Career Ladder

Three Goals To Consider When Building a Career Ladder

The CTO of a company with forty people in the R&D department introduced a formal career ladder to provide engineers with a vision for their future, justify salary increases, and provide a clear sense of understanding of their mission. The process strengthened employees' engagement with the company, and the key challenge was to encompass the diversity of roles and responsibilities with one title. Assessing core skills and competencies was included in monthly one-on-ones to help employees progress on their career path.

IC to CTO, Coding to Not Coding

After transitioning from an individual contributor to a CTO and founder of a startup, the author questioned whether they wanted to remain in the leadership role or return to coding. After gathering data and talking to people they respected, the author decided to stay in their C-level role and picked up side projects to satisfy their coding hunger. The lessons learned from this experience are to gather data to make the right decision, accept the shift in responsibilities, and add incremental value to the team.

When Many Employees Leave the Company Simultaneously

As a leader, it can be difficult to accept when people leave the company. To turn the situation around, it is important to understand why people are leaving and to focus on those who are still considering leaving. It is also important to accept that people will leave, and to embrace those who remain. Additionally, it is important to avoid giving people ultimatums and to understand that the journey is a rollercoaster.

A Founder’s Dilemma: Choosing Between Technology and Customers

This article discusses the importance of understanding customer needs and not getting too caught up in the technical details of building a product. It emphasizes the need for founders to become emotionally detached from their products and to talk to other founders and get an advisor to help them prioritize their priorities. Ultimately, the goal is to build something that customers are looking for and to focus on customer needs rather than the latest technology.

A Framework To Get Your Next Promotion

This article discusses how to effectively manage one's career in order to get ahead. It explains that one should understand their job expectations, their boss's expectations, and build a network of supportive people. It also emphasizes the importance of being thoughtful and genuine when building relationships.

Strategic Thinking for Engineers

In a situation where a team was suffering from low velocity and technical debt, the individual contributor took it upon themselves to ask the existential questions of why the team exists and what it does, and proposed solutions to the leadership. These included contributing to the external team's code base, aligning organizational goals, and transitioning ownership of features to the platform team. The idea was well-received and the individual was given the opportunity to lead the initiative. This experience taught the individual the importance of taking a holistic look at how things are working and the opportunity to become more involved in organizational challenges.