In 15+ years at Amazon, I influenced 30+ promotions to the Director level. I know why some people get promoted while other "top performers" get overlooked.

Here's what you need to know: There are two reasons why you may not be getting promoted:

1. You are being overlooked.

2. You are being considered but not selected.

I traded my time for money for 33 years, from 18 to 51. Recently I turned 55 and now I often feel "short of time" before old age closes in.

Here are 5 lessons on how to make the best use of your time so that you live the most of the life you want, rather than just "working." was in school or working 60 hours a week from age 18 to 51. During those 33 years, I had limited personal time.

Like most people, focused on my career and money.

At Amazon, Jeff Bezos told us to "not compromise for the sake of social cohesion." I saw him tolerate lengthy, exhausting arguments as a result.

When I was a director, my VP constantly argued with Jeff and refused to back down. Their main, recurring argument was about an arcane economic model called the Prime Attribution Model (PAM).

PAM mattered because it determined how the fee paid by Prime members was divided between business units. Prime Gaming (our business) was getting almost nothing, and we disagreed with how the model was designed.

What are you sacrificing in the rat race?

I struggled with work/life balance throughout my career because the world has a clever, 2-part trap for us. Part 1 – Our own goals and ambitions.

I wanted to be successful, get more pay, and be a part of bigger decisions.

If you follow me, I bet you are the same.

You want to “be the best” and have a great career.

Aging in tech, the truth. When my hair started to go white at 40, I dyed it for many years. My sole reason was to avoid looking too old at work.

A reader asked:

"I’m a product manager leader in the tech industry. I’ve spent time at small companies and larger ones like Amazon. One thing I have seen is the age of employees ICs, managers, executives. As a male in his 40s who wants to continue excelling in the corporate world / climbing up the ladder, what are skills to help keep relevant in an industry that may have bias towards older demographics?" This topic has many Truths:

1/ Yes, there is age bias and some people assume older workers "no longer get it" or "can't keep up."

2/ The reader is male, but the focus and appearance pressure on women are higher. A remarkable woman I know was given “helpful advice” by HR (no less) as to what facial fillers and treatments would help her career.

3/ Age bias cuts both ways. Being a "gray hair" can imply seniority and wisdom.

In 2015, I went from leading a global team of 800 to an individual contributor (IC) role.

I want to share why and what I learned (spoiler: how to influence instead of giving orders). Over a 10-year span at Amazon, I had grown from leading a team of 6 as a Senior Manager to leading a team of 800 as a Vice President. I had teams in Seattle, Orange County, Bangalore, and Beijing.

The Amazon “secret” of controllable inputs for your career.

When Jeff Bezos and his team figured out how to make Amazon grow quickly, one of their key ideas was to focus on what they called the “controllable inputs.” Applying this same idea to your career can help you have more success with much less frustration.

What Jeff realized is that many companies and their leaders focus on the final outputs of the business.

Why reorgs happen and why the true reason is always hidden. 4 key takeaways: 1/ Reorgs happen because the leader cannot meet a goal(s).

1a/ If the reorg doesn’t make sense to you, then you are likely not seeing what the leader felt was not working (e.g. making money, getting users).

#OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman have hidden problems. CTO Mira Murati is leaving, after co-founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman left.

I do not know Sam Altman, but I do know executive teams. Executives only leave a wildly popular "unicorn" that supposedly has a $150 Billion valuation as a last possible resort.

One person might leave purely for ideology.

Too damn many Senior Managers - why you are stuck and not moving up explained.

You are smart, hard-working, and deliver a lot.

You began as a skilled individual contributor (IC) and now you have mastered leading teams of 25 to 75+. Why do you keep hearing "Maybe next cycle, after you (fill in the blank)?"

Too much good competition.

Your peers:
-Went to good schools.
-Got advanced degrees (MS, MBA, etc.).
-Work hard (long hours).
-Manage big teams.
-Solve hard problems.

A CEO I worked for seduced my wife in retaliation for my pushback on him at work. He won. I got divorced and left the company. When I say I truly understand how some executive teams can be political snake pits, I trust you will believe me. Learn from my pain - do the following: 1) When you have a good manager, lean in and take advantage of it.

2) Spot the snakes.

3) Do excellent work, even for nasty leaders.

4) Don’t confront the snakes directly

5) Don’t become a snake

Managing up to executives is different. They are busy, removed from the day-to-day details, and have big results to deliver. Here's 6 actions you can do to manage up effectively: 1. "Be bright, be quick, be gone."

Executives have less time. Come to your conversations with them prepared with well-thought-out ideas, express them quickly and clearly, then move on.

Performance improvement plans (PIPs, Pivots) almost always end in you being fired or quitting. There are psychological reasons this is inevitable. Here is why, and how to avoid them as an employee and to be a better manager. First, I know a few managers will argue with me in the comments and claim that they "do everything they can" to help employees improve. I welcome your stories and claims - please post them!

A student of mine is getting promoted despite his manager leaving before his promotion was completed. Losing your manager mid-promotion often sets promotions back, but not his. He credits two actions he applied from my class, Breaking Through to Executive: 1) After taking the class, he stopped waiting for annual review time to discuss his goals with his manager and did it in their next 1:1. He then brought it up about once a month for the last six months.

I was lucky enough to have my team grow from 6 to 800 people in 9 years. I was promoted from Senior Manager to Director to Vice President, and I had imposter syndrome the whole time. Here are 4 ways I fought it, and how you can too: It is no surprise that when my team grew 130x from 6 to 800, I ended up not fully knowing what I was doing. At the same time, it is hard to say no to opportunities when you have experienced downsizing and setbacks.

Being good at your job is not enough to be successful. At any level of your career, you need to manage up, whether you are an intern or a CEO. Managing up has 3 distinct phases, depending on your role: According to our newsletter's latest guest author, Luke Congdon, the 3 three distinct “arcs” of a career are as follows:

1. New employees

2. New managers

3. Executives

In each of these arcs, managing up looks different.

I got to be an Amazon VP because a series of managers fought to promote me and pay me more. This was no accident. I used "The Magic Loop" which I invented with my first manager.

Here is that story and how you can do it yourself today. In my first job out of college, my new manager had no idea how the company’s tech worked. The way I handled this had an impact on my entire career, all the way through what I do now as an Executive Coach.

Her not knowing our tech is how I discovered “The Breakthrough Loop”.

Big tech jobs are not what they were. Amazon made my career and "my life", but things have changed. Here is the good, the bad and the ugly of today’s big tech job options: (1) The Good

- Great Comp.

People may want more, but tech worker pay dwarfs everyone except Wall Street traders.

I learned firsthand as an Amazon VP that hard things are much scarier in our minds than they are in reality. And, the fear of failing is always much greater than the likelihood of actually failing.

I spent years avoiding tasks that: - Seemed hard
- Used skills I thought of as my weaknesses
- Required activities I dislike
- Require speaking to people I don’t know (I'm an introvert in this way)

I was asked to describe my typical day as an Amazon Director and VP. My answer was short: “meetings.” That was accurate, but here I will go into more detail. This is a day in the life of an Amazon VP. I will cover normal days, big decisions, and crisis management.

◾Normal Days

On “normal” days, my answer of “meetings” was pretty accurate.

At Amazon, my team of 800 had more than 75 managers. I saw many thrive and others fail. A Harvard study identified the 4 main risk factors of manager failure, so I am going to share how managers can fix them and avoid failure. I will share what individual contributors can do to help themselves (by helping their managers identify these risk factors).

The 4 main risk factors:

1. Lack of self-awareness
2. Lack of two-way empathy
3. Unproductive relationships with employees
4. Absence of goal alignment