Lessons Learned from Designing a Product Design Career Ladder
In this article, I will share the building process of the product design career ladder at Super Dispatch and lessons learned during it.
I joined Super Dispatch in 2015 as the first product designer. I have worked on different company products since then. The company has grown fast during the past years, so we decided to expand our design team in 2018. Hiring 3 designers in 2 months made me take the Design Lead role. We have different products and teams in our company. The designers are a part of these product teams.
Problem
We didn’t have a clear guideline on career growth for the designers and didn’t know who was on what level, how to identify it, and how to help the designers grow.
Solution
I started working with our engineering leadership on a product design career ladder to build a career growth framework for the designers so that they fully grasp the requirements of their current level and how to get promoted to the levels above that.
Product Designer Career Ladder 1.0
After some quick research, we designed the 1st version of the career ladder and shared it with the design team. In this version, we mostly collected the necessary skills. Instead of using specific levels like junior, middle, and senior, we decided to number them.
What We Discovered
There were several challenges while applying this version of the ladder:
- Some requirements weren’t clear enough.
- We didn’t know how to measure the progress.
- It wasn’t clear how to get promoted.
Product Design Career Ladder 2.0
After facing these challenges and getting feedback from the team, I started working on the next version of the ladder. The goal was to make sure the requirements would be clear and the progress on goals set based on them would be measurable.
First, I reviewed the existing design ladders on Progression to learn how other product companies approach them. After reviewing them, we decided to use one of them as an experiment. Then, I realized it could be challenging because companies build these frameworks based on their business requirements, products, and team structure. As a result, requirements can be quite different in different companies, so it might not be a good idea to apply another company’s ladder without adapting it to our requirements.
In the 2nd version of the ladder, we decided to experiment with dividing skills into 4 categories:
- Dexterity (Hard skills or design skills)
- Strength (Getting Stuff Done)
- Wisdom (Impact)
- Charisma (Communication and Leadership)
Before rolling out this version to the team, I provided one-on-one meetings with the product designers and went through all the points mentioned under each level, and it helped us get aligned.
Testing and Iterating
The Product Design Career Ladder 2.0 was rolled out to the team in January of 2021 for our performance reviews. The team’s feedback has been positive since we were able to determine each designer’s level and set SMART goals. But as there is always room for improvement, we will continue to iterate upon it as the company and team evolve.
Learnings
- Using a career ladder from another company can be challenging because companies build their career ladder based on their business requirements and team structure.
- It’s not enough to use a career ladder only during performance reviews. Revisiting the requirements and goals set for each designer during one-on-one meetings should be mandatory.
- Evaluation between middle and senior levels could take more time than between associate/junior and middle levels.
