, no design excellence/quality bar getting promoted to Principal only because they are in a manager role, and riding on the success of a hard working team.
A lot of IC get overlooked simply because they don’t get the sr. lead visibility or that impact is measured on revenue/MAU (monthly active users) which become a coin toss since some features will have big impact on driving MAU (like integration) where some driving quality will not.
Is this how other tech company measure design impact?! As a quality driven(read perfectionist) designer I feel like this measurement is heavily skewed to promote managers rather than hard working IC designers.
Considering leaving MS because of this.
11 YoE
220 TC
🤘
comments
That said, a managers job is super hard and frustrating. Politics, people, politics, less hands on work… it’s kind of like all the bullshit and way less of the fun. I would also say if you’ve only been at MS for 3 years it is common it takes longer to get to principle. Are you showing up in meetings? Is your manager presenting ‘for’ you? Ask why if so, and ask for more opportunities to present your work in upwards meetings, but do understand sometimes that’s not possible. To get around this I’ve done videos and snuck my name or face in them. Also- you need the full LT sign-off on the promotion. You should be having high-level cross-discipline impact. It’s more then drawing pictures.
Impact=revenue/visibility/MAU?
I think it ultimately creates a system skewed against IC design.
I do appreciate the comment about what I should do/need to do however. I think this also shows up as subjective as it seems like all you need is a sponsor. Not saying being a Manager is easy. I’ve led teams and I’ve also been a manager at MS before. Politics is never fun and especially when half of your work is to convince other people of the true impact of design, and why design excellence is important.
If I boil it down I see
Principle design managers = Successful product (not reflective of your own work)
Principle design IC = over deliver and play politics to get other people to understand and vouch for your worth, a long with “getting lucky” (or choose) to get put on features that have business impact.