A new iteration of our engineering career path at Alan
A few years ago, we shared our engineering career path with the outside world. We thought it was interesting for our candidates and other companies to see how we envision an engineering career path.
In the past years, our grid didn’t change much: we only updated some wording. For more than a year we frequently received internal feedback that it could be improved and clarified. That’s why we decided to make a significant change to it.
Why a new version?
We started from the observation that most Alaners in product roles are working with Alaners in other product roles. By “product role” we mean: product managers, product designers, researchers, engineers, data scientists, etc. — all the people working closely on the product.
So our goals were to:
- Ease the reviewing of performance of an Alaner in a different role
- Increase efficiency for the promotion committee
- Improve fairness of outcomes
That meant having a common framework to build career paths across multiple roles: data scientists, engineers, product managers, product designers, operations managers, etc.
We also received feedback from engineers that our grid was not as clear as we expected it to be. We wanted to address some of the most common clarifying questions we received from readers of the grid.
How to use the new definition
We first wanted to define what to expect from the grid for a product role and what it should measure:
We measure impact first
Performance at Alan is ultimately about one’s impact, meaning the value one creates for members and the company. We decided to use the equity value created as a common metric across Alan because we believe it’s a good proxy.
Level descriptions are not checklists but guidelines
The descriptions are only a starting point in determining the level of an Alaner’s performance. There are aspects that cannot be captured in a short and incomplete rubric like this one, and hence, every level review decision is unique and must be handled on a case-by-case basis.
What matters, in the end, is the impact the Alaner has on Alan. A complementary guide to having an impact can be found in the Alan Leadership Principles.
Level changes are about what one has actually done (track record)
They are not about what one could hypothetically do — it’s a consequence of being impact-oriented. It can be frustrating if you did not have a project that allowed you to prove yourself, but we believe it ensures fairness and avoids theoretical and subjective discussions. We also believe that it’s your role to provoke those opportunities, particularly for senior levels (demonstrate agency).
Levels are large bands, not thin lines
There is no rule as to the time an Alaner should spend at each level. That said, growing enough to change levels takes time, and this time is expected to grow with each level. It typically takes several years to go through higher levels (D and above). Levels are the result of steady personal growth and impact over time, not a measure of what an Alaner delivered during one cycle.
How to read each level
We decided to keep the letters we previously used as the whole company already uses them. We only refined them to highlight what it means to work on the Alan product.
How does it apply for engineering levels?
Based on the principles above, we decided to revamp our engineering grid. Our new grid, which is (by design) greatly influenced by the one above, should be read with the following guidelines:
- For each keyword in bold in the 1-line description of the philosophy pillars (scope of impact, expertise & leadership), we have provided a definition applicable to the day-to-day work of a software engineer at Alan.
- To support these definitions, we have added illustrative examples from past or present peers.
Levels definition
As we mentioned above, we added internal examples from past reviews for each keyword. As we are a fully transparent company, all reviews of all Alaners are accessible to all other Alaners. That’s why we can rely on real- world examples. For obvious reasons, we decided not to share those examples below, as it mentions Alaners and their internal reviews.
As each level is quite detailed, we’ve published separate articles for each level. Nonetheless, we’ve also given a brief summary of each level below.
A list of quick links for each level: B1, C0, C1, D, E, F, and G+.
Level B1
Detailed version is here.
You are just starting your career.
- Scope of Impact: You are autonomous on the tasks and small projects that you own.
- Expertise: You are building and refining core technical skills.
- Leadership: You demonstrate that you learn efficiently.
Engineering team Impact
- We don’t expect you to have an impact on the team at this level and encourage you to focus your energy on your personal growth.
Specifics
We expect engineers at level B1 to grow fast enough, a rule of thumb is that we will start questioning if Alan is a good environment for you if you are still at the same level after 18 months.
Level C0
Detailed version is here.
Your mandate is to grow while actively contributing.
- Scope of Impact: You can demonstrate clear impact on problems that you own.
- Expertise: You are autonomous on core skills, building fluency and mastery on the full-spectrum.
- Leadership: You are autonomous to drive your projects, with support for scoping and framing or when the project becomes too ambiguous.
Engineering team impact
We don’t expect you to have an impact on the team at this level and encourage you to focus your energy on your personal growth.
Specifics
A rule of thumb is that we will start questioning if Alan is a good environment for you if you are at the C0 level for 2 years.
Level C1
Detailed version is here.
Your mandate is to grow while actively contributing.
- Scope of Impact: You can demonstrate a clear impact on problems that you own within your immediate team.
- Expertise: You are autonomous on core skills, building fluency and mastery on the full-spectrum.
- Leadership: You are autonomous to drive your projects, with support for scoping and framing or when the project becomes too ambiguous.
Engineering team impact
You are an active contributor to helping the engineering team run with a small scope.
- You contribute to at least one engineering team initiative on a regular basis (recruiting, incident management, onboarding, mentoring, etc.)
Specifics
Very simliar to C0: A rule of thumb is that we will start questioning if Alan is a good environment for you if you are at the C1 level for 3 years.
Level D
Detailed version is here.
You are a driving force on the topics that you own.
- Scope of Impact: You can demonstrate impact on member and business problems. You impact the trajectory of your immediate team (eg: team or small department).
- Expertise: You have solid foundations on all the spectrum of your practice. Your solutions are high quality and can be trusted, without supervision.
- Leadership: You can be trusted to lead any medium-sized project, independently. You can move quickly and keep momentum when needed. You can frame problems and build sound, long-lasting solutions for them.
Engineering team impact
You are trusted to lead engineering team initiatives and do so regularly
- You occasionally own and regularly contribute to engineering team initiatives.
- You may start to coach Alaners up to level C1.
Specifics
Levels D and above are terminal levels. It is fine for an engineer to spend their whole career in level D. Alan will do everything so that someone who wants to grow to the next level can achieve it, but there is no such expectation.
Level E
Detailed version is here.
You are a leader in your department.
- Scope of Impact: You consistently deliver a large impact on ambiguous member problems and on our business. You impact the trajectory of your extended team (eg: large team, department).
- Expertise: You are proficient on most of the technical and/or product stack, and expert on its parts related to your practice. On these, you are a go-to person, able to unblock other Alaners.
- Leadership: You are a driving force in identifying large-impact problems or opportunities. You ensure short- and long-term velocity by solving complex problems with high-quality solutions. You might coordinate the work of several people from product roles as part of bringing those solutions.
Engineering team impact
You identify and own improvements for the whole engineering team
- You own improvements or experimentations that are well framed and impact the entire engineering team.
- You focus on editing the engineering team, by ensuring the understanding and durability of your changes.
- You are effective at attracting senior (D+) engineers to join Alan and mentoring them when they arrive.
Specifics
Same as D, this a terminal level.
Level F
Detailed version is here.
You are a leader for Alan.
- Scope of Impact: You consistently identify and solve Alan’s hardest member and business problems. You may own a large scope or tackle high ambiguity. You impact the trajectory of a large department or several departments.
- Expertise: You understand finely and demonstrate how to deploy your proficiency efficiently, using both soft and hard skills. You may be an expert in redefining key technical abilities for Alan.
- Leadership: You make Alan faster. You enable and inspire your peers through your output, and a big part of your impact is indirect.
Engineering team impact
You are a leader in the engineering team and are enabling its success over time
- You identify and drive ambitious and ambiguous topics impacting the entire engineering team and beyond.
- You are helping the engineering team grow by pushing and exemplifying strong accountability to learn from incidents and mistakes.
- You are effective at attracting very senior (E+) engineers to join Alan and mentoring when they join.
- You consistently improve our recruiting process to allow us to keep raising the bar.
- You may coach more than two Alaners and in particular you are comfortable coaching coaches, team leads and department leads.
Specifics
From level F, we believe the best performers are spiky. Some engineers may be at their level because of performance in one or several of the F-level dimensions, rather than all of them. In short, the best “F+ engineers” usually follow a certain pattern. On top of their engineering team impact:
- They come with a problem they identified.
- They are capable of explaining what the problem is in technical and business terms.
- They offer 1 way forward, but contrast it with other options they considered.
- They know exactly how to measure the success of their change.
- They can tell you clearly where they need help to make it happen.
Most importantly, they are able to repeat this process indefinitely vertically (convince X people about 1 specific problem) and horizontally (apply same principles on a number of different problems)
We’ve determined a non-exhaustive list of flavors. We can have someone be exceptional in one of the following departments to be achieving at level F/G/H:
- Organization building
- Technological breakthroughs
- Team delivery
- Infrastructure leading
Level G+
Those levels are a bit different as they are leadership positions in the company: VP or C-level positions. So they are handled in a different way and grid. This is out of the scope of this article so we won’t discuss them.
Next steps
What we plan to do over the next months is to add more concrete examples for each section. Those will allow current engineers to see the kind of actions that are considered aligned with the grid. Of course those are only examples — not things to redo.
As usual, if you have any feedback, feel free to reach out to us. And we’re still hiring at jobs@alan.com.
