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by UncleMeat
1806 days ago
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> I'm genuinely wondering what people on the other side of this debate think about this. If you like having systems like this in your organization, what is it that you like about it? I like it. There are limitations and the frameworks can be misaligned with the ideal goals, but in general it provides the following benefits. 1. You aren't completely at the whim of your manager. Managers need to actually document what you did and why that aligns with whatever level on these frameworks. Other managers can provide oversight on this. The alternative is that career success is 100% opaque and based on the feelings of one person. 2. It helps me as a manager do performance evaluations. I'm glad to have a framework than to just go based on my feelings, because my feelings are often wrong. 3. It can help shift priorities for an organization that is working on the wrong stuff. This is hard and requires careful language and training, but in an ideal world these sorts of frameworks allow people to align their personal career goals with the goals of the company. If you can make the company do better without pleasing the framework, then the framework may be wrong or perhaps your priorities are wrong. I've seen the latter plenty of times. Somebody insists that their work is just obviously impactful and therefore they don't need to measure anything but they are forced to measure it due to framework requirements and, surprise surprise, what they did wasn't that important after all. |
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This is the biggest important part. When your compensation, access to good projects, and career growth depend entirely on your manager, and you are not in the "in group," it's worse than demotivating--it's a feeling of hopelessness. You can document everything you did as evidence and none of it matters because your manager just doesn't like you. If you're lucky, you're at a company that encourages moving around and you can hope to luck into a better manager, because that's your only way out of the prison.
EDIT:
Unlike most of the commenters here, I love these written ladders, and I sincerely wish more companies did them. I would seriously favor companies that had written ladders over companies where it's hidden mysticism. When you are a "ladder climber" work personality, it is imperative that you can actually comprehend the actual requirements for getting to the next level--otherwise, how do you do get there? Guessing? When promotion happens at your manager's whim, it seems to have less to do with your work output and more to do with how well you brown nosed and smooth talked.