Personal Growth and Development Guide

Non-linear Career Frameworwk

Considering our headcount size of roughly ~100 Doister’s globally, we strategically built a non-linear career framework to enable multi-functional opportunities and pathways for everyone and to allow for long term development. For Doister’s that truly align with our core values, mission and thrive in our environment, there will likely always be an opportunity to pivot their career into a different direction or experiment with a different speciality during their time here. 

Growth Budget 

Our Growth budget is designed to support every Doister with their personal and career development. 

The investment in personal growth and a dedicated growth budget is not merely a perk; it is a strategic imperative for Doist. This approach moves beyond traditional training by empowering Doisters to own their personal growth and development, directly impacting the company's innovation, retention, and adaptability. 

Continuous learning improves critical thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving skills, leading to better quality code, product design, and customer interactions (source here). 

What is Professional Development and Personal Growth through learning? 

Harvard laid it out very nicely here. 

Who is responsible for personal career development and growth? 

You are responsible for your own personal growth and development. This is your career. Your Head or Lead should and can enable and support you, but they are not accountable for your personal learning and growth journey, you are. 

What resources are available? 

• We are starting to build learning material in our learning hub. This Microlearning material can create meaningful pockets of learning, especially for those with large personal and work-related priorities. 

• There are many online learning resources available: Udemy, Harvard, LinkedIn Learning {no one wants to hear this, but a few super amazing people did create learning content on LinkedIn}. 

• Inspiration for AI related learning, can be found here. 

• Audio books or books, paid podcasts or other audio related learning.

• Join a Masterclass.

• Maven Learning (mostly for AI)

• Checkout MentorCruise for 1:1 mentorship and personal career development.

• Community and Network related cohort learning within your specific field. A few examples of these are: 

  • OpenOrg

  • TheProductFolks

  • Customer Success Communities

  • Ro Remote, Remote working mentorship and community

  • Women Who Code

  • Opensource and AI Community and learning

• Do you have more ideas? Add them here directly, no permission needed. 

What about internal company wide learning & development? 

Good news! We will be building internal learning & development programs. Our very first one has already launched and can be found here. We now have a tiny Learning hub and hope to build it out to continue to amplify Doist’s yearly themes and priorities. We also hope to make very complicated topics highly accessible for all Doisters. 

How and when do I prioritise personal growth? 

Daily, weekly, monthly. Create a routine that works for you. Don’t skip it, its vital that this remains a priority during your work time. If you are formally studying towards a degree, post-graduate or long-term learning, carving out all your learning during your work time is not possible, but carving out a few hours a week for dedicated learning is vital for your and our collective growth. 

If I have never used my growth budget, how can I use it right away? 

There are so many options. You need to find one that works best for your work and life. One immediate option is to add the topic to your next 1:1 with your Lead or Head and ask what developmental areas you should prioritise to improve and whether they know about any courses, learning material, cohorts or books available on the topic. You can also review your recent performance review and look at areas you want to further excel in or areas that you need to still develop. 

Here are some ideas on how to get started: 

• Schedule learning time into your calendar re-occurring every week. Aim to dedicate at least an hour or two to learning, weekly. Some Doisters block their 8am to 9am to dedicated learning daily. Find a routine that can work for your life stage. 

• Sign up for a course

• Buy a book on a topic that you’d like to learn

• Sign up for a learning cohort with a subject/ experts of your choice

• Set an accountability buddy. It can be a friend, but it can also be another Doister that can check in and see how it is going or even learn with you. 

• Share your learnings with your team and see if there is shared interest or even shared-learning opportunities internally at Doist