Uploaded December 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago

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In this keynote, Cat discusses the challenges and valuable lessons learned while developing the career ladder at Flatiron Health. She goes back in time and embarks us into a journey in the past, highlighting the various evolution of their career ladders, problems that arose and how they solved them.
She provides 3 specific examples:
- Handling career advancement for individual contributors
- Unintended consequences of some language choices in career ladders
- Managing cultural contributions at different levels of the ladder.
A highly recommended watch for any tech leader looking to manage their team effectively and fairly.


00:00 Introduction and Overview
00:11 Understanding Career Ladders
02:31 Challenges in Developing Career Ladders
02:51 Case Study 1 - The Senior IC Path
09:34 Case Study 2 - Unintended Consequences
13:30 Case Study 3 - Cultural Contributions
20:57 Final Thoughts
21:11 Q&A Session


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This talk was recorded at Elevate 2023, Plato's flagship engineering leadership conference hosted in San Francisco on Nov 7 and 8 2023.