Career Ladder

The Importance of a Detailed Leveling Guide

This article outlines the steps taken by a company to create a leveling guide for their engineering organization. The author took an assessment of the organization, analyzed employee behavior, and researched other organizations' leveling guides to create a guide that was tailored to the company. The guide was incorporated into the onboarding process and employees were given an understanding of the changes and expectations. The guide provided a roadmap for employees to achieve their goals and chart their career path. The article also provides lessons learned from the experience.

Is CS Training Essential to Be a Successful Engineering Leader?

This article discusses whether or not CS training is necessary for engineering leaders to be successful. It suggests that the decision should be approached on a case by case basis, and that strength and warmth should be balanced. It also suggests that CS training may not be necessary right away, but may be beneficial for job interviews. Ultimately, success is determined by what is done outside of the 8 hours spent at work.

A great engineer as a bad manager

A VP at Blackhawk Network promised an engineer a promotion to manager, but she was not given any mentorship or guidance in the role. After three months of coaching, it was determined that she was not suited for the management role and she was moved back to a team lead. She was later promoted to Principal Engineer and the company learned the importance of having multiple career paths and being transparent with employees about budget constraints.

Embedding Company Values To Build a Well-Structured Career Ladder

This article outlines the steps taken to create a clearly defined career path for engineers, including separating paths for individual contributors and managers, defining core values and expectations for each position level, and providing employees with a self-assessment document. The article also highlights the importance of defining values and providing day-to-day examples to illustrate them, as well as the importance of including both quantitative and qualitative indicators to measure performance.

Building our career ladder from scratch

Talkdesk needed to create a career plan to provide transparency for their team. They adopted a plan from "Rent the Runway" and adapted it to their structure, needs and culture. They added communication, more levels, and other tracks. After implementing the ladder, some people were overcompensated and were considered "underperformers" until they reached the expectations for their salary levels. The transition was difficult, but it sent a message and clarified expectations.

Building An Engineering Career Ladder

This article discusses the process of creating a career ladder for engineers in a growing company. It outlines the steps taken to understand what creates value for the business, to talk to managers and individual contributors to understand what traits they look for, and to look at other companies to provide a framework for the rubric. It also emphasizes the importance of involving everyone in the process and investing early to get it right.