What do Career Paths look like in your org?

[alexgarnett]

I want to drive the development of career paths within our organization and I wonder what different approaches your companies are taking.
My first draft looks like a flow chart with existing roles in boxes and arrows indicating how you can move from one to another with all roles of a certain level appearing within a frame that is indicating each level ranging from 0-5 (intern all the way up to Senior VP).
Can someone share a screenshot or explanation how you developed it and what it looks like/how it works?

Thanks so much!

[Learning_Whisperer]

Hi Alex, general pro tip with career paths: make it dumb simple. Most people might look at it once or twice a year, so simplicity reigns.

But here are a billion examples otherwise, mostly in the Engineering space because they like to overwork things:

• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k4sO6pyCl_YYnf0PAXSBcX776rNcTjSOqDxZ5SDty-4/edit#gid=0
• https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2009/02/13/fog-creek-professional-ladder/
• https://ladder.glossier.io/engineer-1.html
• https://www.holloway.com/s/trh-job-titles-levels-fundamentals-for-software-engineering
• https://www.levels.fyi/
• https://www.axelerant.com/resources/articles/how-to-design-an-effective-career-ladder-for-engineers
• https://medium.com/s/engineering-growth-framework
• https://developer.squareup.com/blog/squares-growth-framework-for-engineers-and-engineering-managers/
• https://blog.intercomassets.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Intercom-PM-job-ladder-Logo.pdf
• https://design.zendesk.com/downloads/product-design-career-path_ic.pdf
• https://buffer.com/resources/engineering-career-framework/

I also wrote a blog post about Career Vectors, which is my way of trying to hew “dumb simple”: https://www.learntoscale.us/thought-bubbles/why-you-should-be-using-career-vectors

[alexgarnett]

Hi Dan, thanks a lot for this!