Progression within Individual contributor roles can be achieved through the promotion process. Those choosing to pursue a People Manager role must demonstrate the competences and experience necessary, and complete a successful interview when a specific business need/role is available.
In FT Technology, an Individual Contributor is someone who doesn’t manage any other staff, and contributes as an engineer to teams, projects, and other initiatives. The distinction being made is the difference between someone who is a contributor to a team vs. someone who is a manager of a team, a People Manager.
In FT Technology, People Manager is someone who manages and develops staff and has the responsibility of managing how the team operates.
There are many examples where GSD employees have successfully moved to other departments or teams in P&T such as Internal Products and Collaboration Tooling. Therefore, depending on your career aspirations, support can be provided with development, and are dependent upon a successful interview process.
As part of your ongoing development we encourage you to continually improve, take on new skills, accommodate secondments (where feasible) and get involved in projects that are of interest to you and benefit to the FT. We hope that there is appetite to move into a leadership role, and we will actively work with you to get the relevant skills to make the move.
However, we are a small team with a limited number of opportunities available given the structure, and our decision not to create a Senior 2 role means you might have to explore opportunities within other teams.
It’s important that you continue to have conversations with your manager about your readiness for promotion. Building a promotions case is based upon a number of ingredients of which developing your repertoire of competencies is one of them.
When roles come up, you are free to apply, and actively encouraged to - as this brings experience of the types of things that an interviewer is looking for and valuable experience in interview technique as well as feedback on how you performed.
No, the changes to the competencies do not change your day to day work. They are designed to improve clarity for people and to define the pathway within the GSD.
It’s important that you continue to have conversations with your manager about your readiness for promotion. Building a promotions case is based upon a number of ingredients of which developing your repertoire of competencies is one of them.
All GSD roles require staff to demonstrate their leadership skills - such as communication, teamwork, curiosity and learning, and leadership of themselves and others. Even without a People Manager title or role, it is possible for engineers to take on a leading role within their team, to demonstrate they are capable of taking responsibility for projects or initiatives and to encourage others to participate in a collaborative effort toward a common goal. (This is often in a “tech lead” capacity, and is as a result of an assignment - but could be a project or other initiative.) The GSD team can and should mentor other team members, whether formally or informally within the team, in order to help others onboard, understand a new domain or project, and to improve their skills and competencies as an analyst/technician. The updated competencies provide guidance to staff for their development.
The new competencies are live now - feel free to review and feedback any questions or comments to your People Manager.
We expect People Managers to use the updated competencies to give feedback to employees, set new development objectives and manage performance. Employees should refer to the progression framework when evaluating their own progress, and we hope the language used is helpful for everyone to better describe performance, behaviours and the impact on business outcomes and teams.
No. This change creates more choice for career planning, and makes it clearer what is required to progress. Promotions remain constrained by the shape of our teams (business need) and available budget.
Please speak with your own manager, any Tech Director or Rebecca if you have questions - or suggestions to improve - the competencies or any materials we’re using to communicate them. You can also use GitHub issues (remember these are public) or the #engineering-progression-framework slack channel.