Transcript Dual Ladder: A Story - Microsoft Personal Web Server

Dual Ladder: A Story
“I work for a large aerospace company
in the USA.Several years ago the
company recognized that they were
starting to lose talented Engineers.
There were several reasons but one
was that once you hit the top as an
engineer there was no place to go
except into management, some went
that route, some left the company,
and some stayed.
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Technological Innovation, KV Patri
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Now there is a program that an
engineer or any technical person
now can chose between management and
the higher technical ranks. It is
quite an evaluation that you must go
through, first you must meet certain
minimum levels, then you have to
fill out a 12 page document about
your traits (there are 9 areas
Technical Knowledge and Judgement,
Consequences of Technical Actions
and Decisions, Creativity and
Innovation, Technical Management and
Planning Capability, Research and
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Project Capability, Capability as a
Teacher/Mentor, Technical
Leadership, Advisory and Consulting
Capability, and Communications
Ability), then you go through a
review board. The review board
scores your profile document and
interviews you and then recommends
your promotion or not. You can go
through the process as many times as
you want..
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The levels are Associate Technical Fellow (ATF)
equal to a 1st/2nd level manager, then Technical
Fellow (TF) equal to a 3rd/4th level manager, and
lastly Senior Technical Fellow (STF) equal to an
executive. The rewards go up with each level
and you must start at the ATF and work your way
up and you must go through each step of the
process over again. Some of the rewards are
stocks, office space, office assistant, parking
pass, company pays for associations that you
join, and at the higher levels you get a lap top
and a discretionary fund to pursue your own
studies.
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Additionally, your name, skills, talents get put into a
database and when a special project needs
special talents they can do a search and request
you to work on the special project. Also the
Technical Fellowship program works with upper
management to set company direction and what
type of further education and training should be
offered to the rank and file. So basically you are
in a management position, you can have a group
working for you but you do not give up your
technical position and you usually don't have the
administrative responsibilities that a true
manager would have.
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As you can see I am familiar with this process. It
took me 9 months to get my ATF promotion at the
beginning of this year on the first try. The
program is set up so that only a small number of
technical leaders are promoted. There is
probably less than 2,000 people at this level out
of a company employment of 200,000.”
(as communicated to KV Patri by e-mail)
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