The career ladder is dead, according to a former Facebook executive

Libby Leffler, a former Facebook executive and Google
employee, is now the vice president of membership at
SoFi.
Steve
Maller

• Libby Leffler, a former Facebook executive and Google
  employee, is now the vice president of membership at
  SoFi.
• Leffler advised ditching the concept of the career
  ladder and instead looking for opportunities where you can
  learn — even if it means making a lateral move. That’s how she
  approached her time at Facebook.
• Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has written about the idea
  of a “jungle gym,” which involves more potential for
  “detours.”

As a college student, Libby Leffler could never have predicted
where her career would take her.

Leffler worked at Google for a year before heading to Facebook,
and then to Harvard Business School. Today, she’s the vice
president of membership at personal finance company

SoFi.

It isn’t just that financial technology didn’t really exist until
recently, or that SoFi is only seven years old. According to
Leffler, the career ladder — a predictable series of steps from
college graduation to retirement — is all but dead.

Leffler, for her part, told Business Insider that, instead of
trying to force the career ladder back into existence, “I wasn’t
only focused on the next level up. I was really always drawn to
things that intrigued me, gave me the chance to learn as much as
I could, and gave me the opportunity to learn something new, with
plenty of room for experimentation.”

Leffler added that she never shied away from, say, moving to
another team within her company, even if it wasn’t a promotion
per se. She started out as a client partner, then became a
business lead to the chief operating officer and a strategic
partnerships manager.

“The things that I learned in my previous roles, whether they
were a step up or lateral in nature, have all prepared me for the
opportunity I have at SoFi,” she said.

She advised others to do the same: “Sometimes this means taking
that role that might be the same level on a different team, where
you can learn a totally new skill, or you can change roles. Then
you can level up into something else where you can leverage the
new skill you learned.”

A career can look like a ‘jungle gym’ instead of a ladder

Leffler’s observations recall the concept of a career “jungle
gym,” a term that’s been touted by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.
(Leffler said the term is used widely at Facebook, and not just
by Sandberg.)

In her 2013 bestseller, “Lean
In,” Sandberg wrote that “ladders are limiting” and that
“jungle gyms offer more creative exploration. There are many ways
to get to the top of a jungle gym. The ability to forge a unique
path with occasional dips, detours and even dead ends presents a
better chance for fulfillment.”

Meanwhile, Business Insider’s Mark
Abadi reported on a
Harvard Business Review article in which the psychology
researcher Tania Luna and the Weight Watchers International
executive Jordan Cohen said too many modern employees have a
“delusional belief in the outdated idea of linear career
progression.”

The career ladder, or the direct professional path, they write,
“no longer matches reality. We no longer need to be good at
predicting the future; we now have to succeed when the future is
unpredictable.”

Leffler said that, at Facebook in particular, she rarely set her
sights on a specific role. Instead, she said, “I was always
looking really for, ‘Where is an opportunity for me to contribute
and make an impact at the company?'”

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