Talent Management / Career Paths & Progressions
- Distinct from Designations, Career Ladder is the role framework, that would enable fitment basis observable traits, capabilities & competencies, setting right expectations at all levels. Currently, to keep the structure the agile, 4 types of roles are envisaged (IC, POD, Functional, Org level)
- Career Ladder comprises of 2 distinct paths: Technical roles (eg. Solution Architect) & People Management roles (eg. Engineering Manager); 10%:90% spread
Critical Behaviors for Growth | IC | POD | Functional | Org |
Professional Mastery | - Can solve small to medium problems independently; - Can understand & contribute to solving larger problems - Understands the high level architecture of stuff they work on | - Designs, documents & implements reliable, testable & elegant solutions to problems - Could be a POD level expert in particular domain or go to person for specific set of problems - Understands & can clearly explains the high level architecture & design of their team’s systems | - Contributes to the long term strategy & vision in their domain of expertise - Function level expert & go to person for solving problems in domain - Can take a technical leadership role or a larger cross-functional role of multiple pods / function | - Drives & facilitates Org level changes - Org level expert in particular area or go-to person for solving problems in their domains - Actively educates rest of org in their areas of expertise |
Values team success over individual success | - Positive & constructive in team interactions - Puts team’s priorities over their own - Collaborates with other team members | Can effectively take a leadership role on a moderately complex project with a few people working on it - Will identify & take work from other members if it is more important than their tasks - Can explain complex problems & solutions to people inside & outside of their domain of expertise | - Road manage or take a technical leadership role on large projects, working with multiple cross functional teams - Can identify & help resolve cross - team dependencies & issues | Works actively & effectively on company level priorities & initiatives that are beyond the role - Focussed as much on Functional level, Tech wide, or company wide issues as their own work |
Continuously improves themselves and their team | - Receptive to constructive feedback - Figures things out independently, but seeks help when needed -Seeks improvement opportunities from all kinds of situations | - Mentors less experienced members of the team - Helps identify team weaknesses & suggests solutions - Works with their managers to actively grow their skills, proactively partnering with more senior members of their team | - Actively engages in expanding their scope beyond the defined confines of their roles - Proactively gets involved in process improvement, value unlocking exercises - Mentors other members of POD / Functions | - Involved in tech wide & Org wide improvement projects beyond their roles - Supports other people in their functions & Org in their domain. Actively works to level-up the Org in their domain |
Holds themselves and others accountable | - Drives tasks to completion - Takes responsibility for their actions & recognizes their own mistakes | - Holds team accountable for best possible efforts - Offers constructive feedback on areas of broader scope | - Actively enables solving cross-team issues by assisting other teams, beyond the expectations of their roles - Would display strong understanding of broad issues in their domain beyond work, such as processes, company issues & projects | - Actively takes accountability for tech improvement efforts - Roadmanages Org level and/or most critical strategic projects - Will actively work with tech or company leadership to drive a solution when they see a broader issue |
Thinks about the business impact of their work | - Understanding of priorities & goals of their team - Actively engages in understanding the requirements & the impact on the team - Basic understanding of priorities & goals of the POD & company | - When discussing work, engages in discussion around business impact of features - Demonstrates ability to translate between basic business requirements & technical requirements | Finds appropriate metrics & measures ROI (effort/time/cost) when making decisions - Shows a broad understanding of business context of work happening across organizations | - Collaborates across functions including areas of outside tech or their own functions - Helps guide the functions on business impact & mentors PODS & Teams on decisions & their approach towards business |
Talent Management: Career Ladder - Engineering
Critical Behavior | Skill | POD Member / IC role | POD Level role | Functional level role | Tech Head |
Professional Mastery | Impact | • Act with urgency and deliver high-quality scalable work that will add the most value • Work with the pod lead to direct focus to advances the team's goals • Prioritise the right things and not overcomplicate work. Propose appropriate scope adjustments, when required | • Execute projects to a very high standard, balancing timeline and tech debt • Proactively account for risks and monitor their likelihood • Work closely with partner teams to prioritize tasks according to impact & effort | • Identify and execute on opportunities that have cross-pod impact • Proactively identify and help to refocus team's efforts when projects are off-course or not technically feasible • Drive standardisation of results across pods | • Identify new opportunities for team to execute that have org-wide impact • Responsible for ensuring that results do not come at the expense of long term growth, retention, or safety • Ultimately accountable for the consequences of the team’s technical decisions, and for achieving the right architecture and tradeoffs to reach and maintain high engineering throughput |
Holds themselves and others accountable | Say/Do ratio | • Follow through on own commitments, take responsibility for own work, and deliver on time • Own failures and learn from them • Work with pod lead to solve problems before they become bigger | • Work with pod members to follow through on team commitments • Unblock partner teams on feedback, signoff and consultancy within agreed timelines • Identify new opportunities and advocate for and implement improvements | • Work with pod leads to understand areas of efficiency improvements • Conduct regular cross-pod catchups to monitor timelines and quality | Follow through on own commitments and take responsibility for own work and the work of the team • Escalate appropriately to ensure the team is unblocked and help them learn how to unblock themselves • Involve the team in the discussion of “what to build” and not just the “how to build”, creating a sense of ownership for the end results |
Craft | Code Fluency | • Code is free of glaring errors, bugs in edge cases not in main flow • Code is well documented and well tested (appropriate use of manual or automated dev-testing) • Able to read & navigate through a large codebase and debug others' code | Ensure high code quality in code reviews • Promote use of reusable, scalable, flexible & efficient code throughout one’s pod • Provide guidance to pod members on code quality & effective documentation (both HLDs and LLDs) • Merge only well-reviewed code that satisfy the above criteria | • Ensure technical understanding to engage in specific discussions with team members • Ensure documentation and efficient code practices are standardized across pods • Not expected to own projects directly from an execution perspective this level onwards | |
Craft | Testing & Debugging | • Strong awareness of tools & libraries to support automated testing & debugging • Code is well-tested, with appropriate use of manual or automated tests • For QA, understand requirements well before writing test cases ◦ Test cases cover all the workflows and are discussed with other teams | • Promote dev testing for pod members' projects (manual or automated) • Plan & execute a testing strategy to increase code coverage. • For QA, Deep understanding of product functioning leads to less missed cases ◦ Take ownership of reported pod-bugs with well maintained bugs backlog | • Work with pod leads to set and achieve targets for testing coverage and efficient tooling. For QA, Participate constructively in architecture or design reviews of complex features that have a broad set of complex dependencies | |
Craft | Architecture Design | • Create coherent designs with multiple components interacting across different system boundaries, taking inputs from partner teams on requirements & scale • Bugs do not creep in at the boundaries between components due to mismatches in expectations of what is technically feasible | • Define the high level systems we need to build to meet strategic objectives • Define and track metrics around which the robustness of team’s efforts are going to be measured | • Do frequent audits of architectural systems to ensure scalable structures are built for the long-term • Facilitate cross-team discussions and brainstorms on overall architecture |