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@ken jackson, are you in a position to share what you would consider to be a good definition of what 'the next level' or promotion might look like? Is it somet

@ken jackson, are you in a position to share what you would consider to be a good definition of what 'the next level' or promotion might look like? Is it something specific to the individual, or something more general? I've found it extremely challenging to write a light weight tech progression ladder, that is flexible enough to still be of use on a week by week basis for a specific individual and general enough to provide comparison across teams. Any thoughts much appreciated (my initial stab can be found here http://fragile.org.uk/2010/09/how-to-appraise-a-developer-part-1/ http://fragile.org.uk/2010/09/how-to-appraise-a-developer-pa... it also explains why, despite this thread, I have a need for a tech ladder). Neil

kenjackson 16y ago
The way I've done it, although I really don't think its optimal, is to do it on a very individual basis w/ no formal guidelines. What I've found useful is to make all roadmaps publicly available, except for sensitive inforamtion. And then calibrate it upwards. So you as a manager, review with your manager your directs roadmap. You don't have to do this sync up often, but just enough so they can say, "Hmm... Tim's level 3 is doing much more impressive stuff, we probably need to sync up on this". And of course, with everything public you can get feedback from anyone at anytime -- but this happens less often than you might think. In a big company this will probably lead to discrepencies across orgs. But honestly that probably happens anyways.
- neiljohnson 16y ago
  That's interesting, I do like the personal approach, but I'm not sure I see how you know to say, 'okay you've progressed enough that you can now call yourself a Senior Software Developer' Ideally, I think I'd prefer not to have to assign labels at all (for the very good reasons outlined in this thread), but in practice I've found this not to be practical.

kenjackson 16y ago

The way I've done it, although I really don't think its optimal, is to do it on a very individual basis w/ no formal guidelines. What I've found useful is to make all roadmaps publicly available, except for sensitive inforamtion. And then calibrate it upwards. So you as a manager, review with your manager your directs roadmap. You don't have to do this sync up often, but just enough so they can say, "Hmm... Tim's level 3 is doing much more impressive stuff, we probably need to sync up on this". And of course, with everything public you can get feedback from anyone at anytime -- but this happens less often than you might think. In a big company this will probably lead to discrepencies across orgs. But honestly that probably happens anyways.

neiljohnson 16y ago
That's interesting, I do like the personal approach, but I'm not sure I see how you know to say, 'okay you've progressed enough that you can now call yourself a Senior Software Developer' Ideally, I think I'd prefer not to have to assign labels at all (for the very good reasons outlined in this thread), but in practice I've found this not to be practical.