The conventional language of career success moves in only one direction: up. If you really succeed, you reach the top. But there is another type of career path. Sideways moves without a promotion or a pay rise, can be a benefit to employees and organizations alike.
A study carried out by Donald Sull of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his co-authors in 2021 found that the availability of lateral(横向的) career opportunities has a marked impact on keeping employees. When they decided whether to stay in the company or not, chances to move sideways were two and a half times more important than pay. Another paper, by Xin Jin of the University of South Florida and Michael Waldman of Cormell University, concluded that lateral moves did not just benefit organizations: employees who experienced them were more likely to be promoted and to enjoy higher wage growth later in their careers than employees who did not. You can move up by first moving sideways.
The crab-like(螃蟹般的) career has other things going for it. One is that it is a good way to learn new things. As hiring processes increasingly emphasize skills, employers are likely to put comparatively less emphasis on CVs and comparatively more weight on what you know. Messrs Jin and Waldman reason that the upper ranks of companies tend to be people whose capabilities are broad, not deep; that may explain why lateral moves are good for promotion prospects. Along with skills come contacts. Transferring between teams usually means building a bigger internal network. Opening the door to more lateral moves is partly a practical matter. Some bigger employers have "internal talent marketplaces" in which employees can find and apply for jobs elsewhere in the company; smaller firms have fewer such opportunities to offer.
Embracing sideways movement also requires the right attitude. Lots of managers like to keep talent to themselves, at the expense of workers and firms. And moving sideways still has less cachet(声望) than moving upwards. Most people find it not so easy to accept.
