The game has changed. The career ladder's been hacked to just a few rungs. The new path is full of switchbacks. You've got to meander - taking different jobs so you can learn more skills. The rewards are different, too.
New assignments mean resources, freedom, choices.
They mean access to better teams, better projects. It used to be that a career was a career. You knew what you wanted and how to get it. Now the path is unclear. Sandy J. Wayne, a management professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, recently asked 570 employees and 289 managers at a large U.S. company to rank the most important factors influencing promotions.