Diagonal mobility
QE has entered the very exciting (but admittedly stressful) early recruitment phase. We’re fortunate enough to have lots of inbound interest, and my tendency is to attribute this to our:
- Highly urgent and relatable mission. We want to democratize access to high-quality eye care via the creation and domination of at-home eyecare as a new product & services category; and
- Our unique misfit culture. I’d further characterize our remote workplace as a quirky creative playground built on intellectual rigor, scientific curiosity, ethical conduct and mutual respect.
A stellar potential hire had a great question about career trajectory and internal QE role transitions. This got me thinking about how people relate to their jobs, and I wanted to dig into that here.
Having spent much of my adult life operating within very hierarchical norms, I’m stoked to be operating in a different type of professional sphere. Now that I’m responsible for company running and team building, there’s the constant challenge of reframing my mental models around pretty much everything. In this case, we’re talking career definition and mobility.
Recently, I read a great article about how Eleven Madison Park is approaching job crafting* and enabling people to “alter their jobs so that their roles are better suited to their strengths and interests.” This got me thinking about how QE, especially in this nascent stage, should empower folks to treat their jobs as vehicles for multidirectional growth.
I don’t consider myself to be a mathematical thinker, but I keep returning to the concept of combinations and permutations. Considering the reality that each person has constantly changing array of skills and interests, it makes more sense to incorporate this dynamism and combinatorial potential into how we approach jobs. And on a practical level, job descriptions should actively be updated as company size and needs evolve anyway.
Of course, each job (e.g. Senior Software Engineer) should have a fixed set of core responsibilities and expectations. But beyond that, perhaps we should think of jobs as inkblots rather squares. Meaning that it might be better to conceive of our company less as a collection of stackable “square” jobs and more as a living canvas of inkblots that bleed into and alter one another.
This leads me to the concept of diagonal mobility. I believe that within QE, team members should be allowed to have lateral and upward opportunities. In other words, if someone is interested in exploring roles in another department, there should be freedom to do so. If someone wants to redefine the exact boundaries of their responsibilities, this should be an open and stimulating discussion.
Diagonal mobility is really exciting to me because it creates endless potential for growth, unexpected discovery and personal & professional fulfillment.
At the end of the day though, I just want everyone at QE to be happy. :)
Quinn
*BTW for those who might encounter a Quartz paywall, this is the most salient part re: job crafting:
“A 2008 paper authored by Wrzesniewski and Dutton, along with consultant Justin M. Berg, outlines three kinds of job crafting. The first involves changing the “number, type, or nature of tasks” in a job: A teacher who loves music, for example, might start delivering their lessons in the form of songs. The second category involves changing interactions with others, like a salesperson who prides themselves on taking new employees under their wing. The third category is changing how you perceive your job. Wrzesniewski’s research on custodial workers, for example, found that hospital janitors who saw their work as a way to support patients were far happier at their jobs than those who envisioned their roles as simply cleaning up.”
