

Some thoughts on "Up or Out" - antiform
http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/29/some-thoughts-on-up-or-out/

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njetx
I worked for McKinsey for 4 years and I actually really liked the up or out
process. Yes, it puts you under pressure but not much more than the pressure
young competitive people tend to put themselves under anyway. Nearly everyone
there wanted to be challenged and get fast promotion. At the same time the
process was very open, feedback was fair and when people didn't make it there
wasn't much stigma attached (it just didn't work for them).

The flip side of up or out is that if you are any good you get promoted very
quickly. I couldn't think of anything worse than waiting around for your boss
to retire or move on.

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jrockway
_I have proposed before to organizations that they implement a non-management
technical track all the way to the CxO level, because it’s a lot cheaper to
keep your best people on salary than to hire them (or their equivalents) back
as consultants at 2x to 6x their salaries. Such a track might look like this:
Associate Engineer - > Engineer -> Senior Engineer -> Technical Officer ->
Senior Technical Officer -> Executive Technical Officer -> Chief Technical
Officer (only one of these). The ranks from Technical Officer and up would
have salaries, perks, and benefits equivalent to progressing through
management (VP, Senior VP, Executive VP), but without actual management/head
count responsibilities._

I like this idea a lot. It certainly sounds like a reason to continue working
for one company.

