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April 18, 2021

Weekly Roundup - Issue #5

As the second wave of the pandemic rages on, there’s a feeling of tiredness and helplessness permeating everywhere. It’s like being in an invisible zombie movie with no end in sight. So please take care of yourself, talk to people isolating themselves, reach out to those you care about and stay safe.

The Importance of Career Laddering – Sarah Drasner
The Importance of Career Laddering – Sarah Drasner
Career laddering is a system used to show what expectations are at different levels of a role, a purpose of which can be defining how one might be promoted.
css-tricks.com

It’s been a year since I was asked to do this. Career ladders aren’t enough on their own- it’s essential to discuss how they work in practice, which is why I wrote an article too.

Rubrics without action are pointless because they don’t actually drive clarity for your employees.

— Sarah Drasner (@sarah_edo) April 15, 2021

Design orgs are still so new, that often reading about engineering management helps. They’ve been here longer, faced similar problems and have found ways to address them.

This article feels like the missing manual about how to use career ladders at your workplace. It made me rethink my conversations with my reports regarding their job level.

It made me understand –

  1. Why asking ‘Where would you like to be in 5 years’ is important
  2. Why asking them to self assess themselves is important instead of you doing the assessment
  3. Why we should structure their development goals as per 30/60/90 day plans instead of a checklist

If you are looking to adopt a career framework for your design org, you should definitely read ‘Org design for design orgs’. It talks about the qualities of an effective design org, the common problems plaguing design orgs and how to build a design org. You can check out the framework they offer over here.

Related:

  1. 'Org design for design orgs’ blog for articles
  2. Progression.fyi for other frameworks to reference
  3. Career-Ladders.dev - Sarah’s framework
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