What kind of different promotions can you achieve from various different tech-related jobs?

There are a lot of different career paths within tech, and each will have its own unique promotion opportunities. As an example, I started my career in Sales and the opportunities for me to be promoted are very diverse. I can continue to be a salesperson who get promoted to sell to larger accounts like the Googles, Macy's, and Teslas of the world. I can also get into management within Sales, where I can manage a team of Sales Executives and coach them to master the art of sales.

There are also a diverse number of other careers in tech, including Human Resources, Engineers, Event Planning, Operations, Customer Service, and marketing to name a few. Those all each have their own unique promotions tracks.

More importantly, tech is a growing industry so the opportunities to be promoted will be vast compared to industries that are losing jobs due to technology and innovation. My suggestion is to start by picking a career path, and then find those opportunities to be promoted with that path. I hope that helps!

Hi Katrina,

Tech-related jobs is a broad term, as there is almost every kind of job within the tech industry. For example, at Salesforce, we have software engineers building the product, product managers ideating the product, sales reps selling the product, managers leading teams, even building site managers overseeing construction of infrastructure. So if you want to just work for a tech company, you can pretty much do anything! That being said, as a software engineer, I will answer the question from my experience.

One of the things I love about Salesforce is how many levels of promotion there. A lot of the top tech companies have very defined levels for each type of role, allowing you to stay on your path for a very long time while getting promoted every couple of years. As a software engineer, we have the following levels:

• Associate (junior) engineer
• Engineer
• Senior Engineer
• Lead Engineer
• Principal Engineer
• Architect
• Principal Architect
• Distinguished Engineer

The levels for management (from what I've seen) are pretty similar

• Manager
• Sr. Manager
• Director
• Sr. Director
• VP
• SVP
• EVP

And if you are truly brilliant, you can get promoted to C-Level 😉(CEO, CTO, etc.)

How do you move from level to level? That answer isn't so straightforward and can change depending on your role, team, manager, project etc. However, in general, if you are having a noticeable, positive impact on the team, you can get promoted every couple years.

You also don't have to stay on the same career path. Just recently, one of my colleagues went from Engineer to Manager! My advice to you when you are in college and thinking about your first job is to really focus on that first job, and not too much on the five year plan. Try to pick something that you are interested in, and once you actually start working, your interests and potential career path will become more and more clear.

P.S. the website levels.fyi and the app Blind have some good info