I'm Steve Huynh, 18 years inside Amazon's promotion machine, now helping engineers stop guessing about their careers and start engineering them.

Your code quality, your commits, your technical depth, those got you here, but the promotion committee isn't evaluating any of them.

Promotion comes down to leadership scope beyond your level, and whether your manager can make the case without you in the room.

I spent 18 years on the other side of Amazon's promotion table, nearly a thousand interviews, talent reviews, and workshops that trained thousands of engineers.

I watched brilliant engineers stay stuck for years, not because they lacked skill, but because nobody taught them how promotions actually work.

I was one of them, eight years stuck before I cracked the L6-to-L7 gauntlet that only 1% of engineers break through. Once I understood the system, my comp jumped $300,000 a year, not from better code, but from mastering the unspoken rules.

I left Amazon to teach what I learned, YouTube, a weekly newsletter, a book, and Top Tier, where I coach engineers directly on promotion cases.

If you're a mid-level or senior engineer stuck at your level or passed over, that's exactly why I built everything I do.

I've sat on both sides of the promotion table, I know what the committee evaluates, and I know how to close the gap.