<aside> <img src="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/52f1c029-ec85-4ff5-bd43-c6d6ea9259e0/4ac52e45-9c00-4377-9779-d01edf40d33b/Octavia_Hello.svg" alt="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/52f1c029-ec85-4ff5-bd43-c6d6ea9259e0/4ac52e45-9c00-4377-9779-d01edf40d33b/Octavia_Hello.svg" width="40px" /> This page aims to communicate Airbyte's principles around growth opportunities and provide guidelines for how to grow your career at Airbyte
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Airbyte’s principles around growth can be summarized as:
We believe a meritocracy means the business will achieve stronger results, you will be surrounded by energizing & reliable peers, and that talented people will want to work at Airbyte. It gives us peer and leadership role models to emulate within Airbyte. Meritocracy ensures titles, promotions, and growth opportunities are awarded based on proven performance and results, not seniority, tenure, or political savvy. This helps to motivate our team to constantly learn and grow, trust the organization and, ultimately, build the culture that we strive for.
Promoting internally is important to our success. It promotes the culture that we are creating at Airbyte as the company grows. It motivates employees to improve and take on greater responsibilities, which in turn improves talent retention & business outcomes. And it makes Airbyte a much more attractive place to work.
Promoting internally requires effort on the part of both the employee & manager. First, we will do our best to put forth objective expectations for employees at each level (junior, senior, manager, etc). Employees are then expected to be proactive in their desire to improve and meet the expectations of their desired role, and they should own their growth trajectory. In addition, every manager’s responsibility at Airbyte is to help grow their reports via coaching, advising, and advocacy within the larger organization.
Combining this with a meritocracy, this provides our employees with an excellent path for growth – any promotions or raises will have been completely deserved and signify material growth on the part of the employee.
While we prioritize growing and promoting talent from within whenever possible, it isn't always the right path for every role. External hires bring new perspectives, specialized expertise, and fresh ideas that help us continue to grow as a company and strengthen our teams.
As we evolve, new functions and roles emerge that may not yet exist within Airbyte, or we may not have an internal candidate who is ready at the right time. In other cases, we may have someone with strong potential, but the role is too critical to take on as a stretch opportunity. When the impact of the role is significant, we may choose to hire externally to ensure the business has the experience it needs while continuing to invest in the growth and development of our internal talent.
Our goal is to strike the right balance: creating meaningful opportunities for employees to grow while bringing in exceptional people who help make Airbyte even stronger.
As an Airbyter looking to grow your responsibilities or level, your first goal should be to build a track record of success in your current role. Always optimize for making the largest impact, building the most leverage for your team, and living out Airbyte’s values. Understand where your strengths and weaknesses are, and actively work on the skill sets that take your output & impact to the next level. This is something that you should work with your manager on and continue to create goals that push your growth and development. Align with your leadership about your desired growth direction, so they can help coach and guide you.
Do this repeatedly and you will earn your peers and leaders’ trust by showing that you can meet new challenges as they come up.
Just as we evaluate external candidates for a track record of success in the role they are applying for, we expect employees to demonstrate the abilities necessary to succeed at the role that they are stepping into. For example, if someone is trying to become a manager, we want to already see significant achievements in mentoring colleagues, technical leadership, and project management. As a rule of thumb, when someone is promoted, the reaction of the people on their team should be "nothing is changing; they were already mostly doing that role anyway." Promotions should not come as a surprise (see Meritocracy)!
