A support team career progression
By popular(?) demand
Recently a colleague of mine asked if I had a sample career ladder for support teams. Oddly enough, considering my obsessions, I did not! So I put something together for him that I think may also be useful to others. It mostly speaks for itself, but before I get to the link, I wanted to add a few thoughts that I didn’t put in the career path document proper.
Multiple paths
The first thing you’ll probably notice when looking over the career path document is that it is in fact several paths. The reason for this is twofold:
Not everyone wants to be a manager (particularly engineers). If the only way to advance within a team is to go to management, people are going to start looking elsewhere when they’re ready for something more challenging. By having a dedicated IC path, we can hopefully keep those folks on the team and happy for the next phase of their career.
Team needs can change over time. You may need additional roles for new specializations, you may have to add additional seniority levels, or there may be other unforeseen changes to your team structure. By building in flexibility now, it will be easier to slot in new roles or even full paths.
It’s important to note that these separate paths aren’t set in stone—a team member can switch back and forth as their interests (and skills) dictate, pending approval. More folks might be willing to try a team lead role, for instance, if they know they won’t be railroaded into being a manager afterwards, whether they want it or not.
A glide path out
Another thing you may notice is that it explicitly allows for a way off the support team. Once an engineer has done their time in the trenches, they may be ready to move onto a different role entirely. As a leader, you need to recognize that there are two ways this can happen: either within your company, or elsewhere. It’s far better to keep that accumulated knowledge and expertise, not to mention relationships with internal and external partners, within the company. While this process is likely to look different for every internal transfer, at least in a startup, it’s important to at least gesture in that direction so your team knows it’s an option.
Guidelines, not laws
A document like this is very useful both for showing your team that there is a clear progression they can aspire to and as a guideline for managers to recognize when one of their team is ready to advance. At the same time, it’s a mistake to treat every word of it as gospel. Sometimes things need to be more flexible than that. That being said, exceptions should be rare and not just ‘on the whim of the manager’, or any confidence your team may have in this progression will swiftly evaporate.
The document
OK, enough of that. Here’s the goods! I hope you find it useful. Please feel free to copy and use it as the basis for your own team’s career progression.
Thanks for reading Andy's Support Notes 💻💥📝!