Paths & Competencies
In my first product management job, eBay didn’t have career ladders. I asked my manager what was needed to get my next promotion and… she didn’t have an answer. I was generally “on track” but: was I operating as a senior PM? And then what would it take to become a group PM?
Our solution to this chicken and egg problem: I defined our PM job levels, along with my peer Ha Nguyen who was in a similar situation. This filled a gap for the department and also was a contribution that enhanced our credentials as leaders among the team.
Since then, I’ve been through this exercise at most employers and as an advisor. This past week, this came up independently at three different clients. It’s something most teams need, but many lack. Done well, it's one of the most powerful ways to establish clear and consistent standards. It gives your team a shared sense of what great looks like.
Below is my general approach. There are consistencies, but there is no “copy and paste” solution. You need to write your own.
If you haven't read the first post in this series, it covers why standards, levels, and paths matter in the first place — and why most leaders invest in this for their products but not their teams. This post covers how to build the artifact that makes it real.
Why and When
“What gets rewarded gets repeated.”
Ambitious employees are motivated by growth and progression. This includes knowing how their work is evaluated, where to focus their efforts, and what it takes to advance. A good career ladder spells this out. It inspires people to increase their impact in ways that help the team.
It helps leaders too. It signals what matters, creates a consistent framework for performance discussions, and supports calibration across teams.
A good ladder provides clarity, enables better coaching, and reduces uncertainty for everyone.
Most startups don’t start with this. Jobs are fluid. With growth comes differentiation:
There is a core group of co-founders and/or executives
Others become people managers
Individual contributors lead key initiatives
Teams are filled out with others to “get stuff done”
At some point, new roles come with a question about level and manager. People start to wonder if they are making progress, especially if they are giving up parts of their job to others.
These things go from unspoken and unwritten to something that people start asking about. You want less ambiguity.
One practical note: introduce the ladder near the start of a new performance period if possible. Rolling it out right before a review can feel like moving the goalposts, even if the intent is the opposite.
The Mechanics
At its simplest, a ladder can be a matrix with levels on one axis and attributes on the other. Here is how I approach defining one:
1. What does your team truly value?
This sounds obvious, but varies more than you’d expect. The ladder is where you make that tangible for your team.
Do you truly care about results, or just delivery and execution? Is a person’s performance just about the “what” was achieved, or do you also care about the “how”?
Are people working as part of a team, or is the majority of their responsibility as an individual contributor? If they are part of a team, does the team have shared goals or just specialized responsibilities?
Which company values actually reflect the culture? Which ones do people roll their eyes at?
How important are team contributions, such as mentoring others, helping recruit and building culture?
The answers to these questions form the competencies you will use to evaluate people. Aim for 5-10, with minimal overlap between them.
Competencies I have used and recommend include impact/results, execution, leadership, innovation, strategy, collaboration, functional craft, scope.
My take: make impact the primary measure; emphasize team values and how things get done; team success also encourages alignment and collaboration. These are core attributes for a high performance team.
2. How do expectations change by level?
Scope and responsibilities vary by level, but how specifically do you define this? For example:
How many levels do you need at your stage and size? Smaller means fewer.
How do titles correlate to scope at your company, for both individual contributors and people managers?
What is their scope of influence on your business and on others?
Keep it simple but consistent. Ideally people across teams have comparable attributes. A well-designed ladder should let you compare a senior engineer to a senior PM and not require a separate ladder for every role on your team. Have just enough to differentiate the major tiers of scope and impact. The answers to these questions are the levels in your job function.
My take: differentiate individual contributors between learning, doing, leading and expert. Differentiate managers by size of team, levels of their organization and if they are leading a department. With both, consider if their primary influence is themselves, a small team, a department or the entire company.
Once you have the competencies and the levels, put one on the rows and the others on the columns. Then fill in the matrix with an expectation per level. Easy, right?
Getting it Right
Not entirely. Details matter, including:
1. What is the core job of a people manager?
People managers are not just role models, they are formally accountable for the performance of others. Yet teams have very different expectations of their managers. For example:
What does it mean to be hands on? Where are they expected to be doers as well as leaders?
How much is their focus on execution and short term results vs. recruiting and people management?
What are their responsibilities to peers and others beyond their direct reports?
My take: the manager’s main job is to consistently improve their team’s capabilities and results over time. Their work should make those in their sphere of influence better.
As Peter Drucker said: "Managers are not paid to perform, but to make others perform."
2. How far can someone grow without being a people manager?
Not everyone wants to or is a great people manager. Ideally you want to have parallel paths for those who find other ways to expand their impact and keep growing. For example:
How else can people provide leadership beyond having direct reports?
What does it mean to be an expert – perhaps the expert – for a given job function? Do you trust them with the most difficult and important decisions in this area?
Can everyone be an expert?
My take: you should have individual contributor equivalents for most non-executive manager levels; experts are the ones who are at the top of their domain and thus they are rare, even on high performing teams; having comparable impact to a manager of a large team is doable but a high standard.
3. Should this address AI usage directly?
These days AI is the elephant in the room for many discussions. It appears on company and team goals up to the board level. What this means for levels and paths may be another thing. For example:
Is usage of AI a reflection of performance and seniority, or is it a specific means to an end?
What parts of this are likely to be true in the future and what parts are changing?
Can you generalize the criteria in a way that makes them more flexible and useful?
My take: AI technology and usage is changing so fast, codifying this in a longer term career path is an exercise in futility; while adoption of AI or AI-enabled processes are goals for some teams, focus the competencies on things that are more durable keys to success; if this is important, embracing change and learning new skills may be better ways to frame this than a specific technology or process.
Completing the Paths
Some other things I like to include for clarity:
Job summary. This is the tl;dr of each level. For example: “Demonstrates strong ownership and execution on a major goal with a high degree of independence” for a PM, or “works successfully through others to achieve their goals” for a manager.
When they are ready for a promotion. What differentiates a strong performer at this level from someone ready for the next level? In reality performance is a continuum, but you want to identify clear markers. If this is vague, expect the conversation to be frustrating for both of you.
Complementing the Paths
Look at this as a key part of a broader system for performance management. Once you have your paths defined, look to related tools and processes – each of which can be their own topics for separate blogs:
Ongoing recognition. Although promotions are strong motivators, they are infrequent. Ideally you want recognition to be a core part of your culture to reinforce positive behaviors – and correct mistakes. This can include direct praise and recognition in team forums.
How and when will you discuss performance? Feedback should be frequent and immediate, but I find it helpful to have a recurring performance and career check-in with team members – somewhere between monthly and quarterly. This can be as simple as rating performance for each competency, discussing disconnects, and choosing areas of focus.
What are the person’s goals and motivations? It’s a mistake to assume people are motivated only by promotions. They may want a new challenge in a new team, job function, stage of business, country or company.
Calibration across managers. These ladders establish standards in writing, but usage is important for them to have the most meaning and impact. Calibration exercises, whether for performance ratings or a 9 block exercise, encourage consistency.
How and when can people get promoted? Most companies do this on cycles, with exceptions for extraordinary circumstances. Usually the criteria is a combination of performance and consistency from the employee combined with need and opportunity from the team.
A Final Note
A career ladder is one of the most concrete ways to create clarity about what great looks like — and to make sure your best people know there's a path forward with you. Establishing and reinforcing clear standards is an important part of building a high-performance team.
If you want to discuss how to establish this and to raise the bar for your team, let’s chat. Book time.
