Ask HN: How do you support your employees' career development?

The fact that you care about employee development and are deliberately seeking out ways to do it better puts you ahead of most managers. I can't directly address advancement within a company, but will share some of my own experience.

I founded and led a small software development team within government that was a mix of government employees and contractors, but we acted like a startup and had a strong culture and team ethos. I was under severe constraints about what I could actually offer my team members in terms of advancement, but I tried to deliberately help them grow. I cared about them for their own sake, but also believed they would do their best work for my team if they felt valued, taken care of, and fulfilled in their desire for growth.

I did a one-on-one with team member upon hiring, and then every 6 months or so. We used these meetings for mutual feedback but I also deliberately asked about their goals and we strategized together about how to help them advance towards those goals. I was honest about the limits of what I could do. Even though I couldn't directly promote people, we often found ways to help team members learn new skill sets in the course of their work, take on more leadership, or shift into different lateral roles that would stretch their knowledge and abilities. In some cases I worked with our contractor company to pay for training in new skills adjacent to, but not directly related to, their core duties.

I also acknowledged in our first one-on-one that this job was just one of many they would hold. I hoped they would stay with us a long time, but whenever they left, we would wish them well and help them transition into their next thing. I also told them one of my personal goals for each new hire: that they would be better for the time they spent on our team.

These individuals stayed fiercely loyal to the team. Most stayed for quite a while. Many did leave for higher-paying jobs after a couple years, but it was always a difficult decision for them because they loved the team and the mission so much. When they did decide to leave, we always wrote recommendations and did whatever else we could to help them find their next opportunity.

I came to say something similar.

I had a horrible experience with a manager after having generally good experiences (as did my spouse around the same time at a different organization). I realized later that the thing that was most problematic for me (and my spouse) was that I truly to this day do not believe the manager was acting in good faith.

I'm not saying that there are good or bad managers for other reasons, but I think just having someone who really truly wants everyone to succeed (as opposed to being motivated by selfish or ideological reasons) can go a long way.

Great response. It is so context specific.

The worst is just going through the motions. Work on this useless project to say we worked on career development for the year and check off a box. Then at the start of the year start working on another useless project for next review.

As long as you don't do that I think you are ahead of 50% of managers I have had.

The best managers I've have were all people managers. Like a gardener, they "planted" me in my role because they wanted my skillset, and now they "cultivate" me to make sure I thrive as they know I'm capable of. When opportunities arise for my own advancement, I'm in the best condition I can be (thanks to their tending) and can naturally move up to the opportunity.

I know it sounds hokey, but sometimes I feel there's way too much emphasis put on tactics of management. A good manager, at least in my industry, is spending their time to make sure the team is running and nothing is weighing negatively on their staff.

This is specifically difficult for us: being a specialized software development agency (~20 people), we have a very strong compentition and our employees are tempted continously with new offers.

What we do is, first of all, we have a well defined engineering tiers level, each with skill requirements an associated public salary (no salary negotiations and everyone knows how much is doing everyone else).

Then, we hold regular office hours with our employees at least once a year to give feedback about them and receive feedback about us (the company). In these meetings we listen to what they want to do and towards which engineering tiers they want to move, and we help them by giving oportunities to develop and prof themselves. This is specifically important to avoid furstrations.

In any case, what matters is to keep communication fluid and give oportunities to allow them stand up. People feel more comfortable when they have someone on their side and percieve their growth as a benefit for everyone (and not only as an exclusive win for them, and obviously, without any type of competition among co-workers).

Something that helped us a lot to create the right expectations is to have a company handbook, where we explain in detail the core values of the company and how we organize ourselves. If anyone is curious, feel free to check it out here: https://mobilejazz.com/company-handbook-pdf (no email required).

> an associated public salary

Seems to have been ommited from the handbook. Care to share with us?

My motto is "leave your people in a better place than where you found them."

I'm in design, so things are a little different from that and CS/programming - but when I onboard direct reports, I'll have a session or two dedicated to drilling down what they want to grow in and/or what they would like to focus on during their time with the company. Maybe they just want to collect a paycheck and have the paycheck subsidize their real interests (been there, all cool), but usually they have an area of design they'd like to improve in for their portfolio.

In that case, I will assign them the projects that best fits that interest, so they get more experience and hopefully a cool portfolio project in it. There's other factors that go into assigning projects (everyone's bandwidth, fairness, skill level of the team), but it's a significant one.

If they want more, I'll also give them optional/doable "homework assignments" to improve at that area of design, along with personal feedback. In design, your portfolio is (nearly) everything, and it's been extremely cool to see my IC's genuinely excited to add projects to theirs that they're happy about.

Personally new enough as a manager that I haven't been through the promotion process with IC's yet, but this is a great question to study that. :)

That's a great question. For me, the first question is to understand their career goals and how much they really want to focus on it. Some people want to go for promo ASAP and want to do as much as possible to build skills now. Others want a more organic and iterative path. Still others are content where they are.

Once we agree on the goals, next is to try to find things that intersect with their skills and interests, and whatever behaviors or attributes the company is looking for at the next level. Whenever possible, I'm willing to shade tech choices or roadmaps to support those. Yes, it might be a slight diversion (keyword: slight) but getting excited and engaged higher performing team members more than offsets that.

Along the way, I make it clear that performance isn't a thing that happens to them, but it's a thing they own. My goal is to mentor and guide, but also to set themselves up to do the work and own it. I'll provide advice on how to go about the work in a way that shows next level skills, as well as appropriate scope, goal setting, etc.

Concrete milestones are definitely useful. Letting your team member set and drive those is great, too. That is a great way for them to demonstrate ownership of their career and understanding of what they need to do to get that promotion.

It will depend on your company, some have defined career paths while others will have you wait for your boss to retire or hop between departments and geography (especially in sales).

As a coach, you help your employees understand their goals and then set actions to reach these goals. If they want to be CEO, maybe their next step is somewhere else and you have to choose between being the coach or the company’s management.

Be a company that promotes from within. Lots of people on HN will vehemently claim that promoting from within is an anti-pattern. But if you don't promote from within, you turn into the kind of place where the more an employee strengthens a skillset, the more undervalued they feel. That kind of resentment leads to an environment that either stunts employees or makes them act contrary to company interests. Both of those are dysfunctional outcomes.

As a framework, I've yet to find something better than the Manager Tools "Trinity" which includes coaching [0].

The short version: work with each of your directs to have a coaching goal. Help them define one or more next steps. Then let them get after it, with you holding them accountable for the steps that you defined together. You can do effective coaching in ~5 minutes per week per direct. That's not just what the Manager Tools podcast says; I've done it.

Just have one coaching goal at a time. It should be something that is pretty apparent if they've achieved it. "Get better at $COOL_TECH" is a lousy goal; "learn enough COBOL to be allowed to take $LEGACY_APP pager duty" is a nicely-measurable goal (if lousy for other reasons).

Steps will be small. You'll start by brainstorming resources with your direct. Then it might be tiny steps like "email me to confirm you bought $BOOK from Amazon by end of day today", "send me a note on Slack with the date of your meeting with Bob about $TOPIC; complete scheduling no later than noon Friday", "show me your 'Hello World' program by end of day Tuesday." Small steps early help keep the coaching work in-mind for your directs. Reporting steps to you helps them avoid putting tasks aside for a week, then scrambling to catch back up. That slows the coaching project down and stresses them out.

One of the biggest stress-relievers of the model is that "coaching" isn't the same as "teaching". Coaching resources can be books, courses, other people in the company, etc. It's also not (necessarily) related to the projects your direct is working on. Providing projects where they can stretch and grow is great (keep that up!), but there might be other skills they need to learn. Running meetings, sales, design, interviewing customers, working with other departments... Your company has its own set of skills. And it's okay if they want to learn something unrelated. A while back, I felt like I needed to learn to draw better, and I had a great boss that agreed that was worth learning on the job, even though I am not and never will be a designer-type. YMMV based on your organization, of course.

How many direct reports do you have? Having too many can make things a lot more difficult, not just for coaching.

This was a bit quick, but if you have questions I'd be happy to help!

[0] https://www.manager-tools.com/2009/07/coaching-model-revised

Put them through college / bootcamp / grad school / whatever. This is the very best possible way, but most orgs won't do it. The best version of this arrangement is they still work part or even full time during this period.

"Or, how has a great manager helped you grow your career?"

I don't think I've ever had a great manager. None of my managers have done anything to help me grow.

I've had some amazing managers who have truly helped me but I have also had lots that wanted to:

* lead instead of manage.. which leads to them not being a good manager

* be a servant leader.. which leads to undefined requirements

* be a mentor.. where they give no actual help or advice but try re-frame any questions as alternative questions

"be a servant leader.. which leads to undefined requirements"

That's what my organization is pushing now.

Provide a good reference for when they job hop. Promotions and raises come from the next company.