She Kept Getting Passed Over for Promotions - Until She Cracked Corporate Politics
…and the unexpected advice in a tiny office book that changed everything.
Hey 👋 I’m Andrew. Welcome to Delivering Value - the newsletter and podcast where I share stories from SaaS leaders about the toughest moments of their careers, and explore how they turned them into success stories. You get the lessons - without the scars.
Yue Zhao is the former Chief Product and Technology Officer at Fuzzy Health, turned executive coach. Now she helps women and minority leaders break through to the C-suite.
Her background is absolutely stacked.
Instructor at Reforge and Maven, Partner at LifeX Ventures, PM leader at Meta, first PM at Thumbtack, not to mention degrees from UC Berkeley and Harvard. Looking at her experience, it would be easy to assume Yue’s career has been smooth sailing.
But early in her career, she felt stuck.
She was shipping high-impact work and quietly became the go-to person across the company. But while others advanced, she stayed in the same role - eventually feeling frustrated that she was “in the room” but wasn’t in the decision-making seat, or being promoted.
It was her first lesson in an uncomfortable truth: doing great work isn’t always enough.
Until she found a tiny book on the Thumbtack office bookshelf that reframed her entire approach to leadership.
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She Just Wanted to Build Great Product
Yue didn’t join a startup to chase titles.
She joined to build something she could be proud telling her friends and family about. She wanted to work on something people used, get better at product, and eventually grow into a leadership role. She knew what she wanted, and why it mattered. When she joined Thumbtack as one of two women at the 20-person startup, she was ready to make her mark.
She expected to spend her time shipping features and learning the craft of product management.
Instead, the team needed help with just about everything else, and she didn’t work on product for a long time. She found herself running brand campaigns, writing help center copy, and tracking down support tickets.
It was a classic early-stage startup story and she was doing whatever was needed.
She Was Doing Everything, Except What She Was Hired For
“I guess I had the most flexible skillset with my consulting background. I was asked to do a ton of different things,” she shared.
She kept saying yes.
Yes to research. Yes to support. Yes to marketing. Because startups reward the people who raise their hand. But the longer she did it, the more she wondered if that was the right approach for her career.
She wanted to be a product leader, not a utility player.
The tension between those identities started eating at her. She was in rooms where big problems were being solved, but wasn’t sure if she was moving her career forward. She kept hoping it would all pay off.
Eventually, the engineering team grew large enough to the point where they needed full-time product leadership. So Yue shifted back to the product team. And all those connections she’d made across the company started coming in handy as she worked on product.
She spent several years focused on product direction - and building her PM skillset. But now she had a new problem, moving her career forward.
“I figured I would do a really great job, and get promoted every year and a half to two years,” she shared.
And at first that was true. She had been promoted once, from entry-level PM to senior PM, about 16 months in. But now, it was several years later, and she was still in the same role. She wanted to be a Director; managing managers. She had spoken with her manager, but nothing really changed.
At some point she realized that being good at shipping product wasn’t enough.
She had to be seen as strategic.
The Cost of Staying Quiet
Yue thought her work would speak for itself.
But the company was growing, her role was expanding, and her career was getting harder to define. She was tired, stuck, and wondering if her early momentum had been a fluke. There wasn’t a performance issue. There was a perception issue.
She hadn’t framed her work in the language leadership cared about - strategy, impact, long-term bets.
And without that framing, she wasn’t seen as a future exec. She was seen as "the person who always jumps in." And jumping in wasn’t getting her promoted.
The longer she waited for recognition, the more it looked like she didn’t want it.
The Tiny Book That Changed Everything
It was sitting on a shelf in the office - The Politics of Promotion. Yue grabbed it out of curiosity.
She didn’t expect much, but within a few pages, she saw her entire situation differently.
It wasn’t just that she hadn’t advocated for herself. She hadn’t learned to build influence up the org. All her energy went down and across. She led teams. She solved fires. She delivered. But she wasn’t creating space to steer strategy or shape narratives.
So she started figuring out which rooms she needed to be in… and whose opinions she needed to influence.
She created her own discussions. Pulled in cross-functional leads. And most importantly, she brought real ideas - not just documents, but discussions.
And that’s when things shifted.
Her influence stopped being informal. Her input started showing up in planning docs, strategy sessions, and leadership meetings. It wasn’t loud or flashy. But it was consistent. And it worked.
She got promoted. Not because someone handed it to her. But because she changed the game she was playing.
What Yue Learned (So You Don’t Have To)
If you feel stuck, Yue’s story probably sounds familiar.
She learned the hard way that being good at your job and being seen as a leader are two different skills. One gets you the work. The other gets you promoted. And no one is going to teach you how to play that second game.
So here’s what she recommends:
Don’t wait for someone to create the meeting. Create it yourself.
Speak the language your execs speak: bets, tradeoffs, narratives.
Build relationships before you need them.
Frame your impact in terms of business outcomes, not tasks.
Ask for what you want. And if you don’t get it, ask what would need to be true for you to.
Her career didn’t take off because she worked harder. It changed because she reframed how she showed up. And once she understood that, she never got stuck the same way again.
Even better? Now she helps others avoid that pain altogether.
Catch my full conversation with Yue on YouTube
Or listen on Spotify
(If you like these kinds of candid conversations with SaaS leaders, subscribe on Spotify, YouTube - or wherever you usually listen.)
Yue learned these lessons the hard way. But you don’t have to.
I work with growth leaders and product-led teams to accelerate impact, influence, and outcomes, without burning out or feeling overwhelmed.
1:1 Coaching for Growth Leaders – Turn chaos into clarity. Build an operating system that scales. Lead with confidence.
Advising for Product-led Teams: – Strategic guidance to activate more users, convert more customers, and balance sales with self-serve growth.
