1 of 33

2 of 33

3 of 33

4 of 33

5 of 33

6 of 33

7 of 33

8 of 33

9 of 33

10 of 33

11 of 33

12 of 33

13 of 33

14 of 33

15 of 33

16 of 33

17 of 33

18 of 33

19 of 33

20 of 33

21 of 33

22 of 33

23 of 33

24 of 33

25 of 33

26 of 33

27 of 33

28 of 33

29 of 33

30 of 33

31 of 33

32 of 33

33 of 33

Grammarly Career Path Introduction

Career Paths have a specific purpose

To define and standardize the aspects of performance that are prioritized by Grammarly and your function, and how those expectations change throughout career progression.

Standardize:

Two team members who are the same level but in different functions have similar expectations of their impact, depth of their knowledge and skill, and the autonomy with which they work. So even though one person is in Engineering and another in Marketing, if they’re both level two, we have similar expectations of them.
All the managers in one function are applying the same expectations to team members. Variation in how we evaluate, interpret and apply expectations is natural across groups of people. Having uniform standards and processes to review evaluations helps with this. It is especially important as we grow and continue to add managers that we ensure we’re using the same standard and reviewing in the same way.

Prioritize: To prioritize aspects of performance in a function. You’ll hear about this in detail today, but the goal is to define what aspects of performance Grammarly, and each function, prioritizes for you to do and develop.

Career Progression: Career Paths include expectations of roles that are entry-level through to our most high-level team members. For example, an entry-level Software Engineer through to a VP of Engineering.

Career Paths and Inclusion

One of the benefits of having structured and shared expectations across our teams is that we create a more inclusive and fair environment.

Inclusion is building an environment with practices and culture that affirms everyone is valued, able to succeed, and treated fairly and with respect.

Uniform standards for performance
Empowering team members to know how they are reviewed and own their career development
Rigor and structure to evaluation processes on an ongoing basis

Career Paths are not *new* to Grammarly

Historically we have used a simple version from a company called Radford. It is widely used by Tech/IT companies and understood as standard.

Previously it was not customized to Grammarly and our functions, so it was not an effective tool for coaching our team members.

Grammarly supports two career tracks

Individual Contributor (IC)	Management
Track requirements: The requirements and objectives of the two tracks will be different, but the expectations of scope of responsibility and impact to the business are similar across levels. Moving between tracks: We support team members transitioning between the two tracks. Moving from IC to Management is not a promotion, it’s a change in Career Path and responsibilities. Similarly, managers who take on an IC role are not promoted or demoted, they’re focusing on a more hands-on role. ICs as people managers: Some team members manage a small team of direct reports (max 5) who work in their expertise area. These team members still spend a significant portion of their time on hands-on contributions and will be on the IC track. An example is Tech Lead Managers in Engineering. Compensation: Each Career Path level has an associated compensation range. The compensation ranges for ICs and Managers are identical to remove compensation as an incentive to pick the Management track.

Career Paths,

Learning & Development

Learning & Development is a large category of activities

Formal education -- university, training programs, certifications
Skillset development -- interactive trainings, mentoring and coaching, practice and mastery
Knowledge building -- books, articles, blogs, lectures, meetups
Experience -- applying what’s above in different circumstances, on various projects, with different people and teams

Career Paths and Learning & Development

In terms of performance, we care most about the impact of team members -- what they get done and implement; goals they achieve and exceed; tools and efficiencies they build, etc.

Grammarly’s Career Paths describe the main aspects of performance necessary to build this impact and contribute to our mission.

Career Paths don’t describe every detail for your individual learning and development. They’re a roadmap and you will fill in the details.

Career Paths and career progression

Level

Time

How will we use Career Paths going forward?

Career development conversations

The Career Path will be a tool you and your manager use in learning and development conversations as you define and create plans for your development (every 3-6 months).

Grammarly people processes

We are integrating Career Paths into hiring, performance evaluations, and compensation reviews.

Promotions, or a change in level

A promotion is a change to a new Career Path level. Team members will be eligible for promotions in each review cycle (2x per year). We will not support promotions outside this review process to maintain consistency and rigor in the process. In each performance review cycle, managers will review the level and potential promotion of each direct report. Ahead of the performance review timeframe, any team member can also have a confidential conversation with their manager about if they should be considered for a promotion.

Promotion criteria:

Effective performance at current level + a track record of contributions on multiple projects. Promotions will be based on work experience and performance, not gut instincts or retention concerns.
Evidence over a period of 3+ months that the team member meets the requirements at the next level (i.e. can perform at that level, is not promoted too early or based on potential only); we expect there will be some gaps, and those gaps are compensated by strengths and overall performance.
Business need; there must be a need at Grammarly to have the role at the new level in the function. The benefit of being part of a growing company is that this is often the case!

Promotions are reviewed in a calibration meeting by a group of managers, and depending on the seniority of the role, the Exec team to ensure a consistent expectations bar.

Career Path calibration process

In calibration meetings, managers review leveling decision to ensure they are consistently interpreting the expectations and aspects of performance in the Career Path.

In preparation for this Career Path rollout, we did multiple calibration meetings with the managers in each function as well as with the Exec team. This was a rigorous and deliberate process. In Engineering alone, we did over 14 hours of calibration.

We will use calibration meetings in the future in review cycles to ensure we continue to apply a uniform standard.

Titles

In many organizations, team members’ titles reflect their level. At Grammarly, levels will be kept confidential (i.e. team members will not know each other’s levels) and titles will not have a corresponding 1:1 relationship to level.

Why? There are many pros and cons to public titles and we believe that the potential for negative side effects on culture is high. We’re optimizing for an organization with individual autonomy and team collaboration.

We want an equal environment where decisions are made based on the merits of the idea
We will not make arbitrary decisions based on levels/titles; we will continue to have team members with the most context and knowledge in discussions, decisions, and projects.
We will enable team members to show their career progression by providing documented evidence in BambooHR of level history and promotion effective dates.
Team members can talk about their career progression and evolution in terms of the scope and impact of their work and how it has grown over time.
We will find ways to celebrate milestones and success apart from public levels and many titles.
The current approach makes the decision reversible; if we roll out levels and corresponding titles publically, it’s irreversible.

Career Path Structure

Career Path Structure

Career Path Structure

Career Path Structure

Career Path Structure

Career Path Structure

The 4 shared categories for all Grammarly Career Paths

Impact	Autonomy
Skills & Knowledge	Ownership

The aspects of performance on all Grammarly Career Paths are in the same four categories: Impact, Autonomy, Skills & Knowledge, and Ownership. All functions use these same categories, and each function developed the content under the four categories them using the same definitions.

Impact is defined as: Measurable affect (output) on Grammarly’s business.

It answers the question, “What impact does a team member at this level drive with their team and for Grammarly?”

Autonomy is defined as: Scope of work for which the person is primarily responsible.

It answers questions such as, “What do we expect a team member at this level to accomplish? What do we expect them to lead? What type of supervision and instruction are they provided?

Skills and Knowledge focuses on domain-specific expertise and capabilities; the progression of knowledge and mastery for the function.

Ownership describes Grammarlian’s shared drive for Grammarly’s success and the success of all of our team members. It describes activities that are essential to our collaborative culture such as effectively giving and receiving feedback; sharing knowledge, mentoring, and coaching; and driving productivity and our values. For those who were part of the organization when we started discussing ownership mindset, you will see that ownership continues to be described in terms of the Informed, Involved, and Invested portions.

Ownership is on all Grammarly Career Paths

How individual matrix looks in practice

Relationship of levels and compensation

Level	1	2	3	4	5	6
	$A-B	$B-C	$C-D	$D-E	$E-F	$F-G

Each Career Path level has a corresponding salary range. All team members in the level have compensation that is within the range, i.e. all team members in Level 3 have compensation between $C and $D.

We complete a compensation review two times each year. We update the compensation ranges based on market data from over 400 Tech/IT companies in the US and over 55 Tech/IT companies in Ukraine.

Growth/Marketing/Comms Career Paths - the process

Exposure to career paths at Uber, Airbnb, Ebay and a few others
Many hours calibrating with others at Grammarly
Numerous calibration sessions with others at Grammarly
Several calibration touchpoints with others at Grammarly

Growth/Marketing/Comms Career Path Dimensions

Impact	Autonomy
Skills & Knowledge	Ownership

The aspects of performance on all Grammarly Career Paths are in the same four categories: Impact, Autonomy, Skills & Knowledge, and Ownership. All functions use these same categories, and each function developed the content under the four categories them using the same definitions.

Impact is defined as: Measurable affect (output) on Grammarly’s business.

It answers the question, “What impact does a team member at this level drive with their team and for Grammarly?”

Autonomy is defined as: Scope of work for which the person is primarily responsible.

It answers questions such as, “What do we expect a team member at this level to accomplish? What do we expect them to lead? What type of supervision and instruction are they provided?

Skills and Knowledge focuses on domain-specific expertise and capabilities; the progression of knowledge and mastery for the function.

Ownership describes Grammarlian’s shared drive for Grammarly’s success and the success of all of our team members. It describes activities that are essential to our collaborative culture such as effectively giving and receiving feedback; sharing knowledge, mentoring, and coaching; and driving productivity and our values.

Growth/Marketing/Comms Career Path Dimensions - Impact

Growth/Marketing/Comms Career Path Dimensions - Autonomy

Growth/Marketing/Comms Career Path Dimensions - Skills & Knowledge

Breadth: In marketing, as you progress in your career, we expect specialization in one discipline: PMARK, CMARK, LCM, COMMS, GROWTH, ACQ. As you deepen expertise in your discipline, your work starts impacting other disciplines; You go from operating independently in your functional area to having to take into account other teams’ priorities to, eventually, informing other team’s work with your unique insight. Ultimately, you’re striving to get to a place where you’re a master in your domain and have intimate knowledge of priorities and goals of all other domains in the GMC realm

Audience: How well do you know/understand our audiences and to what extent does your work affect them? You go from a general awareness of our audiences to working on projects that directly affect specific audiences to, eventually, leading the charge on identifying new audiences and how to effectively reach them.

Data & Insights: Your relationship with data. From accessing data and insights highly relevant to your function to leveraging broad types of data from multiple sources to triangulating data from internal and external sources and forming unprecedented insights.

Collaboration: With whom do you collaborate and at what level? Is it just your immediate team? Peers from other teams? Leaders/execs from other teams? And at what level? To exchange factual information? To influence decision making? And lastly -- moving from participating in collaborative efforts to leading them.

Title Mapping

Titles

Not all current titles conform to these guidelines
Our mapping attempts to honor company philosophy & reflect industry standards
E.g.

B2B Marketing Manager
Sr. Growth Marketing Manager
Content Marketing Specialist -- B2B

Promotions & Recognition

Promotion is the advancement from one level to the next
Recognition:

Privately between manager and team member
Often accompanied by a comp increase
If new title is in play, manager will facilitate
TBD treat from Grammarly
If there is role scope/focus change, we will announce/recognize to relevant audience

Recognition cont...

We’ll continue to focus on recognizing impact and performance in ways other than publicly announcing promotions:

Shout-outs in #cheers and #gmc
Team events to celebrate key milestones
Compensation increases
High Fives!
Ideas are welcome

Skills & Knowledge

Grammarly IC Career Paths

General
Applied Research Science
Computational Linguists
Customer Support
Engineering
Growth & Marketing | Communications

To be added:

Analytical Linguists
Data Science
Design
Product Management
Sales
Other functions as we grow!