How do you support your reports' career growth?

Question

Accepted Answer

Career growth is a **partnership: the report owns their career, you own creating opportunities and honest feedback**. Your job is to know what each person wants and to connect their growth to real work.

## A framework

```text
1. UNDERSTAND  → what do they want? (not what YOU want for them)
                 IC vs management? depth vs breadth? next 1–2 years?
2. ASSESS      → where are they vs the next level (use a career ladder)
3. GAP         → the 2–3 skills/experiences that close the gap
4. OPPORTUNITY → assign real work that builds those (a stretch project)
5. FEEDBACK    → regular, honest signal on progress
```

## Make it concrete

> "You want to reach senior. The gap is leading ambiguous work end-to-end. The auth migration is a good stretch — you'd own the design and coordinate two teams. I'll back you up."

## Pitfalls

- **Only discussing growth at review time.**
- **Promising promotions you cannot guarantee** — talk about readiness, not titles.
- **Assuming everyone wants management.** Many great engineers do not.
- **Hoarding your best people** on critical work so they never grow.

## Why it matters

Growth is one of the top reasons people stay or leave.

Engineers who see a path stay; those who feel stuck update their resume.

Investing in growth also compounds: people you develop become your senior engineers, your leads, and sometimes your fellow managers — and they remember who invested in them.