Welcome to Engineering Paths @ Beyond!
During early startup days, the focus is on experimenting, shipping it, and iterating and improving with a short feedback loop to find a market fit. It is a great environment where everyone pitches in on many things and does what needs to be done. This is our cherished identity. We want to stay true to it, while growing. In 2021, we nearly 3x our size and more than 2x our revenue. We did all this with our can-do, entrepreunarial spirit as we scaled, and it is now time, and agruably a bit overdue, to improve clarity and structure in engineering.
We care about your experience, your happiness, and your growth at Beyond. This is our north star and ultimate goal. We believe that your passion, engagement, and confidence are the key ingredients to Beyond’s success. We developed this framework to empower you and your manager to help you achieve just that.
tl;dr Jump to the paths
Contributions that aren’t covered here
We tried to be quantitative, precise, and Beyond-specific in building these career paths. While it’s important to evaluate everyone against the same explicit standards, we also recognize that our levels can’t possibly cover every form of contribution to the organization. Our promotion packets provide space to describe and contextualize contributions that don’t fit our criteria but ought to be considered.
Promotion philosophy
Promotions are descriptive, not prescriptive: We promote engineers and managers when they have demonstrated that they are consistently performing at the next level. Promotions don’t unlock new responsibilities; the new responsibilities and increased scope come first, and then we recognize it with a promotion. Please keep in mind, every role description builds on top of the previous one. What is descriptive for one role is implicitly descriptive for the next one too.
As you grow through the engineering paths, your impact on Beyond will grow exponentially. Therefore, every step along your path will require more time to develop. For example, Software Engineer 3 to Senior Software Engineer is a more significant step than any other before. Senior Software Engineer 2 to Staff Engineer or to Technical Lead Manager and every step beyond, are larger and typically requires at least two years of development. At Senior Software Engineer 2 or Technical Lead Manager, there’s no longer a default expectation that you’ll eventually be promoted. You can stay at this level indefinitely, and that’s totally fine. You will be able to continue to grow breadth-wise and be recognized for it. There simply aren’t as many roles available past that point.
In the end, it is on you to be your own advocate!
“Every promotion I’ve ever gotten has been me saying: I am operating at this level, I have done all of these things, I think I am ready for the next level, and here is why. Your contributions should never be ambiguous — document them! Make a list for yourself — about what you do, and how it impacts the company. Advocating for yourself isn’t arrogance: You are giving your manager details about things you are working on.”
- Arquay Harris, VPE @ Webflow
Compensation philosophy
We hold ourselves accountable to be equitable. Therefore, we are constantly monitoring and updating our salary bands according to market data. These bands are related to the different roles on the engineering paths and are wide enough to allow for compensation increases even outside the scope of a promotion. More details here (internal link).
Map of Paths
Credits
Creating Beyond’s engineering paths was possible thanks to the outstanding collaboration of our Beyond EM team, Paula, Mariah, Rita, Dan, Matt, and Francois, and the positive drive and leadership from the one and only Miguel #wecare. We are also standing on the shoulder of giants, in particular Camille Fournier (VPE @ Rent the Runway / The manager’s path), Will Larsen (An elegant Puzzle), Katie Wilde (VPE @ Buffer), and Jerry Talton (VPE @ Carta), whose gracefully open content was repurposed here.