Homebrew Guide to Career Ladders

Are you a startup

founder who has never had to think about career ladders? If you are growing and hiring more people, it's time to put career/job ladders in place. If you aren’t sure where to start, the Homebrew Guide to Career Ladders has arrived just in time. We will explore:

As always, we welcome your feedback.

Let’s start with the basics.

When you hit approx 30-40 people and the company is at least 18-24 months old you should implement career ladders for all functions. This is around the time when you hire an HR manager who may have some experience in this area. You will have employees who have been in their respective roles at least one year and may be ready for a role with greater scope (for example, a promotion) and there need to be clear guidelines about what the next level looks like and how employees will be evaluated to determine they’ve reached that level.

Some companies have rewarding career tracks for people who want to move up and stay as ICs (individual contributors). Building an option for IC career ladders (rather than pushing high performers into management tracks) may be important to retain talent.

For example, some companies provide a career path for ICs such as in the engineering function where a very senior engineer becomes a “principal engineer” vs. director or vice president. It is becoming widely used in other functions such as recruiting, product management, and sales. One major advantage of having a two track (IC and Management) system is that the people who go into management actually want to manage. Otherwise, they’d pick the IC track.

It depends on the job function. The average career ladder for an IC role can be anywhere from 4-8 rungs. For management around 5-7 rungs. Engineering tends to have the most rungs at early stage companies.

4 for IC roles and 5 for management roles should be safe. You can always revise as the business needs change.

Additional reading:

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Let’s explore different career tracks by function (Engineering, Design, Product, Marketing & Sales).

Here’s an example of Foursquare’s

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has created a detailed

for product design roles.

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You don’t see the Principal Product Manager as a popular title because the IC path for a PM tends to end at the Senior PM level at early stage companies. Some companies have a Group Product Manager (not shown in this chart) which is considered a balance of individual contribution and people management. Larger, later stage companies (MSFT, AMZ) tend to provide dual career tracks in product. These companies have a product area that is big enough in scope and complexity or that requires significant strategic planning.

Source:

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The IC career path is not typically recognized in marketing. Marketers tend to build their careers as ICs then manage others. Career growth for ICs can mean managing larger projects and managing cross functional teams vs. managing individual people. Some senior marketing folks who don’t want to lead big teams choose to work for themselves and run marketing consulting businesses. They take on different projects for companies where they are managing projects -- sometimes more than 1 at a time vs. managing people.

Source:

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Sales is a function where an employee can stay an IC and successfully grow her career in most companies. Large companies tend to have more individual contributors with many years of experience who have chosen to “carry a bag” and sell themselves vs. manage a team. Sales IC’s carry a sales quota that they are experienced enough to meet or exceed regularly and that they can benefit from financially.

As your company grows in different functions, it is important to take time to build out career ladders for all functions where applicable. Employees need to understand their potential career choices in a company, whether they are moving towards management or individual contributor paths. It is the manager’s responsibility to discuss career development during

and make sure that employees understand the different choices they have regarding future opportunities. A ladder is an essential tool in career development for both managers on the promotion side and employees working towards a larger scope of responsibilities.