Career Impact Results
How readers are leveling up (who they are, results they are seeing, what content high performers want more of, and a call to action to help us improve future surveys)
Hello, it’s Ethan & Jason. Welcome to Level Up: Your source for executive insights, high performance habits, and specific career growth actions.
FYI, we have 4 upcoming events:
(May 22) Workshop: The 6 Steps To Land A Great and High Paying Job. Learn how to navigate today's competitive job market. RSVP here.
(May 28) Leverage AI to Ship Big Tech Products. Ethan & David Markley (Tech VP) will cover the process to ship unimagined products. RSVP here.
(May 29) Ethan live executive coaches an SVP of Engineering. Attendance and video recording for newsletter paid subscribers only. RSVP here.
(June 11) Top 3 Product Insights from Stripe, Amazon, & Airbnb. Ethan & Rohan (Product at Airbnb; ex-Stripe) do a product dive deep. RSVP here.
Today, we are sharing results from a Level Up Career Impact Report short survey we launched in Q4 2024 to better understand how our content and products (e.g. newsletter, courses, community) have impacted your career.
We’ve found that our most successful readers, community members, and course alumni share one key trait — they took immediate ACTION.
A large part of why we are sharing these results is to inspire more people to take action. It’s great if you engage with our content (thank you)…but it is meaningless without action.
Let’s dive in and get inspired.
We would love to hear from more our readers in this anonymous survey:
Who took the Career Impact Report survey
Takeaway:
Vast majority (82.6%) are senior leaders (management and ICs).
Takeaways:
No surprise, Product Management (26.1%) is the largest group, followed by Engineering (21.7%), and then Program Management (17.4%).
Sales and General Business (GM) are close to double-digits.
The remaining job families/roles include IT (with Cloud and data), Research, Legal, Telecommunications, Marketing, Design, HR & Recruitment, Finance, and Data.
Takeaway:
We are seeing real tangible results with many readers getting promoted, landing new jobs (external and internal), and getting increased compensation.
If you enjoyed seeing data from the community, please add to it with your own experiences:
More on what readers shared
Q1: Please share a few words of how our content has helped you.
“Helped me to understand how to get a promotion and move up the ladder.”
“It help me learn about new ideas, validations about topics that are not much talked about, and scaling myself as a leader.”
“I purchased the "Manage Up" and "Compensation Negotiation" online short course. They have helped me to develop an effective strategy to build constructive relationship with my new management, and negotiated the highest IC compensation for my role type at the new company I joined in Q1, 2024. I know this is the highest IC compensation because both the fractional-CFO and the Director of Finance of this start-up has implied it. I was able to get this information from them because I have learned to effectively manage up, not just my direct managers, but also managers of other functions.” (link to referenced video on-demand courses).
“Even as a senior IC the content has helped me level up teams I lead and my cross-team project performance.”
“All the content is career progress relevant and things we only talk about with our close friends but you've made it transparent. It isn't about merit only. And that's reality.”
“In general, I feel like I can navigate the workplace and my career a lot better with more knowledge. I can set clearer goals and figure out what I like and don't like career-wise.”
“Given me the permission to take risks that others are not taking - which catapulted my growth over the last 4 years (prior to LevelUp existed). The content is so actionable that it is almost irresponsible to ignore. Now, in most situations in work - I ask myself 'what would Ethan do?'“
“Last week during an interview I referenced continued learning and improvement in the area of executive presence when asked about an area for improvement. I was able to talk to your recent LinkedIn post and email newsletter about executive presence and leadership. And I believe I watched your YouTube video where you gave advice on answering this question - what you are working on, how you are working on it and examples of what you've done. I believe I handled it well and I am thankful I had your advice in my toolbox!”
“I work in a non-tech company so not everything is applicable. I learned a lot from Ethan on how to think / approach work / career / office politics and scale. I'm still 30% on the watch list. He was the first person to explain in one the open coaching sessions about work life balance that there's no silver bullet and everyone is the same boat which helped me a lot to feel better about myself just knowing it's not just me. Overall - I am getting a ton of value, happy I did subscribed!!!”
“I was struggling to find beyond level opportunities as a Sr. EM. Once I started practicing the Magic Loop approach - specifically, where I decided to optimize for the business/org overlooking personal gains - executive leadership recognized me as a trusted leader and the opportunities opened up. Also, the Magic Loop approach has provided me with more job satisfaction.”
Q2: If there are additional topics or courses you'd like to see, let us know.
Executive coaching.
How to build relationships throughout the company.
How to improve mental focus and energy level for mid-career professionals that are aged 40+.
Content focused on growing as a senior IC given org flattening trends. Also, more content on refining one's life mission.
Emotional Quotient is much needed topic which I find lacking in corporate culture WW. Effective Leadership is another area where I find you and your team can contribute
With the emergent predictions that other organizations will follow Amazon's position on reducing middle-management layers, I'd like to see how Ethan would propose managers managing a larger number of direct IC's, how to make time to support them, and how a manager can excel in managing a larger team to gain their own promotion in an even more competitive field, with an even larger workload on the remaining managers.
Examples of readers taking immediate ACTION that drove real results
“Hope all is well with you and your family Jason! Happy to share that due to executing some of the tactics shared in the program (taking action for one), I have been successful in getting myself promoted."
— Promoted to Director
“I give so much credit to the Level Up: Breaking through to the Executive course and getting a front seat to Ethan's coaching and wisdom. Thank you for working to build this community that has given me to confidence to reach even in the current market environment! It is my dream role and I'm so grateful for the opportunity.”
— New job (hired in a Director role)
“I am excited to share that I got promoted to Director and I sincerely thank and appreciate your help on this. I continued to apply my learnings from the community to influence the cross functional teams. Leadership was seeing the adaptability that I exhibited in continuing to add business value in new role and I was starting to get positive feedback from the VP on my flexibility. If I have to just pick one thing across all of Ethan’s teachings that helped me the most, it is being PROACTIVE. I am very grateful for your help and I really appreciate the learnings I have got as part of your community and your course on Stuck at Senior Manager. It really helped me to achieve this big milestone in my career. I thank you and Jason deeply as this promotion was very close to my heart."
— Promoted to Director (Big Tech)
“What was key was that I actively participated in the live course AND followed through with some participants afterwards to talk shop and build relationships. One of those relationships just happened to be able to help when I needed it. Simply adding connections wouldn’t have been successful as they would have had no context about me, and not enough trust to put me in touch with important people in THEIR network.”
— New job (landed FAANG role)
Read what Anand Vasudevan (Engineering Leader at Yahoo; ex-Amazon) had to say on LinkedIn.
Help us improve future surveys
This was our first Level Up Career Impact Report survey and we want to do more — but we need help (we are not survey experts).
Please write in the comments your suggestions on how we can improve the survey (anything goes — questions to ask, analysis, data presentation, how to distribute the survey for maximum reach, etc).
And if you are a survey expert (or run a survey company) and would like to partner with us, write it in the comments or reach out to Ethan and Jason.
FYI, below are resources relevant to the topics readers mentioned above:
EQ — read Improve your soft skills.
Risk taking — read Take BIG Bold Career Risks.
Promotion — read Make the case for your promotion.
Executive presence — read Executive Presence: How to get "it", "Executive Presence" Ingredients: Gravitas, Communication, & Appearance, and Up Your Game to Influence Senior Leaders.
Executive coaching — read Maximize Executive Coaching with Sue Bethanis (Founder & CEO of Mariposa Leadership.
Build relationships — read Network to maximize your life, Be a High-Value Connector & Networker and How to Influence Without Authority.
Improve mental energy and focus — read Eliminate Distractions, Do your hardest task first thing in the morning, and Be a High-Impact Employee.
Get scope in a flat or downsizing environment — watch the below Lightning Lesson hosted by Maven.
Ethan Evans AI Executive Coaching Action Prompt: Whether it’s a stakeholder update, strategy doc, or 1-pager for leadership, sharpen your clarity by asking EthanGPT — “What risks would a senior stakeholder read between the lines?”
Photos from our May 8, 2025 Arlington/DC Level Up Meetup
Thank you to Omar Halabieh (Amazon Tech Director) & Rajdeep Saha (AWS Principal Solutions Architect) for co-hosting. 3 takeaways from Raj:
Going up via career ladder is fine, but get on a career escalator instead. Find companies, domains, or projects that are growing rapidly, and grow with them.
Career growth isn't an extra task; it's how you approach every task. Instead of "waiting" to work on your career, look for opportunities that are a win for the company and a win for you!
You don't need to be the smartest in the room, just the hardest working one. A disciplined fool can beat a distracted genius. In the movie Rocky, he wins because he refuses to quit. Be the Rocky of your career - consistently work on networking, upskilling, and your career will go up.
Connect With Ethan & Jason
Follow Ethan on LinkedIn.
Get Ethan’s career advice on YouTube.
Connect with Jason (Ethan’s COO) on LinkedIn.
Learn more about Ethan’s live online courses and on-demand courses.
Contact us for corporate training, keynote speaking, guest writing, and more.
Stuck at Senior Manager - How to Break Through to Executive course: 18+ hours of content, 1,000+ alumni, rated 4.7/5, next cohorts are July and Oct. Enroll here.