Creative resistance doesn't weaken with experience. It adapts, becoming more sophisticated. Early career self-doubt (“who am I?”) morphs into late-career pressure (“I have more to live up to”). The battle never ends; it just changes.

Climbing the corporate ladder isn't always the ultimate goal. As professionals become more senior, they often move away from the hands-on, creative work they are passionate about. Leaders advise cherishing mid-career roles where you can be "in the weeds" of the actual work.

A simple yet powerful way to assess your career trajectory is to evaluate your direct superior's role. If you have no desire to eventually hold that position, it's a strong signal that you are on an unsuitable path and need to change direction.

Traits like extreme responsiveness, which earn praise early in a career, can lead to burnout and poor prioritization at senior levels. Leaders must recognize when a once-beneficial belief no longer serves their new, scaled responsibilities and becomes a limiting factor.

True long-term career growth isn't about climbing a stable ladder. It's about intentionally leaving secure, successful positions to tackle harder, unfamiliar challenges. This process of bursting your own bubble of security forces constant learning and reinvention, keeping you relevant.

Actively pursuing a promotion often leads to frustration because it depends on factors outside your control. The path to growth and happiness is to focus entirely on maximizing your impact in your current role. Promotions and recognition will eventually follow as lagging indicators.

When his promotion was blocked by external factors, an engineer didn't scale back his efforts. He continued to take on work well above his level (IC4 doing IC5/IC6 work). This proactive approach during a frustrating period led to a top-tier rating and promotion once the freeze lifted.

Teams often self-limit output because they know overperformance will simply raise future targets to unsustainable levels. This "prison of expectations" incentivizes predictable mediocrity over breakthrough results, as employees actively manage goals to avoid future failure.

A Meta engineer was denied a promotion despite a "Greatly Exceeds" rating due to a behavioral gap in cross-functional collaboration. This shows that lagging promotions hinge on consistently demonstrating the behaviors of the next level, not just delivering high impact at the current level.