Career Development

To communicate what progression looks like, first we need to establish what roles and responsibilities look like at different job levels.

Job Roles	These describe a specific set of jobs like Software Engineer or Account Executive.
Job Levels	Within each Job Role, a team member will be placed at a certain Job Level:
• IC1: Junior
• IC2: Mid-level
• E3: Senior or L3: Team Lead
• E4: Staff or L4: Director
• E5: Principal or L5: VP
• E6: Senior Principal or L6: Exec
Job Tracks	As team members become more senior, they can choose to join one of two Job Tracks: Expert (E) or People Leadership (L).

The Expert and Leadership Job Tracks are equivalent in influence, compensation and responsibility. The equivalence between Job Tracks is a really important point: leadership is one possible specialism and comes with a specific skill set. It's important and managing a team is hard, but so are lots of other skill sets. Sequence values individuals within a Job Level equally on the assumption that they add the same amount of value in different ways.

It’s worth noting that choosing a Job Track isn’t an irreversible decision. Team members can move between the E and L tracks if they prefer to try something different in the next phase of their careers. Although, for a team member to move into a new role requires the headcount to be open for that role in the hire plan. | | Job Titles | Follow a standard rubric dependent on an individual’s Job Role and Job Level. | | Career Ladder | Table of competencies laying out what is expected of someone at a certain Job Level. |

Career Ladder: Individual Contributor

Career Ladder: Leadership

Starting point

At the point of joining the company, a team member will have been offered a Job Role at a Job Level that meets their skills and responsibilities, according to the Career Ladder. Salary and equity are a factor of that Job Role and Job Level.

Where somebody has skills and responsibilities which suggest they are part-way between two Job Levels, this will inform whether their starting salary is in the lower, middle or upper third of the salary band.

Progression

The speed of progression through job levels is a function of somebody’s contribution to Sequence in terms of outcomes and behaviours.

That means that job level progression is not a linear function of years or experience. In other words, high performers progress through levels faster than average performers. ‘Solid’ performers progress more slowly, and low performers may not progress at all until they improve their performance.

As with any craft, as responsibilities grow and seniority increases, it takes longer to progress through higher job levels. But some brilliant performers can and will move quickly even at senior levels.

During an employee’s first performance review, If it becomes clear that they have been started at the wrong Job Level then this can be corrected.

Promotion

Once a team member is performing at the top of their Job Level, if there is a job available at the next Job Level, they’ll be promoted.

Some common exceptions to this would be:

A team member who displays good performance (e.g. 2/2 OvB score) consistently over time and therefore slowly progresses in terms of salary, without ever showing the kind of ‘step up’ progression to be promoted to the next Level. In this case, we’ll keep adjusting the team member’s salary up over time, and are happy for their salary to creep into the next band—but they wouldn’t be formally promoted to the next Job Level until they display the attributes expected at the next Level.