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Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. We appreciate you acknowledging the things you enjoy about being part of WWT Asynchrony Labs. We do take career growth seriously, especially since being a growth organization is a key part of our mission.
We agree that the use of Junior and Senior labels is not ideal, and it’s something that we’re actively reviewing. There are actually no formal uses of the term “Junior” in our processes, but we understand our employees sometimes will use the term (we prefer “mid-level”). While there are different ways of classifying employees within the industry, we always try to balance those methods with our desire to let people learn, move between teams and tech stacks, and even move between roles within the organization. At times any label can become an obstacle to that, and we want to avoid locking people into very specific roles.
None of the leadership team expect the idea of Junior or Senior to be something that’s used in a negative way against anyone. It concerns us to hear that this can feel unfair and confusing, and that’s not something we consider to be acceptable. We’d appreciate the chance to hear more specific examples of where this is being used in hurtful ways. While at times the idea of seniority in a technology helps us construct teams with balanced skill sets, we’re trying to set up an environment where your honest feedback is heard when outcomes don’t line up with your expectations.
There’s no doubt that at times receiving feedback can be a difficult and painful process. We do believe that open and honest feedback is one of the best ways to be a growth organization and become a place where we can continue to improve together. As an organization, we are aiming to do a better job of helping everyone become better at giving feedback in a way that’s respectful to all our employees, regardless of their gender or background. We haven’t always done a great job of letting our employees know the different ways we support this effort, including feedback workshops, respect in the workplace training, and access to performance managers and a local leadership team. We’re always trying to do better and would love to hear your suggestions on how we can make the experience less painful and more productive for you. And we want to specify that we are committed to growing our reputation as being not only a great place for women to work, but as a place that globally values inclusion and diversity across cultures, races, genders, ethnicities, religions, etc.
As we move forward, we’re committed to diversifying our hiring to include candidates with a range of professional backgrounds, including entry-level developers. One of the ways we’re looking to fulfill this commitment is by actively recruiting at more meetups, interest groups, and other avenues. We would be grateful if you would be willing to help in this endeavor as well.
We do value your opinions, and hope you’ll share more detailed feedback with your manager and other members of leadership so we can work together to help make WWT a great place to work for you.
