career ladder

noun

variants or corporate ladder

: the series of progressively higher positions that can be attained in one's working career conceived of as a ladder to be climbed toward greater responsibility and financial success

… a twentysomething heroine working her way up the career ladder …

—Clarissa Cruz

The more skills you acquire and use, the more you can earn – even if you don't jump to the next rung on the corporate ladder.

—Jaclyn Fierman

Like most successful women in the pop-music industry, Rhone, 42, started off answering phones and watching men climb the corporate ladder to success.

—Lorraine Ali

… the kind of resentment that a man who has spent his life climbing the ranks of a large bureaucracy feels toward a man who leapfrogs up the career ladder through a special and obnoxious blend of deferments and degrees.

—Michael Lewis

Today as vice-president and director of global diversity, she works with the office of the CEO to ensure that women and people of color with the potential to move up the corporate ladder are identified and groomed.

—Rhonda Richards

Examples of career ladder in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Climbing the career ladder often comes with a new responsibility: leading people. —Sho Dewan, Forbes, 5 Dec. 2024

Leaving the management career ladder behind, he was promoted to IBM Fellow, the highest nonmanagement level in the company. —IEEE Spectrum, 27 Nov. 2024

The city’s school system initiated discussion of a new career ladder framework with its bargaining unit in July of 2023. —Todd Karpovich, Baltimore Sun, 22 Nov. 2024

Each department can also maintain its own skills matrix or career ladder specific to its needs. —Expert Panel®, Forbes, 22 Nov. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1835, in the meaning defined above