Career Growth at Terminal Level: Why Managers Don’t Tell You the Truth about your performance?
Quick Overview
This Q&A and case-study style guide examines career growth at terminal level, manager feedback dynamics, root causes such as ROI prioritization and emotional safety, and strategies for clarifying performance expectations, communication, and promotion readiness.
Overview
Over the past year, my work experience has reshaped how I think about career growth.
This post is mainly for engineers at or below terminal level. If you feel stuck at your current level, I hope this offers some useful perspective.
I’ll use a Q&A + case-study style, and may keep adding items over time.
Core Question
Q: Why doesn’t anyone tell me directly what I’m bad at?
At a high level, the answer is simple:
Everything is ROI.
Growth is a prerequisite for promotion and raises. Everyone wants to grow.
But once you reach terminal level, growth suddenly becomes much harder—and manager feedback becomes vague, indirect, or constantly shifting.
Common examples:
- “Your communication isn’t strong enough”
- “Your thinking isn’t deep enough”
- “Your mindset isn’t quite there yet”
- You fix A → manager says B is missing
- You fix B → manager says C is missing
- Repeat forever
It often feels like you’re hearing technically correct but completely useless feedback—things that don’t translate into concrete actions or feel impossible to measure.
So what’s really happening?
Root Causes
Reason #1: Your ROI (the real reason)
Managers have limited time and political capital. When something important needs to be handled, they will choose the lowest-risk, most ready person.
When deciding who to invest in, managers pick the highest-ROI candidates:
- Already close to next level
- Low risk
- High probability of success
If you feel stuck in vague feedback territory, chances are you’re not in the top 1–2 ROI candidates in your manager’s mind.
That’s the uncomfortable truth.
Reason #2: Telling you the truth may not feel “safe”
Many people say they want direct feedback—but aren’t actually ready for it.
I’ve had engineers explicitly ask for blunt feedback. When I gave it, they panicked.
From a manager’s perspective:
- Telling the truth risks emotional fallout
- You might shut down, spiral, or react badly
- That creates real risk for the manager
Managers will often decide:
“It’s safer to let this person stagnate or leave than to tell them something they can’t handle.”
Especially at terminal level or below, the impact of you leaving is usually limited—while the risk of telling you a harsh truth is immediate.
Also, if you weren’t ready to hear it, you likely wouldn’t thank them later—you’d resent them for hurting your self-image.
Reason #3: The truth isn’t always obvious
If you don’t clearly understand your own weaknesses, why assume your manager magically does?
Managers may sense that “something is off” but:
- Can’t articulate it clearly
- Don’t know what feedback would actually help
- Don’t see enough ROI to spend extra time figuring it out
So they default to generic statements.
How to Break the Deadlock
You probably can’t quickly become the highest-ROI candidate.
So the only levers you can realistically pull are Reason #2 and Reason #3.
Here’s the key assumption:
If there’s no personal conflict, and it feels safe, most managers actually want to help you.
Helping others feels good. Having stronger reports makes their life easier.
Your job is to lower the cost and risk for your manager.
Practical Actions (From Experience)
1. Don’t rely on words
Saying “I can take any feedback” is meaningless.
Managers don’t trust words here.
2. Take responsibility—immediately
Defensiveness shuts doors.
Ownership signals maturity.
3. Analyze yourself in 1:1s
Go into meetings with:
- “Here’s what I think I’m weak at”
- “Here’s where I might be underperforming”
When you start the analysis, managers often just add corrections—and those corrections are usually the real truth.
One Hard Truth
All of the above are just tactics.
If you don’t genuinely want to grow—
If you’re just trying to play games, extract information, or create a fake image of ambition—none of this will work.
Managers can sense that immediately!
What Comes Next
This only gets your manager to start talking honestly.
The next challenge is harder:
How do you turn “vague but correct feedback” into concrete, executable actions?
Comments (0)