The importance of career laddering - Research - [Date]

Problem/Question

What is career laddering? A system typically used to show what expectations are at different levels of a role, I.e defining how one might be promoted.

Key Findings

To get Senior, you focus on you’re the best ‘you’ can be - you perform your role exceedingly well and you’ve reached a high potential for your own output

To get Staff , your focus is really to expand beyond yourself. You start teaching people things you’ve learned and help serve their needs.

To get Principal, you’re creating systems that scale beyond your role. You’re no longer helping folks be like you, you’re helping them where they are. A lot of activities enable the success of those around you.

In a semi-regular Career Laddering Review, go through every list in current and future role and self assess the progress you’ve made on each item.

30/60/90: Start with the work you want to accomplish in the next three months. Sometimes this can be quantifiable, sometimes it can be less measurable i.e ‘I would like to try to understand our component library a bit more as a newcomer”. Do the same for 30 day, and quickly for 60 day plan.

It is also important to go through what you shouldn’t be doing i.e things that aren’t useful to spend time on.

Revisit the 30/90 plan roughly every month..

Principal Engineer:

• Develops proven systems. Replicates those systems and approaches across the team so that others may learn from and improve on them.
• Deep industry knowledge and awareness of the technical landscape. Incorporates this analysis as appropriate into strategy.
• Not only leads, but ideates new engineering efforts. Provides guidance and vision.
• Mentors and actively drives the technical skills of the immediate or extended team with consideration of their career stage and personal trajectory.
• Removes barriers by working with others around a shared need or customer benefit.
Creates strategies that cross organizational boundaries to achieve broad business goals or influence.
• Anticipates issues or implications that their ideas would have on others, and pursues mutually beneficial strategies.
• Beyond participating in meetings, thoughtfully creates and leads meetings where helpful.
• Sets clear and challenging goals for a portfolio of work, and pursues them with enthusiasm and passion. Understands business objectives and incorporates these into this body of work. Critically reviews multiple plans and adjusts as needed.
• Drives measurable growth by scaling/mentoring teams, affecting engineering roadmaps positively, managing key metrics, creating research and/or programs.
• Partners with other teams to improve the effectiveness of our internal tooling.
• • Anticipates the needs of those around them. Is respectful in terms of async hygiene, exhibiting care that their teammates can get in touch with them or knows their status during working hours. Fills out process docs without having to be asked.

Implementation Notes

Next Steps

References

CSS tricks

Career-ladders.dev