Q: I’m working on our product management career ladder, and I’m looking for examples of how other companies do it.
Career ladders (a.k.a. leveling frameworks, career tracks, competencies, etc.) have long been secretive and mysterious. I’m not totally sure why. I don’t see how sharing these publicly gives anyone a competitive advantage, and every new company ends up scratching their heads and coming up with something new. Why do we do this to ourselves? It’s especially painful for product management—a role that is already so inconsistently defined and evaluated.
Let’s change this.
I’ve collected dozens of career ladders from all of the big companies, and though I’m not at liberty to share them fully, below, I’m going to share the high-level frameworks of how 20+ large companies structure their PM role:
- Titles at each level
- Attributes/competencies/skills they evaluate for
- Where the IC and manager tracks split
- A handful of public career ladders
- A bunch of templates to get you started
If you’d like to contribute to this effort by adding your company, or fix a mistake (I’m sure I got something wrong), please DM me or leave a comment.
Takeaways from reviewing these career ladders
- Two-thirds of companies have both an IC track and a manager track.
- When there’s a manager track, you can switch at L6 (i.e. Sr. Product Manager)
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The most common title sequences:
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IC: Associate Product Manager (L3) → Product Manager (L4-L5) → Sr. Product Manager (L6) → Principal Product Manager (L7)
- Manager: Group Product Manager (L7) → Director of Product Management (L8) → Sr. Director of Product Management (L9) → VP (L10)
- Single track: Associate Product Manager (L3) → Product Manager (L4) → Sr. Product Manager (L5) → Group Product Manager (L6) → Director of Product Management (L7) → Sr. Director of Product Management (L8) → VP (L9)
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Most common attributes/competencies/skills (in order):
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Leadership
- Impact
- Scope
- Execution
- Communication
- Vision
- Strategy
- Collaboration
- Planning
- Technical skills
- Four companies (Stripe, Airbnb, Lyft, and Facebook) try to avoid title inflation and stick to “Product Manager” for the majority of IC levels. Stripe officially sticks to the “Product Manager” title at every level.
- Two-thirds of companies have an APM role
- Two-thirds have a “Principal PM” role
- Over 80% have a “Senior PM” role
- Only 25% have a Lead PM, or Product Lead, role
If you see any other trends in this data, or would like to contribute to the effort by making your company’s PM ladder public, please DM me or leave a comment.
📚 Further study
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