Former Meta employee’s dire warning to tech professionals: “Don’t make promotions the goal… when you start to get into that mindset, you lose…”

Rong Yan, the Chief Technology Officer at HeyGen, a visual storytelling platform, is telling tech professionals to think about how they measure success in their careers. Yan talked about his time working at companies like IBM, Meta, Square, Snapchat, and HubSpot on The Peterman Pod.

He has also mentored many tech professionals along the way. His advice is simple: don't make getting promoted the most important thing.Yan said, “Don’t make promotions the objective of your work.” He said that linking job satisfaction too closely to titles can make it harder to grow and more stressful.

Former Meta employee Rong Yan: 'Career growth isn’t about titles'

Since getting his PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 2006, Yan has worked in important roles at big tech companies.

He started out as a researcher at IBM, then moved to Meta, where he went from researcher to manager in three years. After that, he was a director at Square and Snapchat. Before joining HeyGen in 2024, he was the vice president of engineering at HubSpot.Yan thought about his own path and saw a pattern among ambitious tech workers: “When you start to get into that mindset, you start to count your happiness or your career growth toward something that you don’t have full control over,” he said.

He went on to say that only thinking about promotions can put too much stress on you. It often makes workers compare themselves to their coworkers instead of focusing on how far they've come.

Prioritise skill development and meaningful work

Yan tells professionals not to chase titles but to work on improving their skills, learning new things, and making meaningful contributions. He has learned that employees who think this way tend to move up in their careers without the constant stress of competition with their bosses.Andrea Wasserman, an executive coach, agrees with this point of view. She tells employees to think about the timing of opportunities in a strategic way: “Will this timing make it easier or harder for me to get a ‘yes?’”Yan stresses that the best way to grow your career is to keep learning and adding value, not waiting for recognition. By putting skills and impact first, professionals build a base that helps them move up in their careers and be happy at work.