liefery-it-legacy/it-career-ladder

Career ladder of Liefery IT department

Career at Liefery IT

The following career level descriptions are a guideline for the expectations the team members can have towards a colleague of a given level. A team member who wants to reach the next level needs to fulfill the vast majority of these expectations to be promoted to the next level. It is ok to have a few gaps if they are offset by coming in above expectations in other areas. By the time a team member progresses from a level towards the next level, they should have fulfilled all the expectations of the current level completely.

Developer Roles

• Intern Developer
• Junior Developer 1
• Junior Developer 2
• Midlevel Developer 1
• Midlevel Developer 2
• Senior Developer 1
• Senior Developer 2
• Principal Developer

Developer Tracks

                                         
      Maker Track           Manager Track
                                         
                                         
  Principal Developer         Team Lead  
          |                      |       
          |                      |       
          |                      |       
  Senior Developer II------------|       
          |                      |       
          |                      |       
          |                      |       
   Senior Developer I------------|       
          |                              
          |                              
          |                              
 Midlevel Developer II                   
          |                              
          |                              
          |                              
 Midlevel Developer I                    
          |                              
          |                              
          |                              
  Junior Developer II                    
          |                              
          |                              
          |                              
  Junior Developer I                     
          |                              
          |                              
          |                              
   Intern Developer                      

Product Management / QA Roles

• Product Manager 1
• Product Manager 2

Salaries

Our salaries are fixed per level and public within the team. You can view them here

Career ladder evaluations and promotions

1. Starting a conversation with team lead

• You can initiate a conversation about an evaluation with your team lead at any time. Let your team lead know and give her / him some time to prepare.
• If you don't initiate it, your team lead will initiate it twice a year (January / July)

2. Self-assessment and team-lead assessment

• In your one-on-ones, you and your team lead will do an assessment of your work compared to your current and next career level, based on feedback collected from others
• Both of you identify gaps and differences and make a plan what to do about it and how to improve

3. Continuous improvement

• You regularly check in with your team lead in one-on-ones about improvements in the identified areas

4. Promotions

• When your team-lead thinks you have reached the next level they make a case for it with the other team leads
• Christian suggests a promotion to the management team

Working students

We want to offer career progression possibilities to the team members employed as "working students", even though their position in the contract has to stay "working student" for legal reasons.

Working students are limited to 20 hours per week, have flexible working schedule, and are encouraged to prioritise university responsibilities over job responsibilities. This makes certain activities from our career ladder not viable, namely:

• participating in our support responsibility
• taking on the role of the squad coordinator

When assessing the level of a working student, we want to exclude the points related to the above activities. This in turn means that career progression may be limited to a certain level, if, for example, being a squad coordinator is a key part of the next level.

Glossary

Squad

We form project groups (we call them "squads") to work on a certain topic or a few features that are related to each other. The squad works for 4 sprints (4 weeks).

Squad Coordinator

Squad Coordinator is a facilitating role that helps us organise work within a squad. Among other things a Squad Coordinator is responsible for improving communication within the squad and checking if the squad is on track. Squad Coordinator is not a leader role. Everybody is encouraged to be a Squad Coordinator, regardless of their work experience and title.

Team Lead

The IT department is split into a few sub-teams. Every team is managed by a team lead and the team leads report to the CTO. Among other things a team lead is responsible for running regular 1-on-1's, helping with career progression and extra areas of expertise assigned to their team.