A Closer Look at Our Career Ladder

During the formative years of our company, we took a personalized approach to the professional growth of our employees. With a small team of around 20 individuals, this method was manageable, and we were able to cater to each employee’s unique needs. However, as we expanded, we encountered a pressing issue: ensuring that every employee had a clear understanding of their growth trajectory with us. Regrettably, this resulted in unfulfilled expectations, letdowns, and some employees feeling undervalued.

Motivated to tackle this problem head-on, we set out to create a robust and empowering system that would grant our employees agency over their career advancement. Our vision was a transparent system accessible to all, based on output and performance, and inclusive of multiple perspectives.

But our first challenge was figuring out how to construct a career ladder that would be effective for all of our employees. As a multidisciplinary company, our various departments have distinct work processes and metrics for evaluating performance. Thus, a one-size-fits-all solution was out of the question.

Development Team Career Ladder

At the outset, we directed our attention to our development team, recognizing that they are the backbone of our company’s growth. Our previous system, where it took years for employees to progress to mid-level or senior-level positions, was ineffective and left much to be desired. So, we implemented a more granular approach with smaller promotion levels that would enable employees to climb the career ladder annually.

To spur our developers on and inject a dose of excitement into the process, we gamified the career ladder. Our strategy was to incentivize our developers to improve both their technical and soft skills, providing them with a clear roadmap for promotion.

To demonstrate our unwavering commitment to the career ladder, we created the role of Career Development Officer. This officer is responsible for ensuring that the system is properly implemented and that all employees can reap its benefits. In this way, we aim to foster a culture of growth and development that will benefit everyone in the company.

Agile Team Career Ladder

Having successfully launched our Development Team Career Ladder, we are now faced with an even more formidable challenge: crafting a career ladder for our Scrum Masters, Business Analysts, and Quality Assurance Engineers. However, there is a critical consideration that demands our attention – it would be an arduous task to create individual career ladders for each team that are as comprehensive and detailed as that of the development career ladder.

In response, we created the Agile Team, a department that combines all these areas of expertise. The Agile Team serves as a hub for cross-functional collaboration, enabling each department to push our projects forward and deliver valuable features every sprint.

To tackle this challenge, we adopted a different approach in creating and implementing the Agile Team Career Ladder. Rather than listing specific skills for each level, we identified the team’s skills and expectations, with complexity and difficulty increasing as employees are promoted.

One significant area of improvement that we are still working on is finding the right balance between keeping skills open to interpretation and adding the necessary proof of skill attainment. To address this, we formed a task force focused on further refining and enhancing the implementation of the Agile Team Career Ladder.

Result

Despite numerous challenges, we persevered, and within a year of implementing the career ladder system, we successfully promoted 90% of our employees. This achievement validated our initial hypothesis that the traditional top-down management approach to promotions is not sustainable for a rapidly growing company. Instead, we recognized that providing our employees with a clear path toward career advancement is essential if we want them to grow with us.

However, we acknowledge that the career ladder system is not yet perfect and may never be. But as an agile company, we are committed to continuing fine-tuning our approach to meet the ever-changing needs of the business landscape. We welcome change and adaptability and will work tirelessly to ensure our career ladder system remains relevant and effective for years to come.