Rethinking the Pyramid We Work In

Welcome to Careerland

In fortunate circumstances, you graduate school and find a place in the workforce, just like you thought you should. But then, you immediately experience culture shock - no semester breaks, no changed agenda every six months, and no graduation date. 

In the middle of all this change, it’s easy to lose direction. Most careers warn the first few years will be “drinking from the firehose,” and in your rush to understand the new system, you forget to question what works for you, rather than just accepting what you are told. 

You lean on existing structures to provide direction and meaning. Unfortunately, in many organizations, what is available to you is a career “ladder.” You’ve entered into a pyramid at the bottom level, and you see this represented in the org chart - your picture dangling like fruit at the bottom of a tree that narrows more and more until reaching the CEO on the top. 

There are no freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years; there are now associates, senior associates, managers, directors, partners, executives, and more. 

In impatience, ambition, and a desire to gain some autonomy, you look for the next step. Unless you are incredibly lucky, your first job likely doesn’t supply much meaning for you. It's easy to think that maybe the work would be more meaningful (or at least pay more) if you climb higher on the tree. 

But what path is available to us?

The Traditional Path

You seek out the next promotion, aiming to increase your perceived status and worth, and you get a standard set of options. In the first round or two of promotions, you increase your ability to perform tasks, becoming a valuable contributor. Now you get more responsibilities, more complex tasks, maybe even a little more say in how the tasks are done. 

Your initially shocked system is constantly training you to work more efficiently all the time, but you still probably don’t have a lot of say in what will happen to you or what work you’ll be doing.

So you pursue the next level, which is some form of middle management. You’ve executed tasks, improved your execution, surely it’s time for you to lead small initiatives and maybe have a team working for you so you can make them the excellent contributor you’ve become. 

Soon you search to compound this influence and become a director, managing other managers who manage other contributors. Then your responsibility becomes external, looking to get to the executive level, working on where to steer the ship so you can tell your directors to tell their managers to tell their contributors, and so on.

The Traditional Problem

The issue with this model is that growth is connected almost entirely to managing other people and rewards different skills at different rungs on the ladder.

Individual contribution is a distinct skill from leading teams, but traditional growth moves from the former to the latter despite the different talents rarely displayed in the same person.

On the individual level, this damages careers in both directions. Some with a more natural bend towards helping and enabling others to do their work may struggle with individual contribution and not be considered for promotion, whereas someone with demonstrable skills at contribution may be promoted out of the role they thrive in.

The organization limits itself in this model as well, as promoting the wrong person to a management position causes many ripple effects. For example, suppose the person was a strong contributor. In that case, that contribution is likely to be diluted significantly as their time moves to managerial tasks, or the person may choose to continue to behave as a contributor. At the same time, the team languishes without a leader. Alternatively, the newly appointed manager may have no wish to lead the team or not be trusted by the team, and they will struggle to produce more than resentment. 

These scenarios increase burnout, lower productivity, and drive turnover. 

Both companies and employees want frameworks for career paths and growth, but the traditional model has remained essentially unchanged for decades. Especially with the rise of “knowledge work,” this model is not well suited for the modern era. 

A New Style 

If we want to provide opportunities for growth while allowing employees to play to their strengths, we need a framework revolving around how people do work rather than what work people do. Those who value connection and supporting others are likely better fits for leadership roles, where those who value freedom and autonomy may fit better in positions that allow them to work independently and quickly. This more nuanced approach allows for greater adaptation, compared to focus on technical skills that change over time anyway.

Assume you are hiring a software developer to backfill a recent departure. It’s easy to fall into the trap of saying, “She wrote our Python code. We need to find someone who writes Python.” While that skill will undoubtedly be helpful in the role, it does not encapsulate what that employee did or how she did it. She may have been particularly gifted at rapid prototyping, providing valuable insights during code reviews, or identifying rare but powerful edge cases and user tests. Any developer will have to do a little of all of these tasks, but rarely will they have a natural bend and talent for all of them.

The question when hiring then becomes what does the team need? Is it someone who can inspire the team? Is it someone who can bring formalized processes? Is it someone with a knack for keeping a codebase clean? Or is it someone willing and able to change roles and responsibilities quickly?

In a startup, the bootstrapping phase may require people to play outside of their strengths often, but the more a team can openly acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses (even, or perhaps especially, in the early days), the better they can rely on one another and maintain morale through the roller coaster they will be on.

The traditional growth model will only reward certain skills at certain positions in the ladder. This approach results in shame for those who have little natural gift or interest in that skill while burning out employees who must consistently work outside their strengths. 

If they value the new style they must develop, they can train that muscle. If it is outside of their values, however, they may burn out and leave, taking the domain knowledge and expertise with them.

With so much individual potential available and often untapped, the stakes to best capture the spirit and ability of a team are high. If a company focuses on developing the potential of the individuals, the individuals will be far more likely to apply that potential to their work, accessing depths that were previously locked away.