Career path

We have long been challenged by people who feel uncertain about their career projection at Significa.

Understandably, if we may say so. We know this relates to the fact that we are a small company with no ambition to grow over 40 people. Don't get us wrong, we are ambitious, very much so, but not regarding our team size. It has never been our driving factor, which is made obvious in our Mission and values and deeply engraved in our Culture.

As stated in our Hiring criteria, grinding up the ranks is limited in a company our size. Here’s an excerpt about it:

We aim to hire people who appreciate the benefits and drawbacks of a small team. One thing to note is that with a small team, there's not much room for climbing the corporate ladder. Well, maybe because we're not corporate at all in the first place.

Here, there's very limited scope for hierarchical progression. Consequently, career advancement is more about Personal development rather than an attempt to grab power or a fancy title name.

With that said, though, it's important to note that if we hire you, it means we trust you, and we want to grow mutually with you. That's why we always look to promote internally before considering hiring externally. We don't want you blocked from achieving your potential with Significa. We'll always look inward before we look out. We'll dive into your capabilities and potential to fit a role, and only if there is no suitable match will we look outside. Here's a fun fact for you to prove it: we've never hired externally for a manager role.

Introducing career paths

With the above in mind, aiming to help you with your Personal development, we implemented career paths. As we've written and said multiple times, we want you to be the main character in your life, not anybody else.

In a non-metaphorical way, this means you are in charge of your career, your goals, your ambitions, and your personal development. Our job, as a company, is to help and guide you through your journey, so if you share a particular aspiration with us, we'll happily align your goals at Significa with your long-term drive, ensuring it doesn't hinder your performance or your development.

We know the key to motivating individuals is to match their long-term goals with Significa's needs, whether or not those goals are ultimately achieved together.

How does it work?

We created separate career paths for each department, ranging from level 1 to level 7. Within each level, there's a set of targets you must hit in order to progress to the next level.

Each level is tied to a pay grade, which we'll discuss later in this document. Even though we don't believe payment should be the main driver of your career, we also acknowledge how important it is. We hope the clarity in the pay grades and the targets within each level will motivate you to climb up the levels and increase your salary.

Career paths will provide you with clarity around it. They set the standard for what we expect of you within the context of your level. It gives you a clear career roadmap to identify key areas for improvement and opportunities to develop new skills aligned with our needs. By our, we mean yours and the company's.

In tandem, we've implemented Personal development and performance reviews, which revolve around setting your goals for the upcoming six months, as well as measuring your achievements over the past semester. The career path's purpose is to serve as the source of truth for the one-on-ones with your manager, where together we review these topics.

All career paths can be found on Culture Amp.

Money, money, money!

When it comes to money, the Career Paths are tightly related to the pay grades.

As stated in Policy on pay :

First of all, pay grades apply to every person, regardless of their department. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know engineers typically have higher salaries than everyone else. We don't care about that.

We are a Design-led company, so how logical would it be to privilege engineers? Everybody is equally important to Significa. Period. An Office Manager at level 5 will get the same salary as a Back-end developer at the same level.

We hope this creates transparency across the board. We believe you must know where you fit within our structure, what you need to do to get a raise, and what you need to do to be promoted. And perhaps not less important, you'll be able to see and compare the pay grades of your colleagues, too.

For more details about how payment works at Significa, pick-up your broomstick and fly away to Policy on pay.