Notes

Career Development Plan

2 min read

Career development plan

July 2024

Ideas

  • Ask manager for early performance feedback
  • Ask manager for structured performance goals in PiP style (non-disciplinary)
  • Ask manager for 360 feedback from peers about areas of improvement
  • Ask senior co-workers (i.e. Anton) for performance coaching or mentoring

My perceived areas of shittiness

  • I’m too immature
    • I talk about my feelings too much
    • I get anxious when facing criticism from senior co-workers or managers
    • I complain too easily about perceived unfairness from product or project managers
      • e.g. On-call interruptions, deadline being moved up unexpectedly due to PM-PdM miscommunication
  • I’m not very productive
    • My personal velocity per week is probably lower than my team or peer average
    • I think it’s because I’ve been trying to work on stretch assignments lately
  • I don’t contribute very much at a big picture level
    • e.g. In meeting with product about

Worries

  • I’m afraid that I’m first in line for a lay-off
  • I think that my peers think less of me
  • I didn’t receive a pay increase this year and so I’m not even keeping up with inflation

Alternate job options

I’ll probably need to wait for another year at least. I’ll be applying for senior positions and most places are looking for 5+ years of experience. Alternatively, I can wait to be promoted to senior at my current job and then apply elsewhere with the new title.

I might be able to get an informational interview at an interesting company, or maybe I should just apply anyways and try to get a feel for how far away I am from meeting the job criteria.

Criteria for a potential new job

  1. Better pay
  2. Primarily a tech company, mid-sized
  3. Allows work from home
  4. Strong employee investment (see note below)
  5. Strong accessibility opportunities
  6. Unionized?

Employee investment

  1. The “Loyal Soldier” HR strategy is where a company invests heavily into employee training and retention. Companies employing this strategy generally offer less pay, but greater employee benefits. Human Resource Management, 3rd Edition (OReilly).
  2. Companies generally can be categorized into meritocratic, or procedural. Where meritocratic companies allow higher potential for the best performing employees, procedural companies have a more rigorous process around employee advancement and improvement. The Staff Engineer’s Path (OReilly).

Candidates

https://narwhalproject.org/narwhal-list/

  1. Clio
  2. 1Password

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