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Staff promotion packets
A 4-minute essay on writing your promotion case long before you're up for one
Why it’s worth your time
It's easy to leave a promotion case to the last minute and write it from memory, when it's too late to fill the gaps it reveals. Will Larson suggests starting the written case long before you expect to be put forward and using it as a plan you review with your manager and peers. Though written for engineers on the way to Staff, the habit can suit anyone whose next step gets argued on paper.
Writing a promotion case before you need one
The essay · 4 min · Free
Opens their site. We don’t copy it here; we’d rather they get the read.
- Read the essay.
Look for his six-part template for the packet, and for the loop that follows it, including the step where you bring the empty packet to your manager before you've written much.
- Draft your packet and share it.
Answer his questions in a sentence or two each for the level above yours, in your own company's terms. Bring the draft to your next 1:1 and ask your manager what's missing and what they'd emphasize.
Good moments for this: at the start of a review cycleafter a change of manageronce or twice a year
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
Where promotions go to a committee, your manager is often the person making your case to people who barely know your work. A draft you built together gives them the words and the evidence.
What might make this harder
Bring the packet to your first career conversation with the new manager, so your progress so far is on the table from the start.
Questions people ask
What is a promotion packet?
A written case for promoting someone, which at larger companies often goes to a promotion committee. Larson's version covers your main projects and their impact, how you've improved the organization, who you've mentored, your glue work, who values your work, and your gaps.
When should I start writing my promotion case?
Larson's answer is long before you expect to be promoted, treating it as a plan rather than a final document. Promotions at senior levels, he notes, are built over quarters, halves and years.
How do I tell my manager I want to be promoted?
Bring something concrete. A draft case for the next level, with a question about what's missing, tends to read as a plan, and gives your manager something to respond to.
What it says, and how it holds up
Will Larson's short essay flips the usual order of a promotion case. He suggests starting the packet long before you're likely to be put forward, much as you might keep a brag document. Written early, a promotion packet works less like an application and more like a map of what's still missing. Only near the end do you translate it into your company's official format.
Larson, who wrote the book Staff Engineer, published this in 2020 as a draft guide for staffeng.com, so it's aimed at engineers reaching for Staff and beyond at companies with a formal promotion process. The process around his template matters as much as the template: decide why you want the level at all, expect it to take quarters or years, review the empty packet with your manager, edit with trusted peers, and keep revisiting it. He quotes Michelle Bu on not chasing a role you won't enjoy, and Ritu Vincent on telling your manager what you actually want.
The approach's limits come from its setting. It presumes a company with a defined bar, a process that reads evidence, and a manager willing to coach you toward it. Larson is candid that it may not get you promoted quickly, or at your current company. He also argues that peers often spot your contributions better than you do, which is a good reason to show them the draft even when it feels exposing.
A promotion packet is the long way round if what you're really after is more pay rather than a bigger role. Pay can sometimes move within a level, and that conversation tends to run on market data and timing more than on a case for new scope.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.