nerdgeschoss Human Growth Framework

HandbookHuman Growth Framework

nerdgeschoss Human Growth Framework

Why do we need this?

The nerdgeschoss Human Growth Framework is designed to evaluate capabilities and achievements across employees while trying to fairly decide on salaries. We try to take the guesswork out of this nebulus topic while trying to eliminate discriminations like the gender pay gap.

How does it work?

Pick your job to see the matching Core Delivery track. The level you reach there decides your base salary, independent of whether you are a developer, designer or product manager. On top of that you can take on management and supporting responsibilities, each adding a bonus, and every year with us adds a little more.

Your Job

Core Delivery

Your core track describes how you deliver work. Reach a level by regularly showing that you are capable of the mentioned examples or comparable achievements.

Core Delivery

junior

Scope: Focuses on improving their knowledge of tools and processes while working on defined tasks within a project under guidance of others.

Builds smaller features independently or bigger features with the help of others.

Actively looks for learning opportunities.

Communicates clearly with peers and asks clarifying questions.

Incorporates feedback effectively and iterates quickly.

Participates actively in team rituals and code reviews.

mid

Scope: Owns end-to-end implementation of features and smaller projects and fully understands the languages, frameworks and toolings of the stacks they work in.

Owns and coordinates development of small to medium-sized features.

Has a deep understanding of all the codebases they work on.

Teaches others through code reviews, pairing, and documentation.

Proposes and implements small measures to improve code quality and developer experience/maintainability.

Follows established best practices for documentation and pull request reviews.

senior

Scope: Leads development of complex features and systems across teams. Understands not just the how but the why — from framework internals to long-term product impact.

Owns, coordinates, and leads development of larger features, involving the right people at the right time.

Proactively improves code quality and developer experience beyond immediate task requirements.

Identifies edge cases and potential issues early in the implementation process.

Mentors and supports colleagues through code reviews, pairing, and knowledge sharing.

Collaborates with designers and PMs to anticipate technical risks and ensure smooth delivery.

principal

Scope: Operates at the highest level of development mastery. Trusted expert that is involved in creating and maintaining the foundations of what we work on in strong collaboration with product and tech leads.

Solves the hardest technical problems across projects — the ones others get stuck on.

Debugs and resolves issues that require deep understanding of framework internals.

Tracks where our tools are heading and keeps the team informed about upcoming changes and risks.

Actively contributes to our open source dependencies.

Evaluates, selects, and when necessary builds frameworks and abstractions; prefers proven solutions over homegrown ones.

Advises on technical bets and long-term technology decisions.

Management Tracks

Taking on management responsibilities adds a bonus on top of your base salary (5% per level).

Project / Customer Management

Supports customers and internal initiatives as first point of contact.

Assists in sprint planning, retros, and standups.

Documents decisions and maintains project boards.

Escalates blockers early.

Answers simple customer questions.

Reproduces customer bug reports and turns them into actionable tickets.

Keeps tabs on the current sprint progress and facilitates the completion of the sprint.

Joins and documents customer meetings.

Owns delivery for at least one client.

Balances project scope and deadlines.

Keeps client expectations aligned with team reality.

Anticipates risks and works proactively to mitigate them.

People Management

Leads a small group (3–5 people) while remaining hands-on in their craft.

Runs regular 1:1s focused on growth and wellbeing.

Gives feedback and helps resolve team conflicts.

Coordinates with other leads on delivery and priorities.

Conducts hiring screening meetings as needed.

Owns leadership and decision-making for their team. Has final authority on hiring, trial periods, and contract terminations.

Conducts yearly review of job levels and helps team members take the next step.

Coaches individuals through skill progression.

Partners with other managers to align goals.

Drives hiring, onboarding, and retention for their team.

Craft Management

Leads technical/design direction on a single project.

Defines architecture or design systems and keeps the project on track.

Starts and coordinates bigger initiatives to improve projects, from major refactorings to new technologies.

Conducts technical hiring interviews.

Coordinates cross-functional implementation.

Provides technical feedback.

Ensures delivery quality.

Guides multiple projects or complex systems.

Key difference to Principal roles: focused on cross-team responsibility and standardization rather than individual mastery.

Shapes technical/design practices across teams.

Standardizes frameworks or patterns.

Advises PMs and clients on technical feasibility and scalability.

Leads initiatives to modernize codebases, increase DX and improve workflows.

Supporting Tracks

Supporting tracks reward work that strengthens nerdgeschoss as a whole (5% per level).

Evangelism

Represents nerdgeschoss at local events and creates marketing material.

Regularly represents nerdgeschoss at meetups with contributions or lightning talks.

Creates simple case studies and material for marketing efforts.

Engages with the local tech community on behalf of the studio.

Represents nerdgeschoss at conferences and produces content with lasting marketing value.

Delivers fully researched talks at relevant conferences.

Turns talk material into blog posts and reusable marketing content.

Builds a recognizable presence in the broader tech community.

Mentors L1 colleagues in preparing their first talks.

Open Source

Contributes to and maintains smaller open source projects relevant to the company.

Owns a small internal library or tool.

Reviews contributions from peers and external developers.

Documents processes, APIs, and examples.

Advocates for open source within the studio.

Ensures contributions are well-tested and maintainable.

Drives open source strategy and maintains significant external projects.

Maintains one or more externally visible open source projects.

Reviews and guides external contributions.

Represents nerdgeschoss in open source communities.

Identifies strategic open source opportunities that benefit the studio's work.

Salary Calculation

Years with nerdgeschoss:

Base salary of €3,500.00 results in a total brut salary of

€42,000.00 per year
€3,500.00 per month

HandbookHuman Growth Framework

nerdgeschoss Human Growth Framework

Why do we need this?

How does it work?

We defined several growth directions with multiple tracks each. You can reach levels within those tracks by regularly showing that you are capable of achieving the mentioned examples or comparable achievements. Each level is associated with points (first level gives 1 point, second level 3 points, third level 6 points, fourth level 10 points). Your total points then calculate your salary.

The salary is calculated by a base salary (which is adjusted to the median salary of developers in Berlin) plus a certain amount per point you reached.

Core

Core skills are all about organizing yourself and the work around you.

Self Development

junior

Consistently fills out time sheets and the Daily Nerd (80%).

Shows up to and is prepared for all scheduled meetings.

Communicates timing issues while there is still time to fix them.

intermediate

Consistently reaches billable hours goals.

Manages working hours effectively to reach personal goals.

Collaboration

junior

Schedules pairing sessions for bigger features.

Gives helpful feedback during code/design reviews.

intermediate

Repeatedly plans complex stories, as a story owner, together with peers (this is NOT "who's gonna take the frontend task for this?").

Problem Solving

junior

Fixes logic bugs within the given timebox.

Reproduces and documents poorly written bug tickets from the client.

intermediate

Proposes alternative solutions on an impact vs effort scale.

Find underlying issues of bug classes and proposes a solution.

senior

Consistently demonstrates the ability to quickly confront and tackle complex problems, even outside of their known area of expertise.

Engineering

Engineering skills are technical software development skills.

Foundations and DevOps

junior

Extends build pipelines to run additional checks.

Can find issues in the current state of a system, e.g. full database or misconfigured credentials.

Effectively extends configurations and capabilities of tools, e.g. improved image compression during builds.

intermediate

Setup a new project from scratch, including review apps, build pipeline and CI.

Handle Monitoring Tools.

Find potential issues before they affect production systems.

senior

Plans, evaluates and documents system architectures and services for a new project.

Plans, executes and evaluates measures to increase performance of critical systems.

principal

Intricate knowledge of common databases and how to tune them.

Web

junior

Makes minor modifications to existing screens.

Fixes simple design quality issues.

Uses CSS and TS appropriately, following style guide.

intermediate

Specs and builds interactive components independently.

Prototypes new features quickly, e.g. a modal or popover system.

Provides useful design feedback and suggests feasible alternatives before starting work on a feature.

Preemptively looks for potential issues in the code base and comes up with a plan on how to deal with them.

senior

Acts as a caretaker for all of web client code.

Has intricate knowledge of frontend build tools like webpack and yarn.

Designs, implements and maintains reusable libraries, e.g. the form library.

Implements complex and maintainable animations across hierarchies.

principal

Intricate knowledge of UI frameworks and how to tune performance of them.

Deep understanding of application architectures and their benefits/drawbacks, can use this knowledge to plan bigger applications.

Servers

junior

Adds simple endpoints according to project structure with correct documentation and tests.

Extends or updates existing endpoints with new properties.

Confidently writes basic database queries for reports, including joins across tables.

intermediate

Plans and executes more complex endpoints together with frontend developers while evaluating feature needs from a concept.

Integrates third party services effectively.

Makes sensible abstractions based on template and code patterns.

senior

Can answer any project-specific question asked by peers within a reasonable research time.

Creates a new application from scratch with appropriate documentation.

Implements a completely new feature that is not yet covered by the application architecture, e.g. planned and implemented the billing architecture of KS.

Researches existing solutions to problems and compare build vs buy solutions in terms of cost/effectiveness; makes reasonable choices and documents them.

Creates reusable code between applications and maintains it as a 'gem', as its code owner.

principal

Deep understanding of the Rails code base and all of its frameworks.

Develops complete complex database schemas and model architectures for new applications.

key person of influence

Is a core contributor to a core system used by the company.

Leadership

Leadership is all about helping others to achieve their best.

Mentorship

junior

Reinforces and affirms positive feedback for good work.

Teaches others about existing processes.

Acts as an onboarding buddy.

intermediate

Validates ongoing work and sustains motivation.

Helps group members approach problems with curiosity.

Shares interesting articles with team members to help with their growth.

Asks questions to illuminate concepts, rather than stating them.

Creates and shares material that transfers knowledge.

Direction

junior

Re-prioritises and consults others regarding the completion of tasks in challenging circumstances.

Helps others break down problems into feasible, tangible next steps.

intermediate

Proposes solutions when teams get bogged down or lose momentum.

senior

Maintains a pulse on individual and team morale.

Culture

junior

Actively participates and makes contributions within organizational processes.

Schedules and prepares small get-togethers.

intermediate

Engages in organizational systems thinking.

Advocates for improved diversity and inclusion, and proposes ideas to help.

Solves long-standing organizational problems.

Organizes and conducts extensive team events.

Brand and Marketing

Brand and marketing efforts help our company to grow, both in terms of customers/revenue and employees.

Evangelism

junior

Communicates genuine and honest excitement about their work externally.

Shares personal and organizational successes with their network.

Participates at relevant events.

intermediate

Organizes positive small or medium size events that bring people to nerdgeschoss.

Interacts on social media with followers of our accounts.

Speaks publicly at meetups.

senior

Builds and grows communities around topics interesting for nerdgeschoss.

Is a keynote speaker at conferences.

Content Creation

junior

Researches content for sharing.

Is up to date on relevant industry topics and proposes them for inclusion in future posts.

intermediate

Writes blog posts and stories for our accounts.

Develops case studies.

Documents events and work at nerdgeschoss.

senior

Maintains and manages our monthly newsletter.

Open Source

junior

Contributes to existing open source projects.

Documents and advertises our projects when possible.

Identifies opportunities for future publications.

intermediate

Actively maintains and supports a library on GitHub.

Builds a community around the library.

Salary Calculation

You reached a total of 0. With a base salary of €40,000.00 and a point salary of €1,200.00 this results in a total brut salary of

€40,000.00 per year
€3,333.33 per month

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