> To help guard against discussion about career growth getting lost entirely, Spellbook conducts annual and midyear reviews of its employees, Stevenson said. That allows for "really deep conversation" about workers' careers and how to level up and advance, he said.

I have never had a "really deep conversation" about my career at a mid/full year review. Often, that's where I get feedback about something that happened months ago I was unaware my manager thought needed improvement.

The in-the-trenches feedback mentioned in the article would be an improvement over the lack-of-any feedback.

All of my favorite roles were actually not ones with the most interesting technical challenges, they were the ones where I felt like I had real leverage I could wield through my manager. If you want to get anything meaningful done, you need buy-in from leadership, and it's very difficult to get that when your manager is not on-board.