Grocery TV Career Growth & Development

What makes promotion criteria feel fair and clear — and what evidence supports it?

The most important thing for me as a manager is that my reports and I remain on the same page in terms of both their performance and where they are in their professional development.

For me, getting promoted always starts with developing an understanding with an individual on where they are at their current level. Leveling guides can never eliminate all ambiguity so I like to start with making sure my interpretation of each facet of a given level is the same as the individual. 

Once that mutual understanding is established, the path becomes clear on what gaps need to be addressed for that individual to reach the next level. 

Together, I’ll work with them to set goals that contribute to both their development and the goals of the company. Aligning individual goals with the greater goals of the team and company is critical, because it eliminates any risk of an employee feeling like they can’t progress themselves due to the needs of the business. Promotion and progression then become fair and clear, the individual knows what they need to accomplish and the company benefits from their progression.

Which program most improved your capability in your role — and what changed after?

At Grocery TV, we have a learning and development program. This program provides funds to employees to pursue educational opportunities that will assist in their professional development. Since its introduction in 2024, members of my team have utilized it in a variety of ways: courses around cloud architecture, a conference to learn how to be a better staff engineer and a seminar at The University of Texas at Austin on public speaking.

For me personally, I attended a course around leadership in January of 2025. Throughout the week we covered everything from how to deliver actionable feedback to creating psychological safety. Since returning from the course, my ability to help my team grow in their careers and operate better as an engineering organization has greatly improved. Feedback is now delivered as close to real time as possible and our metrics around having a unified direction that’s understood by everyone have improved twice as much .

What manager or mentor behavior consistently accelerates growth?

Growth comes the fastest when someone is working on things that excite them and bring them energy. You’re never going to become a great writer if the mere thought of sitting down to write bores you to death. With that in mind, I try my best to listen to my team’s interests and desires so that I can put them on projects that excite them. 

Our larger project planning happens on a quarterly basis, so as our existing projects wrap up I make sure to touch base with each individual on my team in regards to their interests. The two things we’ll talk about is how their work from the past quarter has engaged them and what they’re interested in working on or learning next. This has proven to work best with junior engineers, who are still exploring various technologies for the first time and trying to identify where they want their expertise to lie.

Since our engineering department is organized into pods, we can be flexible to who works on what problems. This makes the process simple — listen to what individuals want, identify what the business needs, then shuffle the pods to have the best individual to business alignment.