Microsoft SE Lv 62 to 63 promotion strategy

Microsoft / Eng
BkHG38

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BkHG38
Jul 13, 2019 4 Comments

What advice would people share on 62 to 63 for engineers. I just made 62 in Q3 after being in 61 for 3 years. I’ve heard from other managers this is one of the trickiest levels to justify at people discussions, due to large pool of candidates and budget and business need requirements.

With over 6 years at MSFT I’m really getting the impression too many stars need to align to get the right projects, visibility and impact to get promo. Feels like a moving target especially when there’s already a good number of 2’s and seniors on the team and you’re not the star of the team.

2 q’s
1. How have people had success and what timelines did you see?
2. Would you recommend jumping ship to another company getting non MSFT stack experience and coming back 2-5 years later commanding a more competitive salary?

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TOP 4 Comments
  • To get to Senior you need good scope, complete independence, and great coding & design skills. You need to account for dependencies and corner cases. Make sure stakeholders are informed and agree with direction. Proactively determine the next important item that needs to be tackled without your manager needing to tell you what’s next. Identify overlaps of your work and others to determine what you can implement generically to make it shareable while also finding ways to leverage previously built components.

    In the end, It’s all about how you go about doing your job and how much guidance you need to get to a result. Different tech stacks are easy to learn and don’t indicate Seniority. Building your skill set so that what is written above comes as second nature takes time and repetition, which indicates Seniority.
    Jul 13, 2019 0
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    62 to 63 is very tough. I left MS as a 62 for a levelled up a few years ago. If I could go back and do things differently I would have just done it sooner after the 61 to 62 promo.
    Jul 13, 2019 2