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During my time at Google, I would spend nearly an entire week building out my promotion packet during performance reviews. An entire week!It pains me to think of all the lost productivity that must take place during their twice-a-year performance reviews and promotion processes.Google's performance review process differs from many other companies in that you apply for your own promotion. It's good in that it reduces managerial bias — ultimately, you decide whether to apply. But it's also bad in that people who apply less often — statistically women apply less than men — get promoted less often.As part of your promotion application, you write a detailed self-assessment of your contributions, solicit peer reviews from your supporters, and lay out the rationale for why you ought to be promoted. That input, combined with your manager's feedback, forms your promotion packet.When you apply, you tell a story of the best version of yourself and your accomplishments to a promotion committee — consisting of engineers two levels above you. They spend roughly 20 minutes deciding whether you're ready to move up the engineering ladder.Regardless of whether it's at Google or some other tech company, making the pitch that you should be promoted can be a painful and arduous process — one where engineers have to take off their engineering hats and put on their marketing hats. But it's also a high-leverage investment for your career, as being recognized as someone at a higher level opens up additional responsibilities and opportunities for impact.So what do promotion committees look for? Generally, many tech companies look for evidence of these three core areas:Ability to handle complexity. Complexity can come in many flavors. Most engineers on the individual contributor track focus on technical complexity in solving hard problems with challenging requirements. You might also deal with project complexity on an initiative that has many moving parts. Being able to navigate organizational complexity and ship projects with stakeholders across multiple teams or even organizations similarly requires skill and experience.Leadership ability. Engineers can demonstrate leadership in different ways. You may demonstrate technical leadership as someone who builds tools, abstractions, and workflows that level up the productivity of the team. You might show product leadership as someone who consistently puts forth product ideas, prototypes them, and ships them. Or you might show team leadership as a tech lead who rallies the team together, creates space for conversation and discussion, and makes the team gel.Impact. What's the bottom-line impact of your work on the business? On user growth, revenue growth, traffic, or whatever top-level metric your business focuses on? The more that you can quantify your impact, the better. Quantifying takes effort, but it's also a good exercise to prove to yourself and your team that you're working on the right things. In the absence of quantitative impact, qualitative statements from other engineering leaders or peers about your impact on them can also be powerful.The higher up you are on the ladder, the more complexity you're expected to handle, the more you're expected to lead, and the greater the impact you're expected to deliver.While these areas are important to pay attention to, they’re not always prescriptive in terms of what path to follow to build a great career. To figure out what to do, use this 3-part framework for combining your passion, your strengths, and market demand to build a remarkable career. And if you’re wondering how you might grow your ability to handle complexity, to lead, and to create impact while staying an individual contributor, here’s a mental model for how to keep growing your impact without becoming a manager.

I think the best way to receive feedback is to ask for it — not something a lot of people do.When I was a recruiter, during my first few client meetings I was accompanied by a more senior person on the team. They did this to make sure I didn’t f*ck things up, as a new-comer inevitably does.This is what happened the first few times. After a client meeting would finish, me and the more senior recruiter would be walking outside together back towards the train station.The first words from their mouths would be, ‘How do you think that meeting went?’Clueless to my own behavior, and also lacking any historical precedent of what a successful meeting looked like, I was unable to look at myself or the meeting very objectively.‘Oh, yeh. I think the meeting went well. It seemed like they really liked us.’My “feedback” about the meeting and my own performance in the meeting was shallow at best.The next question would be something like this…‘What do you think you did well? What do you think you could improve?’That’s when I had to pause and think for a minute.‘Hmm, well, I think I did a good job presenting the company….But perhaps me explanation of the contract wasn’t too clear….’Now some self-reflection was starting to come out.In fact, there’s a shit ton that can be improved.There is ALWAYS room for improvement.At that point, the senior recruiter would give me a couple of tidbits of advice—although there were definitely several areas of improvement, they stuck to just a couple as to not overwhelm me with feedback — that perhaps didn’t seem so obvious to me.‘You might not have noticed, but you were swiveling around in your chair a little bit too much. It’s a bit unprofessional. This is perhaps because you were nervous, and you probably didn’t notice.’‘Huh, no, I didn’t notice at all.’‘My suggestion is to try and always mirror the person in front of you, that way you can connect with their body language and also systematically reduce any nervous ticks.’The feedback went on. And I took it, and I improved.Eventually, I stopped receiving feedback.Instead, I started giving feedback.I graduated from amateur to leader — or at least I had been to enough meetings to know my shit.I was also doing more high level shit — negotiating bigger size deals, more complicated terms, and using more creative methods to find new clients.Now, I still went to lots and lots of meetings. I knew that I had blind spots and I consciously tried to improve. A lot of this comes down to preparing.But I was unhappy that the stream of feedback that I once had received almost daily suddenly stopped.So, I started asking for feedback.I’d aim to take more senior colleagues or peers with me, and at the end of the meeting on the same walks back to the taxi, I’d say, ‘What feedback do you have for me? Is there something I could have done better? Something we could have done better?”When the meeting goes well, when we really nail it…there’s STILL room for improvement. Sometimes it’s not huge, but big change happens incrementally.Cherish it and take the feedback and use it to improve.In a company with a strong feedback culture, like perhaps in many tech companies, it’s expected, and it comes out a lot easier.But still, people are often scared to give feedback. That is, if it’s unsolicited. Giving people unsolicited feedback can be stressful. Many of us are naturally non-confrontational. More often than not, people don’t want to hear our opinions, and maybe they’ll just think “oh, hopefully their boss says something about it…”You can create an environment where everyone is comfortable giving each other feedback. That’s one way.But the other way is to create an environment where people are comfortable ASKING for feedback.It starts with you, and it starts today.In your next meeting, whether it’s a 1–1 meeting or a meeting with a client or an internal team meeting, or a presentation you have to give — make a note to ask for feedback.Whether it’s a feedback form or preferably direct feedback, face to face, doesn’t matter much as long as you actually get the feedback.When you get the feedback, don’t interrupt the other person. Just listen.Let there be silence. Let it sink in. And then, instead of saying anything, ask a question.‘Can you be more specific?’Ask questions, clarify if necessary. But never be defensive. Never tell them you don’t agree with it or try to convince them their feedback is wrong. Your emotions are bound to come out…Just let it sit there for a bit.In fact, you don’t have to address the feedback in that conversation necessarily. You can say, “Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate. I’m going to think about that and see what steps I can take to improve. Thank you.”When you 1) ask for feedback and 2) are appreciative and thankful for feedback rather than defensive…you create a virtuous cycle of self improvement. People will be more comfortable giving you feedback and you will be a better person because of it.That’s called a win-win.

Tesla is a snowflake.Slightly naïve to consider any one thing as the reason for success. The magic comes from the right combination that makes the company/ product unique and hard to copy.The key elements:Branding- Tesla projects a lifestyle/ aspirational brand that resonates well across a wide cross-section.Manufacturing - simplified, optimized, automated. This drives down unit costs while allowing to scale, as can be seen with the proliferation of Gigafactories, each built out faster, bigger and better than the last.Lack of legacy costs- dealerships, unions, advertising. These $$$ can be deployed elsewhere. In addition, their manufacturing is not hamstrung by capital/equipment acquired to build cars from 50 years ago. Their management structure does not come from having to manufacture in the last millennium.Battery / Motor Tech. Probably best in class for commercialized product. Also, development of batteries supports other businesses like the stationary power business which supports the PV business. One strategic option is a pivot away from cars to batteries, supporting a variety of applications ( cars, backup power, etc).Software - driver assist is constantly learning with industry leading number of miles with real drivers/ real conditions. This feeds the neural network optimization of the self driving software. Engineers are also constantly developing better ways to extract more range/ power from the same hardware. If Tesla can win the race to level 5 autonomous, it is possible to license.Over the Air (OTA) updates- my car gets more capable over time with version updates similar to a smartphone.Supercharger network. Range anxiety is real. Having a proprietary network offers strategic options- build a walled garden ( today) or create new business/ income by selling the service to non-Tesla (future)?Internet sales. I hate dealerships. When you buy from a a legacy brand, you are defacto supporting all that overhead. Even if you bought the car online, all that cost has been baked in. With the dealership model of distribution, the consumer is paradoxically, the product! The dealers are actually the customer. OEM’s need to keep them fat and happy for mutual benefit. The purchase could even be seen as a loss-leader for more lucrative add-ons that come with it. Given the simplicity of EV design, there’s less need for maintenance, reduces the need for dealer network of workshops. You can buy a Tesla at the bar, on a smartphone in 10 minutes. It comes with competitive financing and delivery takes a few weeks. (Not quite the negative working capital model of 2000’s Dell but compare that with lots full of speculative models and useless options.) Buying a Tesla is more similar to ordering a new iPhone than it is, buying a car. I know people that waited 8 months for an Audi. A business model built around e-commerce is different from one built around dealerships that happen to offer internet sales.Speed. Clear vision and pursuit of the “move fast and break things” aspiration allows them to innovate, adapt and outgrow the competition. If you had a 100 Billion dollars, would you invest on Tesla or would you invest on every other automaker? Would you bet against Tesla taking more time to resolve an issue that came up on Friday morning? Tesla is in my opinion, the fittest, fastest competitor in the space they compete in.Rabid fan base. The free publicity translates into interest and incredible valuations. This gives Tesla incredible capacity to raise capital to pursue their aspirations.When Tesla Killers are discussed. They talk about one of these aspects. In truth, each point warrants its own dissertation. Having to tackle all these advantages is why all legacy brands are struggling and will continue to struggle.Tesla runs a different race, largely independent of the competition, which means they don’t waste energy thinking about what everyone else is doing. Rather, they can focus on running to their strengths, and building the best product. They develop and commercialize technology faster than their peers, are more organizationally nimble and have more strategic options available to them - support the electrification trend by focusing on supplying class leasing battery technology or support the autonomous mobility trend by supplying class leading self driving technology. This is the hallmark of good strategy- strong pillars that are individually difficult to copy, but form a synergistic package that is compelling and unique.Tesla is a snowflake…a beautiful form of water and ready to transform into a million possibilities to react to the dynamic world we live in.Edit 1- thanks to the feedback, I’ve added a little modifier after the catchy title to better reflect the intent of the article. I will continue to incorporate relevant comments into the article so please keep the suggestions coming. 100 upvotes in a day, 580 over the weekend? Thank you all for the support!Edit 2- thanks again for the amazing support and upvotes. Point 8- internet sales. Realized that OEM’s sell dealerships customers rather than cars. Evolving the idea of a snowflake to reflect infinite possibilities.I am interested in writing a similar article on the post Covid world. Please link or dm a question I can react to.