Life Lessons from the First Half-Century of My Career

Re:Life Lessons from the First Half-Century of My Career by neilv on Saturday January 25, 2025 @02:50PM (#42824174)

> Until recently, one company had a highly visible 10-step technical ladder, which led some engineers to pick projects that were the safest path to getting promoted by avoiding high-risk, high-reward projects. In my opinion, that behavior was bad for their careers and bad for the company.

I won't ask what company that is, since maybe there was a good reason not to say.

But is there a new fashion about this (edit: moving away from the now-familiar promo ladder gaming), spreading to other companies?

If so, is it genuinely to improve effectiveness, or something less laudable to workers (e.g., to reduce staffing costs)?

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Re:Life Lessons from the First Half-Century of My Career by ugh123 on Saturday January 25, 2025 @02:55PM (#42824236)

I've seen stuff like this at several companies.

It's created by HR to improve "fairness" and to help certain groups find clearer paths to promotion. But OP nails it in finding that it's often used as a "checklist" for people to do the bare minimum and then point to that when demanding promotion. It's rather gross IMHO.

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Re:Life Lessons from the First Half-Century of My Career by horrible-hilde on Saturday January 25, 2025 @07:11PM (#42826336)

As a retired manager in tech for 20 years this is a way to get the promotion hunters out of your face. There are many only interested in titles. I don't consider them good hires but man do they rise up in the ranks and they end driving the company down.

IME. Id say it is about 50/50, the chaff from the wheat. I think this has been true thru history.

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