Comms Career Development Framework
IC4 | IC5 | |
Role Summary | An autonomous contributor, executor, and collaborator, who has a thorough understanding of the broader market. They see projects through from idea to execution and completion, working cross-collaboratively to raise awareness of Sourcegraph. | A very experienced Comms leader, driving multiple cross-functional projects in a highly autonomous way that shapes the future of Sourcegraph’s business. |
Launch/Project Management | ||
Scope and Impact | Manages day-to-day projects autonomously and leads planning initiatives specific to their role, with minor support from manager. | Drives year-long campaigns and initiatives across the organization. |
Collaboration | Collaborates and influences the comms strategy across the company to develop content and projects. Has a POV about how Marketing should contribute. | Drives strategy for company projects (launches and campaigns, company kickoffs, important milestones, etc.), managing a wide range of stakeholders to drive results.
May work with agencies, partners, and customers. May own small budgets. |
Drive to Completion | Oversees work with cross-functional teams to hit project timelines. Proactively surfaces and addresses blockers. Works with manager to resolve complex blockers. | Keeps all stakeholders on track to hit project timelines. Proactively surfaces and resolves blockers without manager. |
Internal Communication | Keeps the company and stakeholders up-to-date through all relevant channels (Slack, company meetings, trainings, etc.) with little guidance from manager. Proactively builds Comms advocates within the company to champion Sourcegraph. | Influences company strategy and innovation with key stakeholders and leadership. |
Maximizing Impact | Sets and achieves ambitious goals in partnership with manager, works to drive alignment across multiple stakeholders. Proactively flags barriers to achieving goals. | Independently sets and delivers ambitious departmental goals. Is comfortable challenging strategic direction of projects and company intiatives with support from manager. |
Product Expertise | ||
Sourcegraph | Strong understanding of the entire code intelligence platform and the broader market. | Expert in all aspects of Sourcegraph as a code intelligence platform and the broader market. |
Competition | Understands direct and indirect competitors in our category and how we compare. Creates messaging and comms resources to relay competitive positioning for appropriate channel/audience, with support from manager.
- Social: Drives messaging and campaigns to differentiate ourselves with external audience. - Internal: Supports leadership with messaging for teams on changing competitive landscape. |
Is an expert on all competitors and uses competitive intelligence. Owns messaging and comms resources to relay competitive positioning for appropriate channel/audience, with little support from manager.
- Social: Proactively creates campaigns and messaging to differentiate ourselves with external audience. - Internal: Drives comms for leadership with messaging for teams on changing competitive landscape. |
Market | Has a solid understanding of the devtools ecosystem and where Sourcegraph fits in.
- Social: Drives relevant conversation on social channels and seeks guidance from EMs/PMs when needed. Flags relevant conversations happening online and seeks guidance from PM/EM on participating. - Internal: Works with leadership to keep team informed of market positioning and important company messaging. |
Proactively collaborates across the organization to support messaging and positioning to elevate the Sourcegraph brand.
- Social: Flags relevant conversations happening online and leverages listening data to create campaigns and projects around market trends. - Internal: Drives internal strategy and messaging based on changing external trends, adjust comms for leadership based on needs of company and market. |
Messaging and Writing | ||
Messaging | Works and regularly consults with EMs, PMs, PMM, and/or leadership to craft messaging. | Drives collaboration on messaging and content for all projects, in partnership with EMs, PMs, PMM, and/or leadership, which requires very little adjustments and consultation. |
Developer-First | Understands how influential devs and dev communities perceive the product and effectively communicates in a way that earns respect from developers. Uses understanding of product to create stronger messaging and community. | Uses technical intuition to create better messaging and positioning. Evolves nuance and understanding alongside the evolving technical landscape and trends of Sourcegraph and the market. |
Leadership Voice | Works with leadership to craft messages in their voice, shares outline and collaborates to finalize. | Has mastered leadership voice and tone, requiring minimal edits. |
Strategic Thinking | ||
Strategy | Regularly suggests campaign, project, and other ideas to help drive awareness for Sourcegraph and boost team morale. | Regularly suggests thought leadership projects and comms strategies to help Sourcegraph achieve its goals. Independently works to get such comms projects prioritized and resourced, including driving buy-in at the executive level. |
Cross-Functional Collaboration | ||
Leadership | Effectively consults and collaborates with the senior leadership team on comms projects and direction. | Partners with senior leadership on all company and product moments, supports them in tough comms moments. |
General | A strong communicator, who drives cross-functional collaboration efforts and the long-term direction of their team.
Shares their experience and expertise to help others grow, through mentoring and coaching other teammates, focussing on insightful strategy/plans/RFC reviews, etc. Effectively able to convince and challenge teammates and cross-functional stakeholders using valid expertise and respectful communication. Routinely drives improvements in team processes. |
Manages conflicting views at the executive level, without need for escalation to their manager.
Used as a resource to uplevel campaigns, programs, or initiatives. |
Engineering and Product | Effectively partners with multiple PMs/EMs and/or ICs to promote promote projects and milestones internall and externally. | Works with Product/Eng leadership to promote moments and milestones; consulted by leadership on major decisions for comms support. |
Sales and CE | Regularly connects with sales team and leadership to understand challenges and opportunities.
Social: leverages social platforms to support Sales’ ID’d opportunities. |
Social: Influences GTM strategy through projects that impact the broader GTM teams (personas, use cases, competitive strategy, etc). |
Cross-Functional Projects | Owns social/internal comms for any project, with support from manager. | Serves as the social/internal comms DRI for cross-functional projects. |