Cityscoot Excellence Framework (aka Product-Tech-Data career path)
How do we define and position seniority at Cityscoot? How do we estimate salaries and give an overall coherence? What is required to progress and therefore how is a career path defined?
We ride on the shoulders of giants, and we used many of the existing career paths to shape our own… And since transparency is one of our values, so let’s talk publicly about Cityscoot’s Excellence Framework (a.k.a. Product-Tech-Data career path).
1. Organisational hierarchy or the relative positioning of people
As flat as an organisation might want to be, there will always be a relative positioning among people, may that be by experience, by responsibilities, by value added to the company, etc.
Many companies, particularly old established ones, have adopted models defining “job levels” inside the company. Even thought they try to convince themselves that levels depend on criteria like “creativity”, “boldness”, “skills” and so on, in practice they usually rely solely the budget handled and the number of people underneath. Careers paths that progress economically seem bound to management only, and the criteria on budget does not promote frugality.
In the end, there is not enough reasonable room for everyone to be a manager (don’t make me start on “managers of 1 person” organisations…), and not enough budget for everyone to handle millions… So how do people progress?
We believe a career path must be intrinsically achievable, a function of experience and acquired/proven skills, both hard and soft, that allow you to position yourself among colleagues in term of the value added and capacity to make others around you and the organisation grow.
2. How about salaries?
Salaries should be based on your job level (if this one is correctly defined).
One of the biggest mistakes companies make, and one of the main reasons they lose top talent, is thinking a salary is defined “inhouse”, using internal grids updated at the rate that is disconnected from the market.
Salary is an external data, it comes from the market and its tension for a given resource at a given time. Cityscoot is lucky enough to have an activity that has a great impact on society, the environments and the energy/mobility transition, so almost everyone is passionate about what we do… No one wants an army of heartless mercenaries, but we believe people should not sacrifice their value for passion (which by the way is — sadly — the model for many NGOs).
With this in mind, we use the main available annual surveys for French salaries to reevaluate our baseline and try to stay as close as possible to the market for the different positions. Some examples of these sources are:
- Talent.io salary report
- IESF (Société des Ingénieurs et Scientifiques Français) survey (official reference for french Science & Engineering Schools)
- DataRecrutement salary study
- Harnham (international recruitment agency) tech & data salary report
- Thiga LPC Salary Report (french reference for Product)
3. Cityscoot Excellence Framework
Some companies also call this a career path. The main purpose is to clarify a list of criteria to evaluate the progression of all employees in a given area (in this case Product, Technical & Data but we might try to extend it even further, in time) through different levels. It is a framework for overall self-evaluation, in-house positioning and career evolution/progression.
These criteria can be: the experience (years of experience), hard skills and soft skills.
Some examples of Hard skills are:
- Mastery of domain
- Polyvalence (we believe in T-shaped profiles )
- Autonomy
- …
On the hand, examples of Soft skills are:
- Customer / Value focus
- Team dynamic
- Continuous improvement & Knowledge sharing
- …
Why do a common framework for Product, Engineering and Data?
I started this exercise on the Product side, but soon realized that while it might seem counter intuitive, there are more things in common than things that truly separate senior profiles from one or the other domains. This helps bring clarity to what it means to reach a certain level, regardless of the domain.
Since the Excellence Framework is by nature generic, it is usually completed with specific skill set evaluations proper to each domain and expertise (Product, Design, Front development, Back development, Data Science, Data Analysis…).
Defining the levels
We simplified our model and reduced it to 4 levels, based on experience and a given degree of skills. Levels are cumulative, so the skills evaluated are additive.
- Junior level
- Confirmed / mid-level
- Senior level
- Mentor level
Levels are defined so that everyone can naturally progress as she/he gains experience. Market-baseline salaries follow this progression.
What does the “No-Go Zone” mean? After a certain time/experience, not acquiring the skill set to jump-up to the next level is a sign of not meeting the required excellence expected in the organisation. This should not happen and is a red-flag.
Skills evaluation
These are not taken as a checklist to move up a level or accelerate promotions, but as a baseline of discussion during yearly evaluation, a tool to help everyone progress and give indications on the way to move forward.
So what’s next?
The Excellence Framework is a live tool and must be periodically updated collectively to match new requirements, observed lacks… As you can see, the presented version corresponds to September 2022, we will continue to make our entire organisation evolve. This is fundamental to make the company and all its employees progress, together.
This is a complex topic, let us know what you think: feedback is a gift! 😉
