Your manager is not thinking about your career growth right now. Neither is your skip-level.
The only person whose job it is to grow your career is you.
If this idea makes you uncomfortable, this article is for you.
I had over 20 managers across my 18 years at Amazon. They were mostly good managers, and some of them were great. But not one of them ever came to me unprompted and said, “Let’s talk about your career growth.”
That’s because my career was never their job. They had their own bosses to manage, their own priorities, and a team full of other people who also needed their attention.
Every big opportunity, every promotion I ever got, including the one to Principal Engineer, happened because I drove it. I started the conversations, and the good managers supported me.
Most people assume someone will tap them on the shoulder when it’s time. In my experience, that assumption is the single biggest reason high performers get stuck.
Here are three truths about who owns your career, and what to do if you realize that you’re trapped on the wrong side of them.
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Think about your manager’s job for a second. They have a team of people to manage, a roadmap to deliver, stakeholders to keep happy, and their own boss holding them accountable for results. Now think about where “proactively plan the career growth of each individual on my team” falls on their to-do list.
It’s not at the top of the list. For most managers, it’s not even on the list.
For most managers, career development conversations happen only when a direct report brings it up, or during the performance review cycle when the system forces it. The rest of the time, they’re putting out fires and trying to hit their own goals.
This is not a criticism of managers. The reality is that the job is too big and too reactive for most managers to also be proactive career coaches for all their team members.
The reframe is simple: Your manager is your most powerful career resource, but only if you activate them.
Most people don’t consider that their manager has no idea whether they want to grow or are happy right where they are.
Some people are happy right where they are. They like their job, they like their level, and they’re not looking for more scope or responsibility. That’s completely fine. Not everyone needs to be chasing more scope.
But if you’re not one of those people, if you want more, your manager needs to hear that from you. Because if you don’t say something, their default assumption will be that you’re content. And if that’s what they think, why would they push you toward a promotion you never asked for? Why would they give you the uncomfortable stretch assignment when they think you’re perfectly happy with your current work?
They wouldn’t. And you’d never know the opportunity existed.
What to do: If you’ve never told your manager you want to grow your career, this is the week you do it. It doesn’t need to be a big formal conversation. In your next 1:1, try something like “I just wanted to let you know that getting to the next level is a goal of mine. I’d like to talk about what needs to be true for that to happen on this team.”
That’s it. Just one sentence to open the door. You’re not demanding a promotion or putting your manager on the spot. You’re simply letting them know where you stand so they can start factoring it into how they think about your work, your projects, and your development.
Most managers will appreciate the directness. It makes their job easier because now they know what you want, and they can help you get there. The conversation will feel less awkward than you think. And once you’ve had it, everything that follows gets easier.
There’s a version of your career where things just happen to you. You get assigned good projects without asking for them.
There’s another version where you’re doing the steering. You know where you want to be in five years, and you’re actively seeking out the work that will get you there eventually.
Most people are living the first version. They’re passengers in their own careers. They think career growth is something that happens to good workers over time, like a reward for showing up and doing your job well.
It can work that way. It just takes much longer.
I was a passenger for the first 10 years of my Amazon career. I did good work and assumed the system would take care of the rest. When I finally started taking responsibility for managing my career, the pace changed immediately. Not because I suddenly got better at my job, but because I started being intentional about which parts of my job were visible, who knew about them, and whether they mapped to what the next level required.
You can do everything right and still lose. You can have the career conversation with your manager and tell them what you want, but still, nothing changes. Maybe there aren’t any projects on the horizon, and so the promotion stays out of reach. That happens, and it’s frustrating.
But even in that situation, you have more control than you think. You can look for opportunities on other teams within your company. You can have a direct conversation with your manager about what’s blocking your growth and whether this team is the right place for your goals. You can start interviewing externally to understand your market value and what other companies would offer you.
The worst version of this is the person who wants more, tells their manager, gets told “Not yet” or “There’s nothing available right now,” and then just accepts it and waits another year. And then another, and then another.
If you have a goal and you’re not making progress toward it, that’s your signal to change something. Change the conversation with your manager. If that doesn’t work, look at other teams or other companies. Staying put and hoping things will be different next cycle is not a plan.
What to do: Here’s a simple exercise. Write down two sentences: “My career goal is _____. In the next twelve months, I’m going to make progress toward it by _____.”
If you can fill in both blanks with something specific, you’re steering. For example: “My career goal is to reach Staff Engineer. In the next twelve months, I’m going to make progress toward it by leading the platform migration project and having quarterly career check-ins with my manager to make sure I’m tracking.”
If you can’t fill in the blanks, or if the second sentence sounds like “keep doing what I’m doing while I wait for scope to be handed to me,” you’re a passenger. That’s Ok. Most people are. But now you know, you can fix it.
Taking ownership of your career is easy to talk about but harder to do, especially when you’ve never had someone walk you through it. That’s what Top Tier is for. I and my team of principal engineer coaches meet regularly with clients in a small group setting to help them make meaningful progress on their careers. If you need some help in this area, see if Top Tier is right for you.
Your company has figured out the perfect arrangement. You’re good at your job, and you don’t cause problems. Your manager knows they can count on you. From the company’s perspective, this is the ideal state. Why would they change anything?
But from your perspective, this is a trap. Comfort may feel like stability, but it’s stagnation in disguise if you have ambitions for your career.
I fell into this trap at Amazon when I was a senior engineer. I was performing well at my level, getting strong reviews, and feeling good about my work. But I wasn’t growing. I was just repeating the same things I already knew how to do.
Growth didn’t happen until I deliberately stepped out of the comfortable work and took on something that was bigger than my capabilities. That only happened after I rocked the boat a bit. That’s when the trajectory changed.
Disturbing a comfortable situation is one of the hardest things to do at work because everyone around you, including your manager, is benefiting from the status quo. When you say, “I want to take on something bigger,” you’re introducing risk into a system that was running smoothly. Your manager now has to figure out who covers your current work. They have to trust you with something you haven’t proven you can do yet. They might even have to go to bat for you with their own boss to get you that opportunity.
Most managers won’t initiate that disruption on your behalf. It’s easier to leave things as they are. So the push has to come from you. It’s going to feel uncomfortable because you’re essentially telling the people around you that the current situation, the one everyone is happy with, isn’t enough for you.
I remember when I finally pushed for bigger scope at Amazon. My manager’s initial reaction wasn’t excitement. It was something closer to “But you’re doing so well where you are.” You have push past the inertia of that comfortable arrangement.
Your company will never tell you that you’ve gotten too comfortable because they benefit from your comfort. You have to be the one who notices it and breaks out of it.
That’s the final piece of owning your career. You have to be willing to leave the thing that’s working in order to reach the thing that’s next.
What to do: Think about where the boundary of your current capabilities is. That’s where you should be running toward, not away from. What sort of work makes you nervous? The project you’re not sure you can pull off? That’s your growth zone. Everything inside the boundary is repetition of things you already know how to do.
This matters more right now than it ever has. AI is compressing the value of routine expertise. The things you’re comfortable doing today are the things that are most likely to be automated or commoditized in the next few years. If your entire value is built on repeating what you already know how to do, that value is shrinking. It’s imperative that you push into new territory, building skills and judgment that can’t be easily replaced.
Find one thing in the next month that puts you at the edge of what you’re capable of. Tell your manager you want to take on something that scares you a little. If nothing at your current company offers that, it might be time to look elsewhere. Comfort is not safety in a world that’s changing this fast.
Here’s my challenge to you this week if you’ve been a passenger in your career: do one thing from this article.
Tell your manager what you want, make sure that you have a clear sense of what progress you’ll make in the next twelve months, or take on the project that scares you a bit. Any one of those will put you ahead of where you were yesterday.
Today’s a good day to stop being a passenger in your career.
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