I've never seen a career framework I liked

The first time I was presented with a career framework, I didn't take it well. My manager gave me a sheet with a few categories and a score from 0 to 10 and explained that raises and promotions would depend on my score. I was upset! This company had a very strong culture of self-improvement, it was possible to move fast and ship bug-free, but you had to think, test your ideas with others, show your thought process, and sweat the details. It felt like we had captured something intangible and special, and this table felt insulting, infantilizing and opposed to how I thought we worked.

The second time I was presented with something similar, I had a very different experience. I was a new Engineering Manager and I had no clue what I was doing. The company set me up with a leadership coach and he gave me a sheet with a few categories and a score from 0-10 and told me to think about them and how they affect the work I do. I loved it! It gave me a foundation for me to reflect and improve. If my manager ever saw my scores, I was not aware of it.

I often think about these two experiences: The two sheets were basically the same thing: A few sentences describing what is valuable in my job, and a score from 1-10. Why did I react so differently in both scenarios? I've had to use similar systems in several teams since then, and I keep coming back to these two moments. The first was a career framework, it took agency away and made my worth quantifiable and external. The second was a learning tool, it was up to me to give it meaning.

It's that first scenario that I want to talk about here: A "career framework" is the process by which a company evaluates the competency, career level, salary and fit of employees. They may consist of one or more artefacts such as yearly or biannual self-assessments, manager assessments, 360 feedback, SMART goals, and a set of evaluation criteria like what you'd find in progression.fyi. I've never encountered one of these that I like.

It's about objectivity!

One of the common arguments for frameworks like this is about objectivity: You see, if we don't have a standardized form to measure people against each other, a mean evil manager will slip through the cracks and they'll prevent Good People™ from growing their careers. Your team might even run calibration sessions to make sure we're not applying the rules differently.

The fact is that nobody outside the team has a full view of what goes inside the team, and the bigger the size, the harder it becomes to do so, so we just have to trust the manager's word. A bad manager looking to punish their employees will do so with or without a framework, but with a framework they can hide behind a pretense of objectivity.

I think it might be even worse for well intentioned feedback-givers thinking they're being objective. A standardized framework can get in the way of the complex reflection needed to give good feedback and avoid confirmation bias, anchoring bias, recency bias, affinity bias, the halo effect and many many other cognitive biases[1].

[1] Wikipedia's List of Cognitive Biases

My belief: A company-wide or department-wide format doesn't help much if you already have a good culture of learning and exchange, can trick people into a false sense of objectivity, and obfuscates bad actors.

My take: You won't be objective, be upfront about this. Think hard about what type of team you want and what type of team you have. Share this with others, ask how they fit in the team. Build a shared vision for what the team is and what part you all play in it. Read your company's assessment sheet, read other companies' and come up with what's important to you in your own wording. Work with each team member to have something that you can all agree on. When the review cycle comes along, don't sweat the format (or even better, ditch the cycle!).

It's about personal growth!

This is another common argument I hear: This framework is valuable because we want everyone in the company to improve. You might care about this as a person, your manager might also care about this aspect. But at the end of the day it's going to conflict with its other goal: inform the raises, promotions and performance improvements plans.

If the goal is to learn and improve, I don't think this is a good way to do it. Even if you're quite junior and you don't know where to start, a rigid set of goals is doing you a disservice. Every job is incredibly complex. There's not a single set of skills or knowledge that will make you good at your job. Learning is not linear, it depends on circumstances and evolves constantly. Likewise, success in a team isn't individual. It depends on social connections, on how personalities complement or contrast each other, on being able to see a problem from a different perspective. A rigid system will only snuff out diversity and miss the intangible but important effects.

Yes, I liked having that structure when I was starting as a manager. In fact, I've kept using the same sheet over the years, but it has changed significantly. It changed because I changed, because my job changed, because my circumstances changed. It only works for me because I have the flexibility to adapt it to my needs.

My belief: Learning is rhizomatic. Your learning goals will change with you, having fixed-term goals doesn't reflect that reality.

My take: Consider what skills you think are important for your team, take inspiration from progression evaluation sheets. Share this and explain your reasoning, but don't prescribe. Let your teammates set the goal and focus on what will change. Journal and revisit regularly.

It's about fair wages!

No it isn't.

My belief: If you want to solve the problem of fair wages, reduce the gap between the lowest and highest paid person, and have fewer ranges or salaries. Have three salaries! Heck, have just one!

My advice: Don't mix your accounting goals with your career development goals. Everyone can see through it, nobody likes it, and you lose credibility every time you have to do the mental gymnastics of "you are doing well but we can't pay you more" to solve the problem you created by linking the two together.

It's about efficiency!

This argument goes something like "it's more efficient to have a one-size-fits all process that is predictable, especially at a large scale." The sheer amount of preparation, scheduling, writing, and meeting required just to make the process flow seems hardly efficient.

My belief: These systems create an avalanche of work for everyone in the organization with almost no gain. Focus on your main goals is reduced, and people rush to meet the deadlines and phone it in. It's chaos, and it doesn't achieve much.

My take: Let people push for a more in-depth review when they feel they need it. Bake learning into every aspect of how you work and make it a shared responsibility. Be clear on the fact that promotions depend on both merit and availability. Set clear expectations on budgets for salary increases.

Why do we do it then?

I don't know! I'm sure some companies really believe in it, others might see successful teams using these frameworks and try to emulate it, others still might know it's flawed but think "something is better than nothing". I could also be completely wrong and it's actually very successful!

My belief: Just like Agile, this has become one of those practices "you just do" without thinking too much about the context around it.

My take: Set a constraint for yourself. If you removed this process from your company. How could you do it differently?

I am actually curious about this. I'm sure there's ample research or counter-examples, so I want to take a look at it. So here's my thoughts as of today, I'll let you know if I change my mind.