Great advice for new employees to the workforce from https://andrew.grahamyooll.com/blog/Try-to-Take-My-Position/

My CTO leaned back in our 1-on-1 and said something that sounded almost threatening: “You want to get promoted? Try to take my position.”

I must have looked confused because he quickly added, “I don’t mean literally.” Though I still wonder sometimes…

What he meant was simpler and more powerful: start doing the job before you have the title. Take on more responsibility before you’re officially given it.

This advice has stuck with me through years of career growth, and later when I became a manager myself, I saw exactly why it works.

The Responsibility-First Mindset

This advice flips the typical approach to career growth. Most people wait to be given more responsibility before they start taking it on. They wait for permission, for the title, for explicit direction.

But that’s backward.

If you want to be promoted, you need to demonstrate that you can already handle the role you’re trying to grow into. Not occasionally. Consistently. The title follows the behavior, not the other way around.

So if you want to get promoted: try to take your manager’s position. Start thinking about the problems they think about. Make the proposals they would make. Expand your vision to the team’s problems, not just your individual tasks.

Do it for six months, not six days.

That’s how you get promoted.