Being on the older end of startup life and having been in industry for quite a bit over 20 years now I have seen lots of trends. I think what we are seeing now

Being on the older end of startup life and having been in industry for quite a bit over 20 years now I have seen lots of trends. I think what we are seeing now with the "principal engineer" title which use to be very reserved, and rarely used in a startup ever is exactly as you say. The fact essentially new grads are wanting to be called senior engineers is the problem. Personally, it drives me nuts, you are not a senior software engineer with 3 years of experience, but that is what I see being done consistently. I don't care if you worked at 1 or 10 startups in those three years, you are still pretty fresh and maybe at best mid-level but even then I'd err on the side of jr. To me, Jr is 1 to 3 or 4 years, mid is from there to 8-10 years and senior is typically 8-10+ years (although exceptions always exist). To me that time behind the keyboard is what means you have solved a lot of diverse problems, have seen many different business problems and have learned how to communicate and solve problems without writing a single line of code. What I notice though is a lot of these people somehow feel not being a senior engineer is a slight against them, it isn't. Most of these engineers are not bad in my experience, and some are really quite excellent. But they still haven't seen enough of the patterns of business and development to have earned the senior title. Senior people are the ones who keep you from making stupid mistakes and identify known patterns and keep things on track and help you to avoid wasting time. The senior engineer generally is the one that is going to tell you to just use excel or buy a tool versus wasting time that doesn't reach the end goal quicker. For me, it isn't that these people aren't talented, but they are actually doing themselves a disservice because when you tell me you are senior, I expect a hell of a lot more out of you then just being able to write some code or regurgitate some algorithm you learned in school.