Hey friend!
Welcome to the 10th issue of the Mektup. Here is what I think about this newsletter: sending a letter (Mektup means letter in Turkish) to you every two weeks and intending to hear back from you. I’m still excited to send every letter like it’s day one. Meanwhile, I’m still considering different formats for the newsletter. So, if you have a wish, hit reply and send it over!
Now, onto the Mektup.
For the last half-year, I’ve been working on engineering career frameworks (clearly defined career ladders for software engineers) to describe what’s expected from each engineering level. I’ve moderated many sessions in our team. Observing how everyone evaluates themselves and others brought many learnings.
Career frameworks give opportunities to individual contributors. Although it introduces a hierarchy in which many people are disturbed, the engineer gets a seat at the leadership (decision) table. Otherwise, many decisions are accumulated on managers who, most of the time, are not experts on the engineering side.
Dropbox recently published its career framework, and other companies talked about it before as well. One great thing in Dropbox’s framework that many companies don’t have is separating the roles into individual contributor tracks such as quality assurance, reliability engineering, security engineering, etc. This separation helps all level of engineers to see how exactly they can grow in their careers.
Junior software engineers asked me many, many times about how they can grow their skills. If you are a junior or mid-level engineer looking for ways to develop your (technical & non-technical) skills, have a peek at these frameworks.
In more senior roles, such as staff-level engineers, the hassle is a little bit different. Staff engineers usually struggle to define their impact on the company and its scope. While evaluating people with a career framework at work, I’ve often seen engineers being required to bring examples to the table. If you are operating on a senior+ level, that isn’t easy because your work involves multi-teams and multi-year projects. Hence, it’s hard to convince the manager with demonstrated skills in finished projects.
Looking at multiple frameworks from different companies gives hints and solutions to help you achieve the next level. So, my recommendation is to look at the frameworks I listed below, even if you have one defined at work. Focus on how you can grow without the limits that your company imposes on you. Try to determine your existing impact and plan for the future.
Here are the frameworks I am already aware of:
- Dropbox Career Framework
- CircleCI Career Framework
- GitLab Career Framework
- Buffer Career Framework
- Rent The Runway Career Framework
— Candost
P.S.: You don’t need to learn another programming language every three months.
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