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10 Years of Engineering Ladders

Camille Fournier · 28 May 2025

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Flat, manager-free organisations do not deliver the equality they promise: they get abandoned, and the informal power left behind is unaccountable.

Their wordsThe Tyranny of Structurelessness has yet to be overcome, and for those who still care about creating strong, transparent, equitable organizations, this work matters.

Also said by Charity Majors

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Camille Fournier did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

  1. Our reading

    Defining what expertise looks like in a job family is not HR’s work, and a career ladder left to them will be wrong.

    Their wordsDon’t let (or make!) HR do all of the work. It’s really not their job to define expertise in your functions.

  2. Our reading

    A career ladder must not be a checklist that guarantees promotion, because a promotion depends on the organisation’s needs as much as on the employee’s skills.

    Their wordsYou should not try to create a ladder that functions as a pure checklist or scorecard that guarantees promotion if people check enough boxes; promotions are as much about the needs of the organization as the skills of the employees.

  3. Our reading

    Companies should still be hiring junior engineers in the AI era, and should give them visible progress in their first few years.

    Their wordsAssuming you are still hiring junior engineers (you really should be even in this AI era), the good ones will learn quickly and want to see career progress in their first few years of working.

  4. Our reading

    Flat, manager-free organisations do not deliver the equality they promise: they get abandoned, and the informal power left behind is unaccountable.

    Their wordsThe Tyranny of Structurelessness has yet to be overcome, and for those who still care about creating strong, transparent, equitable organizations, this work matters.

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