Altitude Framework
The Altitude Framework is a methodology for framing your achievements differently depending on who you’re communicating with. Different audiences care about different aspects of your work.
Why Different Framings?
A single achievement has multiple facets:
- Your peers want to know how you built it
- Your manager wants to know what it achieved
- Your skip-level wants to know why it matters to the organization
- Executives want the business impact in one sentence
By preparing all four framings in advance, you’re ready for any conversation about your work.
The Four Levels
For Peers (Technical Details)
Audience: Fellow engineers, technical colleagues
Focus on:
- Architecture and design decisions
- Technical challenges overcome
- Implementation details
- Code quality and best practices
- Technologies and tools used
Color coding: Green background
Example:
Designed and implemented a distributed caching layer using Redis Cluster with consistent hashing. Handled edge cases for cache invalidation across 12 microservices. Achieved 99.99% cache hit rate with sub-millisecond latency.
For Manager (Outcomes & Impact)
Audience: Direct manager, immediate team lead
Focus on:
- Results and outcomes achieved
- Team collaboration and leadership
- Timeline and delivery
- Goals and OKRs met
- Process improvements
Color coding: Orange background
Example:
Led a team of 4 engineers to deliver the caching layer 1 week ahead of schedule. Reduced page load times by 60% across all product pages, directly improving our Core Web Vitals score from 45 to 92.
For Skip Level (Organizational Priorities)
Audience: Manager’s manager, department leadership
Focus on:
- Alignment with organizational goals
- Cross-team collaboration
- Strategic initiatives supported
- Department-wide impact
- Scalability and sustainability
Color coding: Blue background
Example:
Directly supported the Q3 Platform Reliability OKR by reducing infrastructure load by 40%. The caching solution is now being adopted by 3 other teams as a standard pattern, improving engineering velocity across the organization.
For Leaders (Business Impact)
Audience: Executives, senior leadership
Focus on:
- Business outcomes in one sentence
- Revenue impact
- Cost savings
- Strategic value
- Customer impact
Color coding: Pink background
Example:
Infrastructure optimization that reduced cloud costs by $200K annually while supporting 3x traffic growth.
Tips for Each Level
Writing for Peers
- Be technical - they understand the details
- Explain your reasoning
- Highlight clever solutions
- Include specific technologies
- Share learnings
Writing for Manager
- Lead with results
- Include timelines
- Mention team contributions
- Connect to team goals
- Quantify where possible
Writing for Skip Level
- Reference department priorities
- Show cross-team impact
- Demonstrate strategic thinking
- Highlight scalability
- Think long-term
Writing for Leaders
- One sentence maximum
- Lead with the number
- Focus on business value
- Use their language (revenue, costs, growth)
- Make it memorable
Using AI to Help
HeroJournal’s AI integration can help you:
- Generate suggestions - AI can draft altitude framings based on your title and notes
- Improve existing text - Refine and polish what you’ve written
- Extract metrics - Identify quantifiable results from your descriptions
See AI Integration for setup instructions.
Common Mistakes
- Too technical for executives - They don’t need implementation details
- Too vague for peers - Technical colleagues want specifics
- Missing metrics - Numbers make achievements concrete
- Too long for leaders - Keep it to one sentence
- Copying the same text - Each level should be distinct
Practice Exercise
Take one of your recent projects and try writing all four levels:
- Start with what you did (peers)
- Then what it achieved (manager)
- Then why it matters to the organization (skip level)
- Finally, distill to one business impact sentence (leaders)
The more you practice, the easier it becomes to communicate your value at any altitude.