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Dual Career Ladders

The personnel system of a large corporation is designed to both motivate and control employees. This often takes the form of military-style career ladders, consisting of promotions that can be earned over the years. There are two main reasons for having numerous rungs in these career ladders. The first is to give people the impression that they are advancing in their careers, both absolutely and relative to their peers. And the second is to give management both a carrot and a stick; a carrot to dangle before their employees as an incentive for hard work, and a stick because promotions can be denied to those who don't play along.

Promotions come quickly at first and are based as much on time-in-grade as accomplishments. Although there are some exceptions, neither accomplishments nor foul-ups have much effect on a person's advancement. Advancing still higher on the ladder becomes increasingly difficult, because the higher someone gets on the ladder, the more expensive they are in terms of both salary and benefits, and the fewer the number of people needed at those levels. Only the few who can demonstrate both their technical ability and their ability to get things done are promoted to the highest rungs.

A phrase that is used is that you have to be "maze bright". Only those bright enough to find the cheese deserve it. And of course, the maze gets larger and more difficult at each step. For example, for promotion to the top rung, an employee may need to be "sold" to a promotion board, and he may need letters of recommendation from executives in other divisions.

Many high-tech companies maintain what are called "dual career ladders." The idea is that talented technical people shouldn't feel that they have to take management jobs in order to advance in their careers; that they can advance through the excellence of their technical work. So early in an employee's career, a branching point is reached, and a person chooses (or is chosen for) either the managerial ladder or the technical ladder. The titles are different in each ladder, but pay and perquisites are supposed to be the same, rung for rung. Of course, the managerial ladder extends into the executive ranks, while the technical ladder stops far short of this. This makes the managerial ladder appear more desirable to ambitious young employees.

In theory, people can switch back and forth between the managerial and technical ladders. This is actually quite a good career strategy, because it gives an employee managerial experience while allowing him to remain technically competent. Unfortunately, switching between ladders is difficult and not done by very many employees.

People who go into management are generally not technical whiz kids. Technical work is something they want to get out of as quickly as possible. It's difficult and not as satisfying to them as working with people. So they go into management and work hard to stay there, fighting for ever larger and more prestigious projects to manage since this is their entree into the ranks of higher management. In short order, however, overwhelmed by their managerial duties, it becomes impossible for them to maintain, never mind develop, technical competence, which they are mostly not interested in, anyway. These people go up the managerial ladder and are expected to intelligently guide a high-tech company, but the higher up they go, the dimmer their knowledge of the technologies they're supposed to manage. What they actually do is "acronym technology," the juggling of three letter acronyms for projects and products that they really don't understand.

On the technical side, the picture is equally grim. On this ladder, people are encouraged to focus deeply, become experts on one or more aspects of technology, and take leadership roles in developing emerging technologies. Many people do this well, but have a devil of a time getting anyone on the management side to listen to them. The problem is that the techies have a hard time navigating the maze - they haven't been trained. And the higher up the technical ladder they are, the worse it gets. Eventually, they get put into advanced technology or advanced design departments where they can be used as occasional consultants or safely ignored.

It should be no surprise that large companies can afford to get rid of their top people, on both the managerial and technical career ladders. They have truly reached their "level of incompetence." The basic personnel system had set them up for failure.