monthly growth – A former Microsoft engineer says the fastest way to spot stagnation is to ask a monthly question about whether your work is truly changing.
For many workers, the hardest part of career decisions is knowing when “staying” quietly turns into standing still.
In a new episode of Steve Huynh’s “A Life Engineered” podcast. Kun Chen—an engineer who has worked across Microsoft. Meta. and Atlassian—shared a framework he used to decide whether it was time to move on.. His focus wasn’t on waiting for a promotion that might never come.. Instead, Chen pointed to an earlier signal: asking whether his work was expanding or simply repeating.. The question he kept returning to was simple: “What did I do this month that I couldn’t last month?”
That “monthly growth test” may sound personal. but it has business implications too—especially in an industry where skills can shift faster than job titles.. Chen said that over time at Microsoft, he could no longer answer the question with anything meaningful.. The tasks were largely the same. and while he could make things faster or better. he wasn’t learning new things at a pace that felt like real growth.. When you hit that wall. the job can start to feel comfortable in the short term while quietly eroding your long-term leverage.
The deeper issue is how career momentum is measured inside modern organizations.. Promotions are lagging indicators; they tend to arrive after performance cycles, headcount approvals, and internal politics play out.. In contrast. Chen’s test is closer to the “leading indicator” most professionals can control: whether your responsibilities. problem types. and decision-making scope are evolving month to month.
This matters right now because software engineering is being reshaped by rapid advances in AI.. The ability to generate code. review it. and automate portions of development has accelerated the pace at which many teams ship—while also changing what “valuable work” looks like.. If a role becomes less about learning new systems and more about applying familiar patterns in an environment where AI handles more of the routine. stagnation can creep in even when productivity appears high.
Chen also cautioned against a simplistic interpretation.. The test doesn’t automatically mean leaving every time growth slows.. His point was to use the question to diagnose what should change—projects. scope. or team dynamics—before you assume the problem is the company itself.. He said he could have spoken with his manager to find a path into work that offered more learning. but he ultimately realized he needed a bigger change in environment.
From there. Chen made a career bet that’s common among high performers: sometimes growth comes from stepping into a different operating model.. He chose to move to a smaller company with a different culture and business approach. which offered a “different level of growth.” In his case. he returned to Microsoft after his work at Facebook became well-established and the remaining effort became more incremental.. He later described another opportunity at Microsoft—helping bootstrap a new games platform—as a chance to apply what he had learned during the earlier transition.
Seen through a business lens, Chen’s story is also about risk management.. Job-hopping can be expensive: there’s time lost ramping up. the uncertainty of new teams. and the emotional cost of starting over.. But stagnation has its own hidden costs—missed skill development. weaker long-term marketability. and slower income growth if responsibilities don’t expand.. The “monthly growth test” acts like a monitoring system. helping someone decide whether the risk of staying is becoming greater than the risk of changing.
There’s a practical takeaway here for workers navigating today’s shifting labor market.. Ask the question regularly. document the answer honestly. and if growth is missing. treat the next step as an engineering problem: diagnose the constraints. then redesign the work.. For some people that means renegotiating scope with a manager.. For others it means searching for a role where the learning curve is steeper—where the work requires new frameworks. new collaboration patterns. and new outcomes.
Ultimately, Chen’s framework is less about leaving and more about staying intellectually honest. When the answer to “What did I do this month that I couldn’t last month?” becomes consistently thin, it’s a prompt—not a verdict—to reshape your trajectory before the market does it for you.