Why Lateral Career Moves Beat Promotions for Long-Term Growth

I see a lot of people laser-focused on the next step up. Head of to Director. Director to VP. Fair enough—ambition's important. But I reckon we've got the entire thing backwards.

The best career move I ever made wasn't a promotion. It was a lateral move—a sideways shift that made absolutely no sense on paper. Less prestige, steeper learning curve, completely different domain. My mates thought I'd lost it.

Turned out to be the thing that set everything else in motion.

The Foundational Reality Check

Here's the thing though: I could afford to do it. Foundational needs—mortgage, family, financial stability—will always trump higher-order growth. And they should. If you need that next level of reward or security, chase it. No judgment.

But if you're early enough in your career, or comfortable enough to take a breath, this is where range becomes your multiplier.

This isn't about privilege—it's about timing. There are moments in your career where you have flexibility, and moments where you don't. Recognising which phase you're in matters.

Why Range Acts as a Multiplier

Having five different lenses to look at a problem beats having one massive lens every single time. You start seeing patterns other people miss. You synthesise ideas from places they'd never think to look. You connect dots that seem unrelated until suddenly they're not.

Here's what I mean in practice:

Pattern Recognition Across Domains When you've worked in infrastructure, product, and delivery, you spot the warning signs of technical debt before it becomes critical. Not because you're smarter, but because you've seen how decisions in one area cascade into problems in another.

Translation Between Functions Range teaches you to speak multiple languages within an organisation. Engineering speaks in systems and dependencies. Product speaks in user value and outcomes. Finance speaks in ROI and runway. When you can translate between these, you become the person who unblocks things that others see as intractable.

Unconventional Solutions The best solution to a technical problem I ever saw came from someone with a background in logistics. They saw the system as a supply chain problem, not a code problem. That perspective shift was worth more than another senior engineer would have been.

Depth vs. Breadth: The 70-20-10 Reality

When I'm hiring for senior roles, I'm far more interested in someone's range than their technical depth. Don't get me wrong—depth matters. But depth comes fairly naturally through the 70-20-10 rule: most of your learning happens on the job, not in a course or a book.

Here's what that actually means:

• 70% of learning happens through challenging assignments – you get deeper by doing

• 20% from developmental relationships – mentors, peers, feedback loops

• 10% from formal education – courses, books, certifications

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Depth builds itself if you're engaged in meaningful work. You can't help but get better at the thing you do every day.

Range? That requires you to deliberately step outside your zone and be genuinely uncomfortable. It's harder. It takes longer. And most people avoid it because it doesn't fit the tidy career narrative we've all been sold.

What Range Reveals in Hiring

When I'm reviewing candidates, range tells me things a linear career path never could:

Character Under Pressure Taking a lateral move—especially one that looks like a step back—requires courage. It shows me someone who backs their own judgment against conventional wisdom. That matters when you're making calls with incomplete information.

Growth Capacity If someone's stayed in their comfort zone for a decade, how do I know they can grow into something unfamiliar? Range demonstrates adaptability. It shows me they can be uncomfortable and keep moving forward anyway.

Peripheral Vision I'm not the most senior person in many rooms I walk into. But I'm often one of the most experienced—and there's a difference. Range gives you peripheral vision. It teaches you how people think across functions, industries, contexts.

That peripheral vision is what lets you see around corners. You spot the secondary and tertiary effects of decisions because you've lived in the spaces where those effects land.

How to Evaluate a Lateral Move

Not every sideways move is worth making. Here's how to think about whether one makes sense:

Does it expand your lens? If you're a backend engineer moving to another backend engineering role at a different company, that's not range—that's a job change. But moving from backend engineering to platform engineering, or engineering to technical product management? That's a new lens.

Does it scare you a bit? Genuine discomfort is a signal. If the move feels completely comfortable, you're probably not stretching far enough. If it feels impossible, you might be stretching too far. The sweet spot is "I think I can do this, but I'm not entirely sure."

Will it compound with what you already know? Range is multiplicative when your experiences build on each other in non-obvious ways. A product manager with an engineering background is valuable. A product manager with engineering, customer support, and sales experience? That's someone who sees the entire system.

Can you afford the short-term trade-offs? Be honest about where you are financially and personally. There's no point making a move that puts your foundational stability at risk. Range is a long game—it only works if you can actually play it.

The Long Game

If you're in a position to consider lateral career moves that scare you a bit—take them. The foundations you build will matter more than the title you're chasing.

Five years from now, nobody will care that you were a "Senior" versus "Lead" in 2024. They will care that you can see problems from angles nobody else in the room can, that you can translate between domains, and that you've proven you can grow into the unfamiliar.

That's what range gives you. And that's why the sideways move you're avoiding might be exactly the one you need.