Things You Think Are Helping Your Career But Are Actually Hurting It
The things holding your career back are probably the things you're most proud of.
Early in my Amazon career, I was the person who fixed everything. Something broke? I was on it. Someone needed help? I was there. I worked harder than almost anyone on my team, and I got great feedback from my peers.
But I also stalled my career, and for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why.
It took me years to realize that some of the things I was most proud of were the things that had been holding me back.
The habits I thought were helping my career were, in fact, keeping me stuck. And the worst part was that my manager, even my skip-level, thought I was doing a great job.
Just not the kind of great job that grows your career.
Later, over 10 years of sitting on performance calibration meetings at Amazon, I saw this pattern all the time. A manager would pitch someone for a high performance rating. They’d talk about how hard this person worked and how much the team depended on them. The room would nod, and then the conversation would move on. These …
