Metaphors offer insights and lessons. Metaphors provide us a vision of what to expect from work. The career ladder is a great visual metaphor. A person started at the bottom and with the right effort climbed each rung. The career ladder told us what the organization, its work, and expectations were for each of us. The career ladder is pretty much dead. A Brand U career more often follows a zigzag journey of knowledge acquisition and personal fulfillment. However, the ladder metaphor was inspirational because it implied there was always an opportunity for a promotion and a place to go.