Stuck at Senior Manager for 12 years!
Live event with Kristi Coulter, author of "Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career"
What could cause someone to be "Stuck at Senior Manager" for 12 years?!?!
This happened to Kristi Coulter.
Her new book, Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career, tells her story.
It's a brutally honest memoir of her Amazon journey.
On Feb 19 (Monday) at 6 PM US PST Kristi will join me live to discuss why she was stuck and the lessons learned so you can keep your career moving.
Kristi had big jobs and accomplished amazing things, including shipping new products, launching a new book imprint for Amazon, and more.
Yet reorganizations, VPs with unreasonable standards, sexism, and other factors we will discuss mean that she was never fully recognized or promoted.
If you feel stuck in your career, this talk is a must:
Hear how and why Kristi ultimately moved on rather than keep chasing a promotion that was not coming.
Hear my contrasting story (Kristi and I joined Amazon at about the same time and at the same level, Senior Manager - L7, but had very different experiences), of how I was promoted, and our discussion of what might or might not have been possible in Kristi's case to change her outcome.
To attend our talk live and/or to get the video recording, become a member of our paid Level Up Career Community.
This is one of the many benefits exclusive to members and it’s worth signing up just for this single talk if you are feeling stuck in your career.
Learn about member benefits and join here.
Audience Q&A with Kristi
Someone asked: “What is wrong with being a senior manager for 12 years or 32 years? Isn't that two levels above a terminal level, which people are supposed to reach eventually and stay there? By default, every move to the next level is an exception and not a guarantee, as each next level is an order of magnitude smaller. It will be 1 CEO, dozen of execs, etc”
Kristi’s response: “My book goes into this more (and I'll save some for my conversation with Ethan!). But one factor was growing up in a VERY achievement-oriented family, where I internalized the need for constant upward momentum. (Not that my parents ever shamed me for not getting promoted at Amazon! It was all me shaming myself by that point). The bigger factor is that I was told at least 6 or 7 times during my 12 years at Amazon that I was "one year away" from promotion. Every time, the goalposts would move and I'd get a new explanation as to why. And at the same time, my attempts to understand what I needed to do to close the gap were often treated dismissively. If someone had just said "Look, level 7 is a respectable place to stay for your entire career and that's likely what will happen in your case," that would have been one thing. But to have promotions dangled over and over and then vanish began to feel chaotic at best, and abusive at worst.”
An ex-Amazonian commented: “LOVE Kristi Coulter's book. Reading it this weekend, I couldn't help compare her experience with mine at amazondays.substack.com. Sure, some challenges were specific to gender, personality, time (2000s vs 2010s) and department (merchandising vs ads). However, Amazon Ads demonstrated plenty of the issues she describes in her memoir. Looking forward to your conversation on feb 19!”
Kristi’s response: “Thank you! One of the more surprising and gratifying outcomes of this book is that I've heard from a LOT more Amazon men than I expected about how much they identified with my experiences, minus the gender aspect. (Though it might be more accurate to say minus the FEMALE gender aspect, because I think some aspects of Amazon culture force men into unhealthy and unnatural boxes too, just different ones.) It has been both comforting to realize what we all have in common, and depressing to realize the men are in some ways struggling emotionally too.”
(Book & Talk Preview): Some managers really screw over their employees and it's just inexcusable!
Kristi is up for promotion when her (apparently clueless) new boss reorganizes her under someone of the same level who is further from promotion.
He does not even realize the impact this will have on her, blocking her promotion.
When he is informed, he doubts her.
When he confirms it, he defends his choice anyway.
He literally talks up her promotion path, then trashes it without apology or recourse.
She did the right thing and quit to go find someplace that appreciated her talents.
I can defend managers who:
Have high standards for promotion.
Legitimately do not have opportunities / need for someone at the next level.
Even those who are insanely busy and don't give the best proactive support, because managers are overworked too and we are all human.
Managers and leaders: understand that you are holding the lives, hopes, and dreams of your employees in your hands!
Yes, employees own their careers. They own doing great work and if they want to be promoted, leading the charge to develop skills and prove themselves capable of the next role.
But you are the gatekeeper. And if you slam the gate in someone's face, you are not doing your job.
If the message to Kristi had been about a tangible gap in her performance, *fine*! But this was just a careless reorg first without awareness and later without concern for the impact on a human.
In my second year at Amazon, I made half of this mistake. I was ignorant of the promotion process and as a result, I failed to act quickly enough on the promotion needs of a good engineer. He quit as a result. I was unaware and I've regretted that mistake for 17 years. The difference is, he did not know the process either, and so he could not tell me I was about to let him down.
Kristi did know. She told her boss and he simply didn't care.
Since the time of my mistake, I've been all over the promotion process for my reports and now for my coaching clients.
I'm excited about our talk because I specialize in helping people get from Senior Manager to Director.
Over 450 senior managers and leaders have taken my class Stuck at Senior Manager - How to Break Through to Executive and rated it 4.7/5.
Talking to Kristi is part of my ongoing research to make sure I help others get through this tough promotion and go on to become successful executives.
Join our next live online class, starting March 9.
Audience Insights
Additional ideas worth considering from my LinkedIn audience:
Kristi’s book is a must read for women in tech. Juxtaposing it with Ethan’s career perspective and coaching will be incredibly valuable.
Manager churn is another huge issue when the process is heavily manager driven (which it is at Amazon, but also many other places). Amazon also has clear data that shows that getting a new manager lowers your performance rating for the exact same reason. The new manager does not know you / has no reason to fight for you (or no data with which to do so), and thus your rating drops.
If you do not support your people, the people who will remain with you will be those who are OK with things as they are. You'll lose those with more fire and higher goals.
"People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care." Incompetence in this case is an attitude that can be changed. Not everyone makes that change, to become caring and invested, but they can if they choose to.
A deep reminder that leadership starts and ends with genuinely caring for those under our leadership. It’s a responsibility and a privilege.
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Level Up is a newsletter from retired Amazon Vice President Ethan Evans that breaks down how he succeeded and how you can get to the next level.
From an ex-Amazonian (and married to an ex-Amazonian), thank you Ethan and Kristi for your transparency in sharing your experiences! Love reading every you publish.