Latest / The Promotion Memo with Fexingo: Getting Visibility, Sponsors, and Executive Presence / How One Employee Got Promoted by Building a Career FAQ
Transcript
- Lucas: Okay, here's a question I bet every single person listening has dealt with at some point: you're a few months into a new role, you realize there are these unwritten rules about how to get promoted at your company, and nobody — not your manager, not HR, not the senior people in your hallway — can give you a straight answer. Luna: Right. You ask 'what does it actually take to get from level four to level five?' and you get something like 'just keep doing what you're doing' or 'make an impact.' Which means absolutely nothing. Lucas: Exactly. So today's episode is about an employee who got promoted by… writing down those unwritten rules. Specifically, she built a career FAQ for her team. A living document that answered the six most common questions about career progression, promotion criteria, and informal expectations. Luna: Okay, I love this already. Tell me the context — what company, what role? Lucas: Mid-level product manager at a midsize SaaS company, about six hundred employees. She'd been there for about eighteen months. Good performer, but not on any big project that would naturally get her promoted. She noticed that every time a new junior PM joined, they'd ask her the same questions — 'how do I get a senior title?', 'what's the difference between a PM and a senior PM here?', 'what do I need to do to get a promotion this year?', 'who decides?', 'is tenure a factor?', 'do I need to manage people?'. Luna: And she was answering those same questions over and over. Classic knowledge drain. Lucas: Yeah. So she decided to stop being a human FAQ and build an actual FAQ. She opened a Google Doc — the simplest possible tool — and started typing out the answers. Then she went to three senior PMs and her skip-level manager and asked them to review it. She didn't ask permission to create the doc. She just made it, got buy-in from people who already respected her, and shared it. Luna: That's key. She didn't wait for someone to tell her to do this. She just did it. Lucas: Exactly. And the impact was measurable. Within three months, the number of repeat questions about career progression on her team dropped by about forty percent. The doc became the default reference for quarterly review prep. New hires started reading it on day one instead of pinging her. And here's the promotion part: a VP of product heard about it, asked for a copy, and used it as a template for the entire product org. That VP became her sponsor. Luna: So she got promoted to senior PM not because she shipped a huge feature, but because she solved an organizational knowledge problem that leadership cared about. Lucas: Yes. And her manager actually said in the promotion packet — verbatim — 'she removed a structural friction that saved the team dozens of hours and improved onboarding consistency.' That's a direct quote. The promotion was approved in one cycle. Luna: Let's talk about what she put in the FAQ. Because I think the magic is in the question selection. What are the six questions? Lucas: So the six she started with — and remember, this was specific to her company and level — were: one, what are the documented criteria for each PM level? Two, what are the undocumented criteria — the things reviewers look for that aren't in the official rubric? Three, who actually makes the promotion decision, and what do they care about? Four, does tenure matter, or is it purely impact-based? Five, do you need to manage people to get to senior? And six, what's the timeline — how long does the process take from nomination to approval? Luna: I love that she included undocumented criteria. That's the part that usually trips people up. Lucas: Totally. For example, at her company, the official rubric said 'demonstrates strategic thinking.' But the undocumented version was 'presents a data-backed recommendation at least once per quarter in a cross-functional meeting.' Which is much more actionable. Luna: So she made the implicit explicit. That's a huge service to the team. And it also made her look like someone who understood how the organization really works. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the career leverage. By documenting the system, she positioned herself as someone who could navigate it. That's a form of executive presence — not because she talked like a CEO, but because she reduced uncertainty for everyone around her. Luna: I want to ask about the risk here. Some managers might see an employee publishing a career FAQ and think 'who put you in charge of defining the promotion criteria?' How do you avoid that? Lucas: Great question. She avoided it by framing it as a draft for feedback, not a final policy. The doc header said 'living draft — please contribute your perspective.' And she got those senior reviewers before she shared it broadly. By the time it reached her manager's manager, it already had buy-in from three respected PMs. So it wasn't her opinion — it was a team-sourced resource. Luna: Smart. She built a coalition before she built the document. Lucas: Right. And I think there's a broader lesson here: if you're frustrated by opaque promotion processes, you have two choices. You can complain about it, or you can build the thing that makes it less opaque. The second option gets you noticed. Luna: And it doesn't have to be a FAQ. It could be a career lattice, a one-pager on sponsorship, an onboarding guide — we've covered a lot of those on this show. But the FAQ is a particularly low-friction starting point. Lucas: Low friction, high visibility. And it scales. Once the doc exists, you can link it in your email signature, in Slack channels, in onboarding checklists. It becomes your artifact. Luna: Which reminds me — I want to mention something about the show itself. We deliberately don't run ads on these episodes. If you find value in hearing concrete career tactics like this one, and you want to support that choice, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, just something that helps us keep doing what we do. Lucas: Yeah, and we appreciate that. Now, back to the FAQ. One thing I want to emphasize is that she didn't just write the doc and stop. She maintained it. Every quarter, she updated it based on new promotion results. If someone got promoted with a different profile, she added that as a case study. The doc stayed relevant. Luna: That maintenance is what turned it from a one-off project into a ongoing asset. It showed leadership that she was committed to the long-term health of the team, not just her own promotion. Lucas: Exactly. And there's a specific update she made that I think sealed the promotion. After the first round of promotions under the FAQ, she added a section called 'What the Data Says' — she analyzed the past two years of PM promotions and identified patterns. For example, she found that 80 percent of promoted PMs had led at least one cross-functional initiative. That kind of analysis is gold for junior employees. Luna: It also shows she can think like an analyst. That's a skill that gets you promoted beyond just product management. Lucas: Right. And here's a pro tip: if you want to build something similar, start by asking your team's new hires what questions they have. Do a quick five-minute poll. The questions people ask in their first week are the most revealing — they haven't learned the unwritten rules yet. Luna: That's a great way to validate demand. If nobody asks questions, maybe you don't need a FAQ. But chances are, people are asking. Lucas: Yeah. And if you're on a remote or hybrid team, this is even more powerful. In-person gossip doesn't travel the same way. A written FAQ becomes the cultural backbone. Luna: Alright, so let's wrap with a concrete takeaway. If someone listening wants to try this, what's the first step they should take this week? Lucas: Step one: open a blank doc. Step two: list the six most common career questions you hear or wish you had answers to. Step three: ask three trusted colleagues to contribute their perspective. Don't try to be an expert — be a curator. Then share it as a draft with a small group and iterate. That's it. You'll be surprised how quickly it becomes an indispensable resource. Luna: And if it helps even one person get promoted, you've already made a difference. On that note, thanks for listening. Lucas: Yeah, we'll see you next time.