

Do I Owe My Employees a Career Path? - Sukotto
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/do-i-owe-my-employees-a-career-path/

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DanielStraight
It sounds like his employees just need a raise. If I was making $500k a year
cleaning toilets, I wouldn't care about a career path. Obviously this example
is extreme, but if losing people is a disaster, you should be paying them
enough that it would be insane for them to leave unless they were planning a
complete career change.

As for more responsibility, just give people more say in how the company is
run. If your employers are better at something than you ever see yourself
being, they probably have insights that you would never have. Ask them.
Implement their ideas.

I don't think people really want to feel overpaid or overextended any more
than they want to feel underpaid or underutilized. If employees are asking for
more money or more responsibility, it's probably because they feel underpaid
or underutilized, not because they want excess.

~~~
ojbyrne
I think a few years at $500k cleaning toilets and you'd have enough money in
the bank to think about a career change. Even if it was

a. Running your own toilet cleaning business.

or

b. Retirement.

~~~
flyosity
What if cleaning toilets is your favorite thing to do in the world? Why start
a business (and, ostensibly, pay others to do the thing you love most) when
you could just keep on doing it, day after day?

~~~
ojbyrne
On a recent trip to Vegas, I was briefly in a bathroom at a casino where
someone had completely missed the toilet while having a crap. I just don't see
that being _anyone's_ favorite thing to do in the world.

~~~
flyosity
My favorite thing in the world is designing & coding software interfaces. I'm
sure there are a ton of people out there who look at me the same way you might
look at a toilet cleaner :)

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jtbigwoo
I knew a secretary at a big telecom equipment company that had been paid in
stock back when the company was just getting started. Twenty-five years later,
she was worth over $10,000,000 and still working the same job. She didn't have
a career path, she had two things:

-a job that made a difference at the company

-a share of the rewards

Give your employees those two things and they'll stick around.

~~~
shasta
I think you mean - she didn't have a career path, but she had two things:

\- a job that made a difference at the company

\- $10,000,000

~~~
jshen
He had it right. A share of the rewards is a gamble that there will be
rewards, but the outcome is unknown when the promise of rewards are given. She
only knew that if the company did well that she would also do well.

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c0riander
I think the more accurately stated question is: Is it better for my company if
I create a career path for my employees?

Everyone's knee-jerk reaction to using the word "owe" will be no. But I think
the question is an interesting one that I, at least, don't know the answer to.
On the yes side, there is the possibility of long-term retention and providing
more benefit to employees as a recruitment tool. On the no side, the potential
for these employees to then leave for better jobs, the resource drain in
creating such a program, the difficulty placing these people within a small
company, etc.

So I'm curious to hear what people who've had this experience think -- _is_ it
better for the company?

~~~
sp_
I used to work for a startup (employee) and I was wondering the same all the
time. One of the perks of working at this company that you were allowed to
speak at as many conferences as you wanted to and everybody who worked there
made good use of it.

On the one hand, this was basically our primary marketing tool. We talked
about our tools, other engineers saw them and convinced their companies to buy
our software. On the other hand, our engineers were constantly in contact with
people from big companies (Google, MS, ...) that tried to recruit them.

Curiously, only one of our engineers ever left the company voluntarily (that
was me, after four years), so apparently the boss managed to create a work
environment that was so great that even constant top-dollar recruitment
attempts by other companies had no effect.

~~~
KMStraub
That's great to hear. A company that is so confident in what its doing and its
hires, that it trusts and encourages them to expand their skill set and degree
of influence.

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grammaton
I think much the same dynamic is in play in the average developer's career.

Think of all the job postings you've seen asking for 5 years experience in
language X and 10 years experience in platform Y. Employers seem to want ever
more specialization out of their developers, which for the most part is
exactly the opposite of what is in the developer's own best interests. What
developer wants to end up wedded to a single platform or language - if they're
smart, or even just ambitious, they'll know that technical knowledge has a
frightfully short shelf life. Not to mention that the only way to get a
promotion or raise as a developer is typically to jump ship and go somewhere
else. So it seems to be in their own best interests to branch out and try new
things, which typically involves going elsewhere.

In the software industry, at least, employers by and large feel little if any
obligation to give their developers a career path, and that's why most
developers move around so much. Not that I don't understand the employer's
motives as well - especially in a field as in demand as development can be,
why should they feel an obligation to give us a career path when we can
essentially write our own ticket if we choose to?

Don't feel any obligation to give your employees a career path, then - but
don't expect them to stick around either. And no, it's not because they're
lazy or spoiled or entitled or disloyal - it's a simple matter of economic
incentives.

~~~
wtracy
Well, whether or not specializing in one technology is good for your career
depends on your career goals.

Being an expert in one obscure technology is an excellent way to become a
consultant.

If you don't want to spend your career maintaining someone else's code, then
it's probably a bad idea to specialize in one technology.

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gte910h
Have you heard of golden handcuffs? While there are certainly anti-employee
versions of that business trope, there are certainly pro-employee ways to do
that. Profit sharing that goes up by year is a good one, as is benefits
increases.

Even just increase pay over time past what they'll earn elsewhere. They'll
keep doing their highly specialized job because no one else can hire them at a
competitive rate.

Find areas they can flex their brains that don't cost you much. Say, publicity
stunt woodworking (I'm sure you could make things that get you press), novelty
items you can use as gifts to prospective clients, etc, completely designed
and done by these skilled tradesmen.

Or hell, just give them stupid amounts of time off. It's very hard to leave a
place that has 20-40 days of vacation.

Or even make a community oriented approach. Have them teach a class on X etc
to the community, mentor at risk kids, etc.

~~~
sosuke
If you're going to use the vacation time route then please don't go to
unlimited vacation. To some employees unlimited vacation is the same thing as
none.

~~~
gte910h
I want to run a company someday where if you've not taken all your vacation,
then at the end of the year your email, phone forwarding and door access card
all turn off till Jan 1.

~~~
bartonfink
So... overnight on Dec. 31?

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PaulHoule
My favorite quote from that article is "That made for an interesting job, but
it wasn’t efficient enough to support living wages and benefits."

It points out a real contradiction. If you want to be able to pay people a
lot, you need to create an environment where they can be highly productive.
The answer for that, in industrial systems, is specialization. If the people
are having to think a lot about what they do, they'll spend their time
thinking, doing different things, and fixing problems caused by doing things
differently -- this work isn't paying work since it comes off their wages.

Another part of the problem is that there are fewer spots the higher up you go
on the pyramid. The other day I was browsing the remainder rack at my local
Uni's bookstore and found that there's now a "One Minute Manager" book about
managing yourself.

I guess these days organizations are being hollowed out, so that few people
have a chance to be promoted to management and that many of us don't get the
managerial attention we need.

~~~
jamesbkel
Sort of on the same note as providing a good environment... at probably the
best company I've worked for, my boss wouldn't blink if I came to him with a
request. Be it a software package, new machine, more hours/machines on EC2.

He realized that compared to what he was paying me to work, these were small
costs to make sure I could work effectively and to help build the company.
Consequently, I had enough respect not to abuse the privilege.

I'm always shocked when I talk to friends at other companies who bitch about
working with shitty machines or generally not having the right tools.
Generally my rule of thumb would be 10% of salary for upgrades/tools/software.
Think about it: for a salary of $50k, what's adding another $5k/year to
significantly improve an employee's productiveness?

Also important is to let them make the decision, not just arbitrary upgrades.

~~~
javanix
Those improvements aren't as fleeting either. If the employee leaves, whatever
process improvements they had gotten with that 5k has a good chance of
sticking around and helping for the future.

~~~
jamesbkel
That's a good point and actually applies perfectly in my case. They still use
essentially the same setup I created.

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ryanhuff
Some jobs are just jobs. Do job x for pay y. But in many employee/employer
relationships, there is a tremendous opportunity for the employer to have a
lasting impact on peoples lives beyond the paycheck, and its more than a
career path at a company. Is it just a job, or a building block of one's
career that ultimately impacts the employee, and his/her family for years to
come?

Whether providing a career path at the company, or providing employees with
improved skills and marketable experiences that will set them up for the next
step in their "portable career path", businesses should recognize there is
social responsibility in the employer/employee relationship. As an example,
the career positioning and experiences gained by a 25 year old employee can
have tremendous and direct impact on their life, and that of their families.

With that said, there are certainly limits to what a business can sustain.
Some forethought in employee selection (right people on the bus), a little bit
of coaching and mentoring, and understanding the goals of the employee can go
a long way to creating a work experience that goes beyond the basic career
path.

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asolove
Do your employees owe you to care about the good of your business?

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bediger
Do you "owe" your employees a career path? In a word, no.

But having a career path is something you can pitch to prospective employees
as an additional reason for working at your company.

Besides that, the jump from "lead engineer" to "frontline manager" should be
something that's not just "be at the right place at the right time" or
"sucking up to the right upper level manager" I think corporations universally
handle this transition poorly, probably due to looking at people as "human
resources".

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JoeAltmaier
No; its capitalism, you owe them money for work.

Should you provide a career path? Sure, you outlined all that in the article.
You need to keep highly-skilled longtime employees somehow.

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autalpha
As someone who worked in a lot of environment (factory manual labor, meat
packaging, tech), I find that good employers are those who care for the growth
of the employees as much as they do the company growth. Even a perception of
"care" really goes a long way to create employees' loyalty. I think this video
says a lot about this point: [http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/animate/rsa-
animate-driv...](http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/animate/rsa-animate-
drive).

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JanezStupar
Am I just being idealistic or is this an tremendous opportunity? What is
better for owner than his employees to want to take on challenges, by
themselves even, assuming they have the chops to pull it off? Employees
showing ambition seems like just as good a reason to expand as demand picking
up, again assuming that the market is there.

I reckon that the founder/manager/owner is not the only one that deserves a
career path (he went from running a one man band to actually managing people).
And someone coming to you and saying - I want to do your work has to be the
most awesome thing an entrepreneur could get to hear. You have a willing
replacement so you can move to something even cooler - now that is some sweet
burden.

What seems like a more interesting question to me is how can I get people to
want to take my job consistently?

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MaysonL
No, but don't get bent out of shape when they leave. And they probably will
leave, whether you have a "career path" for them or not.

So plan for it, prepare for it, and work with your employees to prepare
succession plans for when they do leave.

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bluesnowmonkey
If you've had a guy spend 18 years building bases for conference tables, his
brain is mush. Even adults have to be exposed to new ideas and challenges in
order to continue to grow mentally. So he's not loyal -- he sticks around
because he's become useless for anything else and probably doesn't even
notice.

I know developers who've written basically nothing but RPG for 18+ years. Same
principle. Mush.

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ibagrak
I read the article and I didn't see a word about career path. The answer to
the question is still a "no", in my view.

Once I hire a person, I expect them to approach me with their career
aspirations and ideas. It is primarily their responsibility to come up and
discuss/suggest opportunities for growth. Failing to do that, I actually think
they become one of those idle 6s the article is talking about. I should also
note that at this point I start looking for a replacement.

But do I owe them a career path? No. I owe them honesty and transparency,
which includes not misrepresenting what the opportunities for growth are for a
particular position they are being hired into.

Of course I am talking about those roles where personal ambition is
indispensable, and where proactive behavior is highly valued. Genuine desire
to grow and evolve is very natural and needs to be accommodated, but it can't
take the form of personal interest completely eclipsing team interests and
overarching direction and goals. That's a balance every manager needs to
strike.

~~~
crpatino
> Once I hire a person, I expect them to approach me with their career
> aspirations and ideas.

You may consider that under this strategy, your work force will self select
amongst the extrovert go-getters. This may be exactly what you want, or the
complete opposite. It all depends to what degree your business relies on
typically introvert traits such as creativity or lateral thinking.

But if you are ok with that, I am ok with that.

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michaelpinto
The traditional notion of a career path is that you get promoted from job x to
y — this works in large organization. However in a small biz a career path is
taking on the extra work load and creating the job you want to grow a
business. That atmosphere must come from the CEO, however the employee must
have an intraprenurial mindset.

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orky56
If you were to set up a rotational program that identified leadership, it
would be beneficial to both parties. Imagine a group of high potential workers
who rotated around doing each other's jobs. They would have new skill sets and
would be able to do their original jobs better. Productivity would go up for
each individual task and they would be able to cover for each other if one
were to fall sick or get laid off.

There seems to be a bias that a career path exclusively means promotions but
in this case rotations can provide new challenges and benefits that will
naturally cause an increase in pay.

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DennisP
This talk by Daniel Pink seems relevant.

[http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/animate/rsa-animate-
driv...](http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/animate/rsa-animate-drive)

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invalidOrTaken
He should give his employees a raise if he can afford it, and raise his prices
if he can't.

And if raising his prices isn't feasible, maybe his employees don't deserve a
raise.

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lotusleaf1987
If you don't it's basically just a dead end job and you're not going to be
able to attract high-caliber employees and you won't retain most employees for
long. Your employees will just look for another opportunity and as soon as it
arises move on.

