Pluralsight’s Beckey Woodard Cole discusses how advancements in technology have transformed the way modern day employees expect to climb the career ladder.
The career ladder is exactly what it sounds like. It is a workplace model that enables people to start out on what is essentially the bottom rung of an organisation and bit by bit, step by step, you work your way upwards, towards the role and career that you want.
In the days of old, people who had skill but perhaps not the necessary qualifications or experience, could find themselves, in just a few years, with the title and job they truly wanted by virtue of their hard work, dedication and achievements. So for many it was a system that rewarded commitment.
But, according to Beckey Woodard Cole, the chief people officer at Pluralsight, artificial intelligence is changing how professionals engage with the career ladder, to the extent that the system is becoming obsolete.
She told SiliconRepublic.com, “AI now handles the repeatable, rules-based work that used to sit at the bottom rungs of a technical career such as basic scripting, routine data checks, first-pass code review. That was how junior engineers built credibility before moving into senior, judgement-heavy work.
“With that first rung gone, people move sideways into adjacent disciplines. This can look like a data analyst picking up prompt engineering or a support engineer moving into AI operations since that’s where the gaps sit.
“Career progression is now defined by what someone can do with a model and a problem and is less about tenure within a job level. That also means we need direct ways to confirm technical ability at every level. Titles and tenure tell us less than measurable outputs.”
Pros and cons
According to Woodard Cole, the deconstruction of traditional models can be a positive for professionals whose real value shines through when work is organised around skills rather than fixed roles. Instead of a project falling into the hands of an employee who has the right title, companies can instead draw on the talents of people with the relevant skills, regardless of their current title.
She said, “This surfaces talent that a rigid role structure would have missed entirely and it lets people develop new capability by working on problems outside their formal remit rather than waiting for a role change to justify it.”
The downside, she explains, is that it often takes time and effort to reestablish the infrastructure that creates standard job and role definitions when moving to a skills-based, internal marketplace approach.
She added, “This approach to HR took years to settle into and changing that model means taking on the massive job of overhauling the infrastructure itself. It takes real time to build a skills taxonomy detailed enough to match people to work accurately, and to get people comfortable being evaluated on a skills profile instead of a job description they’ve held for years.”
Woodard Cole also noted the importance of not isolating older employees who are used to a more standard career ladder-based system. In dismantling a traditional workplace system, more tenured professionals may feel displaced, particularly if they have committed years to earning titles and broadening a skillset.
She said, “Treating tenured workers as a valuable part of the knowledge ecosystem is crucial when traditional hierarchies break down. Putting these people in mentoring roles and acknowledging their internal expert status can also help tenured employees to feel valued.
“In addition, executives and other top company leaders should encourage middle management to play the role of player coach, helping to develop talent from within. Pay tied to skill depth rather than tenure matters too and top performers should always be rewarded for their contributions.”
Out with the old
Woodard Cole predicts a working landscape in which organisations develop a ladder-based system more akin to a lattice design, than a straight upward line. She explained, career progression rarely moves in one direction nowadays and employers need to recognise the value of non-linear career decisions.
She said, “ A move sideways into a new discipline, a step back into an individual contributor role after a stint leading a team, a stretch project in an adjacent function, all of these count as progression now, not detours from it. The model that I see having the most staying power ties advancement to what someone can prove, not what a title implies.
“People either move up or take on lateral roles by pointing to a specific outcome, a system that cut processing time, a migration that came in under budget, rather than time served in a role. Progression looks less like a promotion cycle and more like a portfolio of solved problems, each one verified rather than self-reported.”
When it comes down to it, for Woodard Cole, a title is only representative of a point in time, whereas a skill describes the abilities someone has in the moment.
She said, “In technical fields that gap has grown wider. A senior developer title from three years ago says little about someone’s grasp of current AI tooling, security practice, or data infrastructure.
“Employers also face shortages in specific skills, certain cloud platforms, security disciplines, machine learning specialisations and a title-based search misses people who built that skill through a side project or a role with a different name entirely. Verification is the harder part now.
“AI tools make it easy to polish a CV to match the posting description or produce ready answers to interview questions, so a document alone tells a hiring manager less than it used to. Skill has to be tested directly, a practical coding exercise, a live technical interview, a portfolio someone can walk through and defend. These metrics will help leaders anticipate the impact that someone will have in their role.”
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