I co-wrote an article titled Developing Your Career recently for the Auto Trader Engineering blog about how we help managers guide their staff towards the things they need to work on to further their personal development. The article discusses how we came up with a comprehensive set of behaviours and qualities that we expect to see developers exhibit as they move between different levels of responsibility. If you are a developer or a development manager then you might find it a useful resource to inform your discussions around personal development.
Many development managers dread that one day one of their staff in a regular catch up will ask “What do I have to do to get promoted?”. This is daft really, because having staff that are motivated to develop themselves is a critical part of a high performing team. Of course, such a question could really be referring to a desire to be recognised—perhaps they don’t feel their title reflects their progress so far. Perhaps they are not satisfied with their salary. Or perhaps they are simply asking where their manager feels they should be concentrating their efforts to learn. This post is about what we have done recently at Auto Trader to help development managers work through this question with their staff.