Promotions come from consistently acting in your manager's role for months, not from one-off wins; take ownership, propose solutions, and demonstrate the mindset before the title arrives.
The core insight is simple: if you want a promotion, start acting like the person you aim to become. Your CTO's advice to "try to take my position" means taking ownership of team-level problems before you get the title. The article illustrates this with a junior engineer who drafted an RFC to cut service incidents, estimated the effort, and presented a concrete plan-behaviour that signaled they were already thinking like a manager.
Promotions are not handed out after a single win. Managers pre-select candidates six months before formal reviews and look for a pattern of senior-level judgment in day-to-day work. One impressive project is nice, but it doesn't prove you can operate at that level when the spotlight fades. Six months of consistent, responsible actions convinces leaders you can be counted on.
The practical takeaway is to adopt a responsibility-first mindset: identify problems beyond your immediate tasks, design solutions, and communicate them proactively. Keep doing this for an extended period, and the title will follow naturally. It's not about asking for permission; it's about demonstrating you already have the capability.
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