What is your unethical CS career’s advice?

I was approached at a meetup recently right after my talk on system design. Coffee in hand, a junior dev half-whispered, “Come on, Vadim, what’s the quickest dirty trick to get promoted?” I laughed (mostly to buy time) because after fifteen-odd years running teams I’ve seen enough shortcuts to write a pocket guide—most of them ending in flames.

Quick disclaimer before we wade in: every single tactic below works in the short term. Some even look brilliant for a year or two. But codebases age, memory sticks, and the tech scene is basically a small village with Slack. The skeletons you stash now will RSVP to your future interviews. (I learned that the hard way when an ex-colleague popped up on a hiring panel eight years later and still remembered my overconfident estimate from 2015.)

Visibility is the first arena where ethics get wobbly. In every company I’ve joined there were two caricatures:

1. the invisible workhorse who quietly keeps the lights on, and
2. the megaphone hero who keeps reminding everyone they keep the lights on.

The sweet spot sits somewhere between those poles—do real, meaningful work and make sure the right people can see the impact. I’m not totally convinced the 30/70 rule of effort-to-credit scales outside mid-sized orgs, but I’ve watched plenty of engineers pull it off for a while.

If raw coding talent isn’t your superpower—get ridiculously good at being pleasant to work with. Jokes help, listening helps more. I’ve worked with a B-minus coder who left at five on the dot to have dinner with his kids; he never chased titles, yet every team fought to keep him because projects just ran smoother when he was around. That’s a quiet kind of leverage.

Padding estimates. The classic. Ticket needs a day? Promise three, deliver in two, spend the extra afternoon playing Elden Ring. Works best in orgs where predictability beats speed—think banks, big insurers, certain government contracts. Try the same stunt in a tight startup sprint and someone will notice the controller you left on your desk.

Job-hopping for raises. Job-hopping frequently can significantly increase your salary over a few years. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve also seen résumés with six logos in six years get stalled because directors wonder if the candidate ever stuck around long enough to fix the bugs they shipped. Seniority isn’t just breadth of stickers on your laptop; depth still matters when you’re trusted with architecture calls. (I could be wrong, but the inflection point seems to land around the Staff level.)

Grabbing credit. Swapping we for I in performance reviews feels like a power move—until you interview for engineering manager. Good interviewers peel back the onion: “Walk me through exactly how you unblocked that migration.” If the story collapses under follow-ups, you’re done. Long-term leaders amplify teammates; they don’t siphon spotlight. The people who might promote you are usually the same people whose work you’d be stealing.

Negotiations? Companies will always start low because that’s literally Finance’s OKR. Anchor high and let them drag you down—not the other way around. Just don’t fabricate offers; HR folks trade notes more than most engineers realize.

That’s the grab-bag of questionable tactics off the top of my head. Some colleagues swear by them; others got burned. My experience isn’t a randomized trial—just a decade and a half of coffee chats, exit interviews, and “you won’t believe what happened” Slack DMs.

So where’s the line? For me it’s reputation. The tech world is tiny, and LinkedIn makes it microscopic. Fast tricks feel tempting when you’re staring at the next comp band, but they build a shaky floor. One bad reference can haunt three future roles.

Learn the politics, sure, but play them with the same rigor you bring to code reviews. Make allies, not collateral damage. Help others ship; the karma loop is slower than a Jenkins job on Monday morning, yet it always completes.

Your career ends up being a mirror: part skill set, part rumor mill, part “would I share an on-call rotation with this person?” Aim for a reputation that lets people answer that last question with an easy yes—even if it means passing on a flashy title today.

See you out there—ideally on the ethical side of the board.

Cheers,
Vadim