How To Get Promoted Working for the State
I had been spoiled. During my whole working career, up to this point, I had always been promoted without ever asking or even inquiring for one. Even when I was working a summer job when I was a kid back in New York I had been asked to be acting manager of a toy department for E.J. Korvette even though there were other, older permanent employees in the department at the time. When the manager left it was me they asked to temporarily replace him. In the Air Force promotions were strictly based on time, grade and reviews. I worked a summer in a bakery factory where they had planned to promote me to the lead position when I returned the following summer. After the Air force I worked 6 months for a lighting and lamp parts distributor. I drove their delivery truck. When the owner had to be out for a few months for surgery he asked me to take over managing the warehouse. All my IT employments in Silicon Valley I had been quickly promoted without ever asking. Even at El Dorado County, where the process of getting promoted was somewhat similar to the State of California, I was Promoted 3 times and each time by my boss either asking me to apply for an open position or just promoting me in place. Now I was working for the State of California. I had 17 years of experience and most of those years I held a more senior position than my current position at CDCR.
To get promoted in the State you had to be on a promotion list. To get on a promotion list you needed to go through a sort of interview process that was only offered every so often depending on how many were still on the previous list. That meant that opportunities to get on one of these lists were limited. To get on one of these lists you needed to take a test which in this case meant attending an interview with a panel that included someone from personnel as well as one or two supervisors or managers from your field, in my case IT. All those who passed were placed in a tier. Everyone was ranked based on how they performed in the interview. You needed to be ranked in one of the top three ranks to qualify for promotion. Once qualified you could apply for that higher position as one became open which may or may not be in the group or even department where you were currently working. Once one of the upper tiers cleared (everyone in the tier got promoted) those in the next tier would then be available for promotion. When you applied for the higher position you would be interviewed again by another panel from the group that wished to consider hiring you. In other words to get promoted you had to first qualify and then go through a hiring process. The most curious part of all this to me was that those interviewing you were restricted from using any knowledge or experience they had in regards to working with or even interacting with you. It was strictly based on your answers to their questions. The ability to articulate your work experience mattered but the quality of your work and your work ethic did not factor in. I thought that was crazy. That to me was like grading a math test on how well the person talked about the problem rather that how well they solved the problem. Good IT people don't necessarily tend to be big talkers. They don't tend to be strong on the verbal side....
The big CDCR IT project I was working on needed more room and so it was moved from the Mayflower building in town out to the old Aerojet campus in Rancho Cordova. Out at Aerojet we had more space and although I would have preferred to stay downtown, it was a pretty pleasant place to work. Still, there was this feeling that something wasn't quite right. The project team seemed to be working pretty well together but the upper managers on both the CDCR and the TRW (contractor) side seemed to be at odds with each other and it showed in how we were being directed to perform our tasks. It was at times confusing, and through this we, the programmers, kind of bonded more than we might have otherwise.
A promotion test came around and I filled out an application. At his point I was just in a Programmer Analyst position. I had been working at least 2 levels above that in my two previous jobs covering an 8 year period. I got a interview date. When I walked into the interview there was a panel of 3 people. I knew one of them. He was a supervisor in the area I where worked. I had worked with him a bit and my opinion of him was he was not only a lousy supervisor, he was also not good technically. In the IT world everyone who knows anything about IT quickly knows who is really good at it and who is just along for the ride. Every good technical person knows who the best programmers are in any organization they work. Additionally, sharp IT people tend to distrust/have little respect for any IT person who is over them that they know is not a top IT person. Maybe that's not true in other fields, or maybe it is, but in my experience it is blatantly true in the IT world. Because IT people tend to be introverted and not so much people people, many do not make great managers or even want to be managers. In fact they often tend to look down on managers unless that manager convinces them they know their stuff, so to speak. Having been a manager a couple of times now I found it not just helpful, but important to expose my IT skills to my subordinates/programmers when I was managing or supervising.
During my promotion exam/interview I was asked a series of questions by the three people on the panel. As the interview was coming to a close suddenly the guy who I knew stood up and declared he did not think I was qualified for the more senior position I was being tested/interviewed for. Now, in my opinion this guy is not qualified himself and certainly not qualified to evaluate me. My reaction was I felt like standing up and punching his lights out. I am a nonviolent person, in fact I don't think I have ever punched anyone other than when I was a kid and even then it was only after someone hit me. After this display I was asked by the personnel rep if I had anything more I wished to say. I was pissed and so I said “No”, stood up, and walked out.
The interview was held at CDCR's headquarters building in downtown Sacramento. I walked out of the building and decided to drive over to The Rubicon brew pub on 20th and K. “That's it” I thought, “I am done with state service. I'll call them in the morning telling them I'm quitting.” As I got near the Rubicon I calmed down a little and decided I should go back to my cubicle and think about things. I at least owed Coleen an explanation. When I got back to Aerojet I went straight to my cubicle and just sat there looking out the window. A fellow IT friend, Elva, came over. She knew I'd had an interview that afternoon. She asked how I was doing. I don't remember what I said exactly. At first I didn't say anything but then it was probably something to the effect that I was pissed and thinking of leaving. Elva talked me down. She said she thought that guy was a jerk but if he was not going to pass me on the interview he was required to say something. Elva convinced me to go home, cool down, and come back in the morning and we'd talk some more. I followed her advice and thanks to Elva I didn't quit. I ended up working 15 years in the State, just not at CDCR. By the way, it was CDC when I worked there they have now added the “R”. I suspect the “R” probably should have been a lower case “r” as I failed to see much rehabilitation going on in those prisons and I suspect it is mostly the acronym that has changed....
The results of the test came out. The results were posted on a bulletin board for everyone to see. I made the list but I was the last person to make it in the bottom tier. That's right I was evaluated as the worst candidate for promotion and now everyone knew it. Maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised that the IT project I was working on was not doing very well....
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