Is working in community a dead-end career?
It is one of those questions that matters to everyone working in this space, which is exactly why so much bias creeps into the answer.
What we want to be true and what is actually true can be many different things.
So I want to explore what the data actually says. We can all think of people who worked in community and then climbed to a really high level. But that runs into survivorship bias. For every person who made it, how many didn’t? How many people are stuck in the same job year after year? How many haven’t made any progress?
I will give the answer first, then explain how we got there.
Is community a dead-end career?
For many people, somewhat. For some people, absolutely not. And for a few, the answer doesn’t really matter.
Let’s go into the data.
Why This Question Is Coming Up Now
I spent some time pulling together all the CMX industry reports from the last four or five years. The picture is consistent: the community industry is contracting. I personally think we have been in a community recession for a couple of years now, and it only seems to be getting worse, especially for the B2B enterprise communities we typically work with.
Fewer people answering these surveys are working full-time on community than before. And a lot of the career advice in our space is now out of date. What we used to share from 2018 to 2022 doesn’t apply the same way today. It was written before AI changed the entry rung, before the contraction, before the big tech layoffs.
When you look at the CMX data, three trends stand out:
- The number of full-time community roles is down.
- Confidence in increased investment is significantly down from the post-pandemic peak.
- Interest in community from other departments has dropped dramatically in recent years.
I really wish CMX still published the interest-from-other-departments number, because it is the one I find most worrying. None of these three measures point to anything positive about our space.
The Three Data Sources
For this analysis we drew on three sources.
One, the CMX industry reports. Their 2026 report is due soon and I’ll take a look at it when it lands.
Two, an 11-year cohort study. More on that in a moment.
Three, the broader labour market data: public salary numbers, layoff trackers, and what is happening at the company level for community pros.
The Community Pyramid Is Unusually Flat at the Top
The first finding is structural. If you look at community job titles, the pyramid is far flatter at the top than in most professional fields.
Roughly 21 managers for every one VP.
I need to caveat that. “Manager” means different things in community from elsewhere, so the comparison is not perfectly clean. But 21 to 1 is still a very big number. There just aren’t that many senior roles to climb into.
Where 86 Community Pros from 2015 Ended Up
The problem with all CMX survey data is that it is a snapshot. You are measuring the people who took the survey that year, not following the same people over time. Different respondents in different years, so what looks like a trend might just be sampling variation.
So we did something different. Back in 2015 we hosted an event called FeverBee Sprint, 11 years ago. We had all the attendee information: their job titles, the companies they worked for. We selected a sample from that list and tracked what happened to them.
Of the 86 we could verify on LinkedIn:
- 8% climbed within community to a Sr Director or VP role
- 1% became senior at a community-as-product company
- 24% are still in the same role today (this one absolutely shocked me)
- 41% moved laterally out of community into a different function
- 20% went independent or founded their own thing
- 6% left the field entirely
The 24% is the number that stayed with me. I will caveat it: this is based on LinkedIn, and if someone hasn’t updated their profile in years they would still be counted. But as best we can tell, those people are in the same job today as they were 11 years ago.
I would love to do this with a bigger sample. We could include all the attendees from all our events over the years. But it takes a serious amount of time and energy. Maybe at some point.
The Single Most Useful Number: Stay Versus Leave
What happens to people’s careers when they leave community compared to staying in it?
This is the most definitive metric we have for the original question.
If you stayed in community, there is a 28% chance you reached Director or VP level after 11 years. If you moved out to another function, there is a 60% chance you did. Twice as likely to climb if you leave.
You could argue that more ambitious people are also more likely to switch roles, so this is not a clean causal story. Fair point. But the difference is striking.
What we found is that community seems to be a 3 to 7 year window of doing the core work. Either you get stuck in it, or you need to leave community after that time if you want to progress.
Only 8% climb within community itself. Only 8%. Despite all the articles written about VP of Community roles, there really aren’t that many roles to climb into.
The Three Paths That Actually Work
If community is your career, three paths genuinely work.
Path One. Big Org, Manage a Team by Year Four
If you want to reach VP level, you need direct profit-line responsibility and you need to be managing a team. You won’t get there without that. Position yourself to work within a team if you want to manage a team one day. If you are solo or part of a team of two, the progression prospects are limited. We’ve written more about the strategic options for enterprise communities here.
Path Two. Work Where Community Is the Business
Some of the people doing very well are at organisations where community itself is the product or central to the business. Stack Overflow, Reddit, Discord, Discourse. Senior community roles exist there because the company depends on them.
Path Three. Consultancy, Agency, or Fractional CCO
FeverBee is one example. There are plenty of other consultants in this space. I’ll say this having watched around 100 people try to transition into consulting over the last 15 years: it isn’t easy. Very few make it. Part of the reason is that there aren’t many clients to go around, and it’s hard to differentiate from people who have been doing this for a long time. Not impossible, but you need a clear answer to why you are the best option and how you will attract clients. Do you have unique relationships or a reputation no one else has? Most people believe they can do the work. That is a separate topic. Attracting clients is the harder problem. If you make it work, brilliant. The overwhelming majority of people I have seen try haven’t been successful.
Five Takeaways for Anyone Doing the Work
- Treat community as a 3 to 7 year career window. You are probably not going to be in this for 20 years unless you want to be. Some people enjoy the core work and stay in it forever. No shame in that.
- If you want to grow, move to an org with a real community team. You need to be in a place that invests in community: good platforms, dedicated headcount, room to climb.
- Pick a community type that maps to a revenue function. Customer marketing, product, advocacy, customer experience. Support is fine, but I noticed that people doing pure online support communities tend to progress less.
- Own a metric the business actually cares about. Pipeline influenced, expansion revenue, deflection. Not engagement.
- If you are five years in and nothing has changed, the data is telling you something. You are probably in the situation many people are in: there is nowhere to go from where you are. If you want to grow, you will probably need to make a lateral move.
The exceptions exist. Big org with a real team. Community as the product. Going independent. There are opportunities. But if you stay in the role and hope to progress through doing community work alone, the data says you will most likely be disappointed.
The Picture in One View
The headline numbers, the industry pyramid, the climb rate, and the career outcome breakdown:
So, Is Community a Dead-End Career?
It can be. It definitely can be.
But if you want to progress, you have to align yourself with a function where progression is possible. Either work within a larger team where you can climb, or make a lateral move out of community where you can take the connections, experience, and expertise you’ve built into the next level.
Good luck.