A promotion framework for a consultancy that does not fit product-company ladders

Context

Turntabl places engineers inside client teams and runs product teams for others. An engineer's work is visible mostly to the client, and the same engineer might be on three engagements in two years. Product-company ladders assume a manager who sees the work every day and a single codebase to be judged against. Here, both assumptions are false.

The problem

A ladder for this context has to answer three things a product ladder can skip. What counts as evidence when the evidence lives with the client. What progression means when scope is measured in engagements rather than services owned. And where the choice to lead people sits, so that staying technical is a promotion path rather than a plateau.

What I did

• Authored a five-level career progression and promotion framework for company leadership.
• Adapted consulting firm models, where progression tracks engagement scope and client trust, instead of product-company ladders tied to a single codebase.
• Forked the framework into IC and management tracks at L4, so that leading people is a deliberate choice and a senior engineer who does not want reports still has somewhere to go.

What it cost

• A framework is a document until leadership uses it in a promotion round.
• Forking at L4 means two sets of expectations to maintain, and two sets of arguments about whether someone is on the right one.

Outcome

The framework exists and was authored for company leadership. It is one of the artefacts that came out of the transition to thirty engineers.