What would be the right career for me?

Knowing the right people vs. doing a good job, what's more beneficial for your career?

• I work at a well-known technology/management consulting company and this is my first full-time job since graduating college. Recently I have learned that many of my peers (those who joined the same program around the same time) are getting promoted (typically a 25% salary bump and more opportunities to fill interesting roles with more responsibilities) in an earlier promotion cycle than the "standard" promotion cycle originally communicated (which is about half a year later); this I highly support since promotions should be accelerated based on performance rather than on time. Since I am sincerely confident that I am a high performer among my peer group (supported by the score I received from our internal rating system), I had believed that I too may qualify to participate in the earlier promotion cycle. So I schedule a call with my nominal manager to explore the possibility of facilitating my promotion timeline. I had thought that our relations were cordial based on our previous, infrequent conversations, but her attitude had turned sour when I bought up the possibility of adjusting my promotion timeline. Essentially, she told me that it was not up for discussion and that I had to remain on the original promotion timeline (and somehow it would benefit me to stay on the original timeline). I asked why, but she simply said there are a number of factors considered to determine eligibility, but would not elaborate on them. I expressed dissatisfaction with her response and asked whether she could be more transparent, otherwise to me it seemed like arbitrary factors were at play. She denied it and again emphasized that this was not up for discussion. Being someone who does not just give up when confronted with "no," I attempted a different approach by asking whether there were any gaps that disqualifies me from an earlier promotion and how I may be able to address them. What I had thought was a reasonable question resulted in her raising her voice and stating that there is nothing left to discuss. Given this impasse, I decided to end our conversation since I clearly would not be achieving anything by prolonging it. And so, what I do is schedule a call with my manager's manager, the executive leader of my program, hoping to gain some clarity on the matter. And boy did I get clarity… essentially I was told that I needed leadership sponsorship in the practice area that I wanted to promote into and that takes precedence over everything else, including, to my disbelief, doing a good job supporting colleagues and making a positive impact on our clients - major inputs for our internal ratings. Somehow she also conveyed that getting promoted later is a good thing for me, saying that I wouldn't be placed in a more competitive pool (isn't it the point to be challenged?). Here is the actual transcript (spelling and all) for my follow-up to our call (I am normally very courteous, although I admit sprinkling some passive-aggressive language in here): Me: Hi [Manager], thanks for taking the time to speak with me, I will try to keep a positive attitude toward all this although I am somewhat demoralized Manager: You are welcome.....but please do not be demoralised. Focus on getting to the right place with the right ability to succeed once there Me: I will try and have realized that I have approached this all wrong, I will now focus on networking and building connections Manager: There is no bad experience.....we learn from it all and btw - - the things you have focussed on got you to the point where you can look for supprot....without those you'd be nowhere Me: right, I just didn't understand that diligent work alone wouldn't be enough Manager: Well we all live in the context of the business...let me know if I could do a better job of communicating this to you I mean all of you.... Me: yes, I'll let others know as well, I just wished good work would speak more for itself, but this is a lesson learned. Thanks for all your help Manager: Good work will factor in, trust me They've lost my trust so now I'm looking to change jobs. I guess my question is, are all companies like this/this is normal? Does knowing the right people mean that much more than actually doing a good job? I want to ensure I learn from my mistake and humbly ask those with more experience if this is the way of the working world? Are places like Google or tech start-ups in SV like this? Those are the places I'm interested in joining next and heard they are more meritocratic.

• Answer:

  In my experience (recruited 3x in the past year to key strategic roles in largest tech services/ consulting company) - doing great work builds credibility (the foundation your manager referenced) while building solid relationships opens doors. If you're working in a large organization, the reality is that opportunities won't often present themselves just based on your hard work/ results. If you do great work-- managers tend to want to hang on to you-- because your great work helps them look good too. If you want an opportunity/ promotion-- you have to chase it relentlessly. Here are a couple of ways to do that: Get to know one/ several of the managers who oversee a role you're interested in. Learn about what their struggling to achieve and where you want to end up. Offer to help with their projects in any way you can. This will build a great foundation for your relationship. Find a senior consultant/ colleague who has been really successful and ask them to mentor you-- tell them specifically what you're trying to achieve and that you'll bring them 3 specific questions each month to answer. Do this for 6 months and ask them for advise on where to connect to projects that can help you open doors. That's all I've got for now. I hope that helps.