Hello, I work for a medium company with no more than 1,000 employees, and no more than 100 in tech.
My manager manages a quarter of these tech employees.
I'm currently a developer of 4 years and am gunning for the prized 'senior dev' position as a promotion from SWE II. I have a checklist of senior dev responsibilities as published by the company itself, and make sure that I already perform the duties of the senior dev. My manager knows this.
However, I don't work on a project under my manager. I work on a project directed by the CTO, in a R&D role. As a result, my work is very opaque to my manager, and even if I send him updates on my work, he does not know how involved this was, or what it means. The words kinda miss, even if I tell him in a lot of detail.
What's the over-under on a promotion, or even career advances in general? It's currently a hard market, but is it time to start looking?