Some thoughts on "Up or Out"

I worked for McKinsey for 4 years and I actually really liked the up or out process. Yes, it puts you under pressure but not much more than the pressure young competitive people tend to put themselves under anyway. Nearly everyone there wanted to be challenged and get fast promotion. At the same time the process was very open, feedback was fair and when people didn't make it there wasn't much stigma attached (it just didn't work for them).<p>The flip side of up or out is that if you are any good you get promoted very quickly. I couldn't think of anything worse than waiting around for your boss to retire or move on.

<i>I have proposed before to organizations that they implement a non-management technical track all the way to the CxO level, because it’s a lot cheaper to keep your best people on salary than to hire them (or their equivalents) back as consultants at 2x to 6x their salaries. Such a track might look like this: Associate Engineer -&#62; Engineer -&#62; Senior Engineer -&#62; Technical Officer -&#62; Senior Technical Officer -&#62; Executive Technical Officer -&#62; Chief Technical Officer (only one of these). The ranks from Technical Officer and up would have salaries, perks, and benefits equivalent to progressing through management (VP, Senior VP, Executive VP), but without actual management/head count responsibilities.</i><p>I like this idea a lot. It certainly sounds like a reason to continue working for one company.