Not seen as "staff engineer material" because of my personality (they said technical competence meets the bar). I don't know if I can change my personality.
Discussion
Some honest advice here would be very helpful. Please give it to me straight without sugar-coating it. I have 13 years of experience and have worked in big tech my entire career. I have been on my cur
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Some honest advice here would be very helpful. Please give it to me straight without sugar-coating it. I have 13 years of experience and have worked in big tech my entire career. I have been on my current team for 4 years. I am a woman. I work on a niche area in lower-level backend/devops that I intellectually enjoy a lot. I had a performance conversation with my manager yesterday. He told me that my technical competence and contributions more than meets the bar for staff but that I don't have the leadership qualities / traits needed for staff and thus the promo would never go through. I asked for concrete examples and these were what was mentioned: *
Not being assertive or "authoritative" enough: in conversations with XFN partners, not acting as the authority that tells everyone what direction we should all go in; "asking instead of telling" * Unconfident language that makes everyone else unconfident in me: lots of "I think"s, posing things as questions in PR reviews instead of assertions, responding to my own PR reviews by being too overly accommodating instead of defending my code and pushing back more * Not sharing my opinions loudly and thus not dictating direction: being soft-spoken and letting others set direction instead of stepping up and taking the dominant leader role I feel so frustrated and powerless by this conversation. I by nature do not have a "dominant" or "authoritative" personality and I have never had that. I value harmony and cooperation and making everyone on the team feel heard no matter how junior or senior they are. I value humility and language that makes people feel safe. I hate to throw the "sexist" accusation around and I always try my best not to do that, but I also can't help but feel that this is sexism. I think women naturally a softer more harmonious communication style than men do, and that our "leadership style" is different than men's but no less valid. But maybe I'm delusional in thinking this and the only "leadership" that is seen as valid in the corporate world is the masculine one? I don't know if I can change my personality to be more masculine/dominant but furthermore, I honestly don't even think it's even a good idea because women who act authoritatively / dominantly / confidently are often punished for it, not rewarded. I don't think the rules are the same. I'm not sure where to go from here. It's becoming obvious to me that there is no path to staff engineer here. Even if I were able to act more dominantly, would it not be weird to suddenly go from acting cooperatively to now trying to act alpha? A lot of the coworkers on my team do this but I have always hated this kind of behavior. Do I just leave? I do feel attached to this team because I love the technical things we work on and I have invested years to building up expertise in the area. But I can't help but feel resentful seeing people on my team who are staff but not better at engineering than I am. I feel that we do the same job but they are getting paid a lot more for it. I don't think I will ever be viewed as staff engineer leadership material on my team. But if I leave, there's no guarantee I would be viewed as that at a different team/company and I would have to restart trying to go for staff. The third option is to just accept being a senior engineer forever and "quiet quit" / coast. How do you suggest I go forward? Thank you in advance. edit: thank you all for the feedback and suggestions on what to do next. I am going to brush up my resume and start interviewing.
About This Question
This is an interview discussion from a intel interview for a eng manager role (junior level) during the manager round reported in 2025.
It covers the following topics: Career, Behavioral .
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