Like most early companies, we’d been moving quickly and hadn't spent too much time on process and structure. We had well-structured compensation levels, but weren't as clear about expectations and role descriptions. That strategy worked fine for a while, but was starting to show cracks as we grew. We wanted to be more clear about what it takes to move from one level to the next and more consistent across teams and managers.

A career framework is great for reviews, but it's also very useful during hiring discussions. When we're evaluating a potential candidate, it's helpful to pull up this doc and map their skills against it. Often people ask for a specific title, and the knee jerk response is to give it to them because that's going to make conversations easier. But we need to make sure we're hiring fairly across the org. A Lead on the Design team should have a similar level of experience to a lead on the engineering team for instance. Otherwise, you set the wrong expectations internally which hurts the new hire. So rather than jump to conclusions about what someone's level should be, I evaluate their experience through the lens of our framework. It's expected that people will have different strengths and weaknesses, so I don't look for someone to check every single box in order to reach a given level. But if there are more than a few weak areas, that tells me we should consider a lower level. And if they're well above the level we're considering, we should offer a more senior position.

We worked as a design team to come up with the initial skills list, and then I, as the manager, wrote up the framework. While the design team spent a lot of time working to clarify which skills we valued most, I think the hardest part of this framework was differentiating between levels and making sure there was a clear progression from one to the next. We went through multiple rounds of revisions trying to highlight the growth points. For example, no one is expected to manage people unless they have a manager title, but people at L5 and beyond 

 be managers if it was needed and they were interested.

The career framework is one way we've refined our management approach. It's a tool for managers and employees to use during regular 1:1s as well as during performance review cycles, and it’s been very valuable in those contexts, especially when it comes to discussions around strengths and weaknesses. Since we developed this, everyone has more information about what skills our team values most. I also used the framework categories as the underlying structure for our performance reviews, since it helps us build alignment during conversations about career growth and performance.

Steve Schoeffel

Diana Lace Davidova 

Todd Moy

Brandon Dorn

Amy Brumet 

Mindy Wagner

As Whimsical continued to grow, we knew we needed to refine our approach to organizational structure. This framework helped give us a clear picture of the skills required for each role.

Product Design Team Career Framework at Whimsical

Design Team - Career Framework

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