22 ms·

The scourge of job title inflation

155 points by i13e 4y ago

qwertyuiop_ 4y ago
https://www.bullseyeinteractivegroup.com/forms/B2B-Email-Marketing-List-of-Titles.pdf https://www.bullseyeinteractivegroup.com/forms/B2B-Email-Mar...
robocat 4y ago
https://archive.ph/Ms9Tq https://archive.ph/Ms9Tq
- neonate 4y ago
  http://web.archive.org/web/20221212232047/https://www.economist.com/business/2022/12/08/the-scourge-of-job-title-inflation http://web.archive.org/web/20221212232047/https://www.econom...
twiddling 4y ago
The amount of folks with titles that contain executive, manager, and/or director but have no direct reports or hire/fire has truly ballooned.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  Isn't that still specific to finance and certain types of consulting?
  - gamerDude 4y ago
    Also in sales. Because people want to talk to directors not reps.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pesfandiar 4y ago
  While I agree with your point in general, the "manager" in the title doesn't necessarily refer to managing people. e.g. a "social media manager" only needs to manage the function.
- RunSet 4y ago
  It is like a zen koan: What is a "senior developer" in an environment with zero "junior developers"?
  - nowherebeen 4y ago
    It’s so prevalent that if you don’t play this game, you are going to be questioned. This is why I don’t trust titles anymore.
- hgsgm 4y ago
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  They also have no ability to decide how to spend money or negotiate payrates.
RunSet 4y ago
When I encounter the term "engineer", I take it to mean someone who, if they screw up, people die. I know a "Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer" is a thing that exists, but it seems to me rather a contradiction in terms, suggestive as it is of an engineer who is expected or even required to make mistakes. https://i.imgur.com/CNr1vdD.png https://i.imgur.com/CNr1vdD.png
- JamesBarney 4y ago
  Most mechanical and electrical engineers don't work on projects that would lead to any deaths if they screw up. Many construction workers and electricians do. I don't know if that's a good proxy for engineering.
  - PostOnce 4y ago
    There's (I think) a difference between an "engineer" (someone with a degree in their field, say) and a Professional Engineer (aka a Chartered Engineer), someone who is responsible for serious fuckups.
  - glitchc 4y ago
    They are not engineers and need to stop using that term. A PE is absolutely culpable if their design or the project they are managing leads to injury and loss of life.
    - toast0 4y ago
      A PE doesn't operate a train, so why is it ok for them to coopt a term, and not others?
      - projektfu 4y ago
        Engines were likely made by engineers before engineers started operating them.
      - glitchc 4y ago
        A professional engineer is a protected term. Stop calling yourself that if you aren't qualified as one. You are breaking the law.
jemmyw 4y ago
That was something that could have done with analysis rather than a very short article pointing out that its a thing. I'd be interested to know if it really is a thing. For all I know this has always happened and the language around these titles are just a little different.
- epolanski 4y ago
  The Stupidity Paradox[1] Goes in length about that too, it's real and it started in the 80s and balooned as more graduates entered the workforce: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30209127-the-stupidity-paradox https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30209127-the-stupidity-p...
balderdash 4y ago
This has become a pretty prickly issue that I’ve seen in mergers where one company has title inflation and the other doesn’t. What’s perverse is that while having an inflated title may be a benefit with regards to external lateral employment, it’s a huge detriment to internal advancement as employees with inflated titles aren’t qualified for roles their title might imply, but aren’t considered for what could actually be career advancing roles as they’re considered too “senior” on a title basis
- calmlynarczyk 4y ago
  One of the pieces of advice I received from the founder of a startup I once worked for is that you don't give out C-level titles at a young company other than what is legally required (i.e. a CEO). The reason is that when you likely get acquired there isn't a massive shock for those C-level employees since they're almost certainly not getting a C-suite position at the acquiring organization. Instead, all of the startup execs had VP titles. When we got acquired by a large corporation, many of them went down to Senior Manager titles, a few being able to get Director titles. I suppose a cynic might argue this is actually about the ego of the startup CEO, but after seeing it in action I believe it was good advice and have used it in my own startup.
gtramont 4y ago
Reminds me of the late David Graeber' BS Jobs: https://web.archive.org/web/20220901173213/https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220901173213/https://www.strik... and the book that followed.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  These aren't bullshit jobs, or at least the two on mostly unrelated. These are "real" jobs that need title inflation because title is cheaper than cash. The article uses the example of building receptionists. Receptionist may or may not be strictly necessary for any particular building, of course, but it's indisputable that a building receptionist is a real job. Eg a large office or residential building where you have a large number of people coming and going throughout the day. Part security guard, part front office mail clerk, part janitor, part concierge. More than enough random little tasks that are difficult enough to automate in the edge cases. The article also mentions "Sanitation technicians", which are about as far from a bullshit job as you can get... someone has to clean the shit.
  - gtramont 4y ago
    Hence "reminds me". Indeed they aren't the same, but I disagree that they're unrelated. I'd recommend getting past the article and book titles to understand how these jobs come to be in the first place.
  - rippercushions 4y ago
    There is notable overlap between bullshit jobs and inflated titles though. Poke around any large corp and you'll find plenty of "Global Head of Value Engineering Strategy" types, often 'heading' a team of 1, namely themselves.
version_five 4y ago
I think it's in "Managing the professional service firm" by Maister that he talks about giving people various titles so they can't really compare themselves within a firm. Famously (maybe) there is a scene in The Office where Dwight and Andy square off as Assistant Regional Manager and Managing Director in charge of sales, and each thinks their title places them above the other. There's an element of this in the article, which I think is different than the Walmart Associate / Metamate thing which I think is somehow meant to instill comaraderie. And then there is the actual inflation - "lead" is the new one I see. Are you a lead or the lead. Nowadays it's almost always the former, and it means you have about two years experience, like most current uses of senior
- californical 4y ago
  I think your wording could confuse people. I am a lead in the context of my company, as there are a few different leads. But each of us is the only lead of our own team. So if you asked me, I’d probably say “I’m one of our leads”, because the company has several teams which serve different functions. But I am the singular tech lead of my team. Had no idea that a team would have multiple leads, wouldn’t have even crossed my mind to disambiguate that for you, and I’m guessing that same confusion has happened with others
  - happytoexplain 4y ago
    Having multiple people on the same team with "lead" in their title, with no clear definition of what they are leading, is in fact a phenomenon I have seen in practice. I am aware of one major company that simply promotes everybody from "senior software developer" to "lead software developer" at a certain point, with no regard for how many people have that title on each team. In practice, the lead position seems to be more like what is called senior in other companies.
jedberg 4y ago
I was just talking to someone about this the other day. I personally don't care what my title is, as far as things like self-worth and ego are concerned. But what I do care about is scope of work and who I get to influence with my work. And for that, it seems like most everyone else cares about titles. And so I'm forced to care too if I want to get done what I need to get done. Up until recently everyone at Netflix was a Senior Software Engineer if they were an individual contributor. This worked great within Netflix, as you just did what you needed to do and everyone respected that you were doing the right thing. But it was troublesome if you ever wanted to leave Netflix, because you may have been doing what Principle Engineers do at other companies, but when you apply there they tell you "Well you were a Senior Engineer so the best we can do is Staff Engineer". Until it became well known what Netflix was doing, it was hard to get even an equivalent set of duties elsewhere.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  One of my largest career mistakes was telling my employer i didn’t care about titles when they were offering to do something for me when they didn’t have the money to give me a raise. I have thus been stuck for quite a long time in “Sr” purgatory.
  - ramesh31 4y ago
    > I have thus been stuck for quite a long time in “Sr” purgatory. The move beyond senior becomes almost entirely political. You have to play the game or you’ll be stuck there forever (or until interviewing into a higher role elsewhere). It’s all about doing the right things for the right people at the right time, with your name prominently attached.
    - thriftwy 4y ago
      Or leading teams, starting new projects and stuff like that. Kind of carries your name for you
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    This is effectively what I was initially going to add ( I made a similar mistake ), but let me elaborate on it a little bit. While in an abstract there is no reason to care about the title ( I have a ridiculous title compared to what I actually do now despite being an IC ), but depending on the environment you are in ( finance comes to mind ), you will almost automatically fall under different band with HR for salary/benefits package. I wish this stuff was properly standardized, but every company does their own thing ( and does what it can to ensure it is hard to compare your job title to one at another company just in case employee has a bright idea they can compare competing salaries ).
cowlby 4y ago
Obligatory "The Inflation of Everything" from 2012 https://www.economist.com/leaders/2012/04/07/the-perils-of-panflation https://www.economist.com/leaders/2012/04/07/the-perils-of-p... https://archive.ph/mrEtL https://archive.ph/mrEtL
tabtab 4y ago
I'm not a troll, I'm an "agitation engineer!"
- IncRnd 4y ago
  I tried that career path, but it was far too competitive!
Patrol8394 4y ago
Unfortunately, titles do matter.
politician 4y ago
I wonder if anyone has ever tried negotiating an inflated title as a severance benefit. That would really push this to the next level.
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  Why not? Severance is all about signing away your rights to sue for discrimination or misconduct in exchange for some token. It's all negotiable - I don't see why they wouldn't grant you a silly title in future reference checks, especially if you go as far as to refuse the cash payment.
bitwize 4y ago
I switched jobs recently and took a step down in title. My pay increased and the team dynamic and management is decidedly less toxic than my previous job, so... win overall!
BurningFrog 4y ago
One of the perks of working at a tiny and probably doomed startup is that everyone can be "Senior VP" of whatever they want :)
- gumby 4y ago
  At one company we had a policy that you could have any title you want but it had to reflect your work and not provoke mockery. The example of the latter was "Sure, you can have cards that read 'Software Wizard' but what will happen if you show that card to a colleague?" There was only one person whom everybody else agreed was a true software wizard and that person just wanted the title "Programmer" -- actually they didn't want cards at all. One wag said he wanted the title CFO. We said that would be OK but he'd have to actually do the job, including taking on the liability. He decided to pick something else. The main purpose for titles was so that when you talked to someone outside the company they'd know who they were talking to "Oh, a VP. This person can sign my contract" or "Oh, a VP. THis is a waste of time; I need to talk to a developer" === OTOH I have worked in an industry where titles are super important: pharma. That's because you can get a job on a drug program that's already been under way for a few years, work on it for several years, and then move on with it still not approced. The NDAs are actually observed in that industry so you can't talk about your work. So the fact that you had a continuous rise to senior associate director showed that you had been at least valued by your employer.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    IT should have the title Software Warlock because their job is to wrangle daemons into place. QA can be the Software Paladin or Cleric. If you write source code your title is obviously supposed to be Sorcerer, why is there even a question here.
    - throwawaylinux 4y ago
      IT has to be Computer Necromancer, surely? Their job is to resurrect dead systems. I mean you go to IT complaining about a miscreant computer and the very first thing they'll do is tell you to kill the thing then raise it from the grave.
roland35 4y ago
I don't see title inflation being too big an issue at large companies. At my megacorp we have fairly well defined expectations at each level and managers calibrate across teams. It's basically: - junior, fresh out of school and is basically expected to do whatever task they are told to - mid, a few years in and can define their own work within a project - senior (many stop here), can manage their own projects, but limited influence outside the team. Expected to mentor juniors and work with partners - staff, a lot less coding, lots of digital ink spilled recently on what staff engineers do :) basically influence the entire team and help set technical direction - principal, basically a mega staff engineer, influences a larger organization. Called in to solve the hairiest problems. - senior principal, can bend spacetime at will
alfalfasprout 4y ago
This is already a rampant issue in software engineering and means that there's an enormous gamut of what "Sr. Software Engineer" means between someone who knows how to "code" and someone who can solve large technical problems at an organizational level.
jschveibinz 4y ago
If you could specify, model, design, build, document, promote, test and verify a solution—-whether that was in software or any other field—-then you were an “engineer” in the sense that the title was used in the 20th century. In the 21st century, the term “engineer” has lost that meaning and it is now used mostly to identify programming professionals of various skill levels.
tigerlily 4y ago
Anyone think of any good joke job titles? Here's mine: Executive Professor
- ggm 4y ago
  Contextually the word Professor means different things in the US to almost anywhere else. In the UK and Australia it means a senior academic who can be head of department, occupies a "chair" which may be personal or functional, and who has moved beyond the pedestrian state of teaching to a more exalted level we call "many fine dinners" In America, it appears to mean "is paid to teach" "Dean" might work. Dean of cleaning. Dean of Catering.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    That seems like an oversimplification of American usage. It certainly doesn’t refer to a K12 teacher, and many people distinguish between adjuncts/instructors and tenure-track professors. Technically though, one is not a professor until reaching the rank of “full professor”, which typically happens no younger than 40, after being promoted from “assistant professor” to “associate professor” (and then coming up for full several years later). Assistant professors will say “I am a professor” when asked what they do for a living. But when being introduced at academic conferences they would normally be referred to as “an assistant/associate professor at university X”. Some of this is inside baseball among academics, but the first paragraph applies pretty widely.
    - ggm 4y ago
      You didn't use the words Lecturer or Senior Lecturer there at all. They're terms used in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. There's another fine British/Imperial academic title: Reader. I never quite worked out what it meant. Most of the professors told me it meant "not to be trusted" but they would say that. Emeritus and Adjunct are a bit like "executive producer" in "State and Maine" grace-titles handed out to keep people happy. Emeritus get use of a room and access to the coffee machine.
      - 4y ago
mberning 4y ago
I’m more concerned with skillset deflation. It’s super common to run in to people with 10 years experience, a nice resume, and an impressive title that can’t do much of anything.
- rabuse 4y ago
  I think this happens because employers are expecting too much from their employees nowadays, where everyone needs to bounce around 10 flavor-of-the-month languages/frameworks, so you never master anything, and later turns into code smell. The better path to more skilled individuals is going back to the "training for the role" days, and sticking to what works to just deliver a solid product.
  - im3w1l 4y ago
    There is a some amount of useless churn, but it's also the case that things are getting better, so that being decent at the current thing can be more productive and useful than being a master of the old.
- cratermoon 4y ago
  It's not 10 years of experience, it's 1 year of experience 10 times.
  - urthor 4y ago
    People keep repeating "1 year of experience 10 times" like it's a bad thing. The problem with the "1 year of experience n times" career trajectory is it pays incredibly well. And it's extraordinarily fulfilling to tackle a new project and a new tech stack every 18 months. Everyone keeps saying establishing yourself is worthwhile... the money and the exciting projects say otherwise. I'm not sure how to feel.
    - atraac 4y ago
      I would also that the benefit is not only better pay, but also being able to onboard efficiently and working with varying styles of orgs and people. If you work at a single place for a very long time, you get used to the way people work, think, approach problems. It's really nice to see how 'others' do it, what 'others' think, validate what you know and do.
paxys 4y ago
I have seen this happen more and more in tech as well. Engineers join a company right out of college, are promoted to "senior" in a couple of years, and "staff" another two or three years after that. Now because everyone is staff you have to keep making up fancier titles – senior staff, principal engineer, technical lead, architect, senior architect, chief of staff, partner engineer, distinguished engineer, technical fellow... I asked a higher up why this was the case, and the response was simply that people quit if they aren't promoted quick enough. Titles are free, and smaller companies have zero problems handing them out like candy to keep people happy.
- JSavageOne 4y ago
  People are getting promotions without pay increases? That's news to me. If you're getting promoted and being assigned greater responsibility, than your compensation should increase accordingly.
  - wodenokoto 4y ago
    If you are 2 years out of college you might not know what that compensation should be. You might not even know what the increased responsibility of the title should be. But you do appreciate the bragging rights of the title, and so that is all you get. E.g., senior means I'm officially leet. Not that I have responsibilities.
  - thenoblesunfish 4y ago
    The title change itself has real value to people. People love to feel a sense of progress, and they love to feel appreciated. Promoting the same person twicw over N years, instead of once, may cost the same but will make the employee happier. That's the free part.
    - taneq 4y ago
      And just like monetary inflation, this inflation's cost is hidden in the devaluation of the inflated commodity. 'Senior Engineer' used to be a title that people valued highly, as a result of the years of work it took to earn. Now nobody's impressed by such a title.
rabuse 4y ago
I absolutely abhor job titles, but in the corporate world, especially when seeking new employment and building that buzzword-laden resume, it's an unfortunate reality.
civilized 4y ago
The finance sector started this decades ago. A Vice President is just a spreadsheet slinger and there are at least five different kinds of Director.
- pestatije 4y ago
  I saw this too...i wondered how could a single bank have so many VP's
- MagnumOpus 4y ago
  But it now is an established convention. When you hear "VP at a bank", for the last 50 years it has been common knowledge that it is an individual contributor with 4-8ish years of experience, and when you hear "Managing Director", you translate it to "10yr+ experience and some people under him". Whereas in software, you don't really know how much authority a "senior architect" or "engineering fellow" or "principal staff developer" really has...
  - mejutoco 4y ago
    tbh, there are fewer banks. If you limit the software titles to FAANG you get a pretty good idea of what they mean too.
- notahacker 4y ago
  And the startup scene does it far more aggressively than the corporate sector, where founders dish out C level titles to their interns. My favourite 'Director' I've encountered so far was an Associate Director who was a fresh graduate doing LinkedIn outreach for an SME.
ugurnot 4y ago
There are people who join to chess tournaments in small countries, just to obtain the GM or IM titles. Those titles are hard to obtain in bigger tournaments. Not the same thing, but they belong to the same cluster.
galmactima 4y ago
We need to have some kind of standard in the industry. It's just like how here in Canada we have the plague of regulatory bodies given the legal right to make it illegal to call yourself "Software Engineer" as a protected term unless you have a B.Eng. and spend 3 years in gov't controlled training programs. What a joke. What we really need to do is set up some fucking standards so that braindead developers can't cheese their way into industry and get promoted to "Senior Developer" by writing mediocre, barely functional JavaScript code among other monkey-brained developers writing barely functional code of a similar caliber. It's becoming an epidemic of self-taught bootcamp idiots who're destroying the industry and decimating uptime and availability which competent developers are then required to fix on-call, and I'm tired of pretending it's not.
- klodolph 4y ago
  It's not just this industry though, it's lots of industries. "Communications director" is something you have to fucking decipher with a code you get on the back of your Froot Loops box, because it means one thing at one company and something radically different at another. Just to give an example. Reading somebody's resume can be hell.
- briga 4y ago
  So on the one hand you’re complaining about regulatory bodies keeping standards for job titles. But on the other you’re gatekeeping the industry against people who don’t have traditional education. Surely the problem isn’t bootcamp grads, but rather the companies that would let an incompetent engineer get promoted to senior in the first place. I do agree that keeping preventing Canadian developers from calling themselves engineers is a joke (let’s see them try and stop me)
thenoblesunfish 4y ago
The article doesn't seem to make a very strong case for the severity of this "scourge". Just like grades or degrees mean little without knowing about the school they came from, job titles, especially their implied seniority, don't mean much without knowledge of the company. Is this a problem worth worrying about, or just a fun rant?
- emodendroket 4y ago
  Yeah, I agree and it's how I've seen people react to my resume with a nominal "step down."
- nicbou 4y ago
  I never learn anything meaningful from articles titled "the [growth/rise/fall/death/scourge/epidemic] of [a thing that happens on Twitter/in California]".
- futureproofd 4y ago
  Personally, I take it seriously and I think that we at least have the opportunity to make our concerns known here as well. To boil down my job title would reduce me to a computer programmer. I'm fine with that and it's what I tell to people I meet. In the industry though, it's another story, because we have to play the game in order to succeed. The result of this is that everyone on my team is a senior software person, while I reside in North America, and them, all overseas. You can imagine the pay-gap. So where does this put me as the more experienced person on the team, getting paid double the salary of those who share the same job title? As the organization expands and goes through its cost cutting phases, I imagine that spot is directly in the sights of, well a coat saving opportunity. Am I paranoid? Maybe.
combatentropy 4y ago
It reminds me of Newspeak, from Orwell's 1984. Leaders, especially of bureaucracies, perennially hope to shape belief by just renaming things. I've been to Wal-Mart or Target or any number of places, where I have read a sign or overheard a prerecorded announcement referring to the workers as "team members", "associates", "specialists", "customer advocates", and so on. The illusion dissipates instantaneously. I immediately see it as pretentious, and the reflex is to cringe. I suspect that most employees roll their eyes at it too. I don't believe that the executives who came up with these fancy names are fooled by them either --- and that's part of the problem, it's condescending. The executive thinks, "I see right through these words, into the real thing, but my employees and customers are stupider than me, and I believe these names can sway their thinking." Another problem is that it is just like inflation, in that it doesn't stop spiraling upward. I believe that the word "employee" was once a fancy replacement for something plainer, like "worker". But H.R. told me, when I was making an app for them, that it's a dirty word: We don't "employ" people. That makes it sound like we are using them. (Well, you are, but they know you are, and after all you are paying them. It was all agreed upon at the outset. Also it's not so bad. Everyone wants, in the end, to be "useful".) But no, now they are called "associates". It won't end. There is even a chance that it will go in circles. I would not be surprised if some years later, a new executive arrives, says "associate" is too loose: "They aren't merely associated with us in some tangential way. We need them and employ them for our success. Let us call them 'employees'."
- janalsncm 4y ago
  George Carlin on “soft language”: https://youtu.be/o25I2fzFGoY https://youtu.be/o25I2fzFGoY
  - molteanu 4y ago
    I've noticed this a few months ago where I live (Romania), namely, that we've used to go to the "Dentist", which is an actual Romanian word, but now the town where I live is full of "Dental Spas" and "Dental Studios". Yes, we're using English terminology, even though that's not the official language here.
- 4y ago
hintymad 4y ago
A friend of mine, who works at Amazon as a principal engineer, also mentioned that Amazon had been inflating title too. Per his words, Sr. SDE in Amazon used to be a big deal. People usually got such title after > 10 years of grinding, and they would be happy to stay in that title forever. Principal engineers were treated like demigods. There was even a page on Amazon wiki that cautioned new principal engineers not to think of themselves so. But now engineers expected to get promoted to principal in three years after being promoted to L6. An L6 engineers could be promoted to L7 if they could launch a product.
- urthor 4y ago
  While that's true, what's also true is that the money in the industry has quadrupled since that era (stock options lottery aside). Yes, those "old style genuine seniors" in the industry have had their titles inflated up the waxoo. I don't think they're that unhappy about the change.
- ZephyrBlu 4y ago
  As a young engineer, I expect to get promoted quickly because that's what I see happening pretty commonly for other people. The kicker is that most people who get these titles quickly don't even seem to be exceptional. It's pure inflation. It's likely I'll end up with the title of Senior with ~3 YOE at a big tech co. I think it's extremely dumb and feel like Senior and sometimes Staff titles are often undeserved, but it feels like if you don't play along you're just falling behind.
pflenker 4y ago
Fun fact: one of the accused in the fraud scandal around Wirecard claims that he had no important role in the company, as evidenced by his „fantasy title“: Deputy CFO. Source in German: https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/wirecard-prozess-verteidigung-103.html https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/wirecard-prozess-vertei...
- durnygbur 4y ago
  haha non-CFO of non-company, except billions of € were real...
no_wrk 4y ago
The Economist complaining about people having fancy job titles despite not doing the work is rich coming from the boot-lickiest of the capitalist bootlickers.
noyesno 4y ago
Reminds me of my favorite Dilbert comic on promotions in title: https://dilbert.com/strip/2000-08-02 https://dilbert.com/strip/2000-08-02
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
That opening paragraph is great. "Greetings Engineer II"
dave4420 4y ago
> Puffed-up titles may put good candidates off. This is absolutely true. If someone is advertising for a VP of software engineering but asking for a skill set that matches mine, I conclude that they don’t know what they’re doing.
pfoof 4y ago
There was that meme about LinkedIn: - LinkedIn: Blockchain Evangelist, Serial Entrepreneur, AI in Web3 Enthusiast, ex-IoT Devices Department Manager - Reality: unemployed, failed in 5 businesses, but bought some Philips Hue lightbulbs
smadge 4y ago
Does this apply to big tech companies, which usually have generic numbered “levels” which have a relatively fixed distribution?
mkl95 4y ago
Job title inflation is an inverse function of compensation and inequality. When a few people are getting paid a ton of money and you are not being paid much, getting a "promotion" is one of the few ways to land a highly paid position. If your current company gives you more responsibility without increasing your pay, you can usually switch jobs for a higher salary.
MarchM 4y ago
You’re forgetting Chief Solution Architect… at an advertising agency.. wtf?
welder 4y ago
In bay area big tech, eng titles are tied to levels and if you don't move up then you're let go. Naturally people work hard to level up, which also comes with a new title.
theBobBob 4y ago
I work in a smallish company (around 150 employees I believe) and we recently went through this career framework development and standardisation and as part of that we came up with standard levels and titles across the company but we had to make an exception for our USA office. They would all still have the standard titles internally for pay bands, career progression etc but because of customer expectations, everyone had to be a VP of this or Senior VP of that where VP elsewhere in the company was a very senior position. Kinda funny really.
bane 4y ago
It's almost beyond unreal. In the past two weeks I've had multiple discussions about promoting staff with 1-3 years of experience in this, their first job out of undergrad, into positions that have typically required 15-20 years of broad industry experience with various responsibilities or accomplishments (successful P&L management, regarding in their field, etc.). My management has basically just shrugged, "it's the market right now" without considering any long-term ramifications. I'd almost be fine with it if the rising tide lifted all boats, but it seems to be highly particular to the incoming <5 years of experience people. Before too long, I'm going to end up working for people who know almost nothing, and don't even have the experience to know it. That'll be the moment I retire.
- Victerius 4y ago
  Sorry, but I think it's you who are out of touch here. Requiring 15-20 years of experience? Just... no. Software engineers are so well paid that many of them retire from the job market permanently after 15-20 years. You might as well ask people to be 65 years old until they can occupy the position. 20 years is 25% of a lifespan, and 33% of an adult lifespan. Why isn't 10 years good enough? Unless it's an executive position for people who are at the end of their careers. You can become a Brigadier General in 20 years in the military, which would be broadly equivalent to a SVP.
  - chinchilla2020 4y ago
    Yeah this is a weird mentality that I encounter pretty often. It is completely juxtaposed with the reality of most senior managers, who are identified by companies in their early 20s. Companies tend to promote high velocity career climbers and want to promote them young in order to get plenty of years of service from them.
- trifurcate 4y ago
  One thing that you haven't touched on here (and most people don't) is that "professional experience" is highly nebulous in a field like software development where you may have a >10 year head start compared to your peers in terms of life stage. I started programming when I was 8, and have been a contributor to many software projects from age 11 onwards, with a lot of those contributions still publicly visible on my GitHub profile. Straight out of college, sure I have "~1 year of experience" (that is, if you even count my internships) but I've been programming for more than half my life. If you sum my ad hoc experience contributing to FOSS projects, doing one-off contract work, personal projects, and just tinkering over 15 years I might very well be as good as someone with "15-20 years of broad industry experience", but it doesn't show on my resume as an easily quantified number. I've definitely come across and worked with these kinds of tenured, experienced workers who went into software development not as a hobby or interest but as a mere career and ended up falling behind in their later years due to a lack of drive. This kind of thing is rare in most professions, so people aren't used to it (and I'm not saying that it's 100% what's happening in your anecdote), but I believe it is becoming increasingly common in software development.
rapjr9 4y ago
Acadamia often makes up inflated titles for themselves in several ways. A professor starts an "institute" which is just a banner slapped on their work, and now they are the "Director of the Institute for the Study of...". Or they get a donation from some rich person and they add the rich persons name as a title, as in "I. Am Important, the Dovey and Sam Pekinpaw professor of Engineering". Or they join a group of their colloborators and give out awards to themselves and add the award names to their titles as in "I. Also Important, the International Superior Professor". Or they give their group of grad students and their workspace a name as in "Aint I. Great, Director of the Great Research Lab". Many of them collect multiple such titles which can make their titles go on to fill a large paragraph. Some of the titles have merit, some are selling their name to get donations, some are entirely made up. You can do the same. Take your side project, call it a company, and now you are CEO of that company. You don't even need to incorporate the company or give info about it (you are in "stealth mode").
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
t312227 4y ago
imho. this is an old wisdom: titles are free (and they are much cheaper than a pay-rise :))
harimau777 4y ago
I think that a lot of the problem is that programmers are treated like expendable cogs to be run as fast as possible until they burn out and are replaced. So people desperately race up the title ladder in an attempt to get to the point where they aren't treated like crap.
jmclnx 4y ago
Deleted, I was aming for an emacs thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33951866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33951866
- teddyh 4y ago
  I think you meant to comment on this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33951866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33951866
epage 4y ago
My first job out of college had 3 basic titles that broke down into - New grad, takes more than give - Individual contributor - Team technical lead I really liked it as it was clear what the roles where and how to move up. We kept running into problems with people wanting smaller career milestones. Unsure if it was due to smaller milestones from college, gamification, or what. Since that company switched titles to match industry and at each job since, job titles have been a mystery to me.
jmclnx 4y ago
Years ago I realized titles mean nothing these days. Everyone new hire out of school where I work is hired as a "senior programmer". About the only thing that does not happen is a significant pay increase, but the titles with promotion keep getting more grandiose, pay, maybe a 0.5% increase if any.
theshrike79 4y ago
In my opinion titles should be for communicating your approximate skill/experience level to people inside and outside the company who already don't know you. But this falls down when I, with over 20 years of actual work experience, am a "Senior Server Engineer" and I talk with a "Principal Server Engineer" from India who has problems logging in to AWS and checking CloudWatch logs. Titles shouldn't be a reward used instead of pay rises or just for being in the company long enough. You shouldn't become Principal Software Architect just by being in the same job for a decade.
xyzelement 4y ago
I learned a while ago to ground the seniority conversation in comp. Titles are whatever, how much you are willing to pay me is a better indicator of the scope and impact you expect.
- mk89 4y ago
  Absolutely true! I still remember a team member some years who was promoted to "Principal SW Eng" - when titles were still a little bit of "something". And then he added: yeah, but no raise. And we both laughed, because clearly it was ridiculous what they had done to keep him.
jdmtheNth 4y ago
"Sanitation expert and a maintenance engineer Garbage man, a janitor and you my dear A real union flight attendant, my oh my You ain't nothin' but a waitress in the sky" Waitress in the Sky, by The Replacements.
dhosek 4y ago
When I was hired to work for a bank, the offer had a title of “Vice President.” I almost turned it down because I was worried that they were offering me a management role.
jdlyga 4y ago
I get this a lot. On paper, I'm a technical director of software development. This sounds like I'm a manager, but in practice I'm a senior software engineer.
jcolman 4y ago
This is a rant in search of a problem to solve. It doesn’t make a strong case for a “scourge”. The issues it points out have less to do with title inflation and more to do with bad leadership, planning, and comms.
pizzaknife 4y ago
when i was 16, i held a position at now defunct Kmart, which i candidly referred to as 'Stock Logistics Technician" yes, i was a stock-boy. i suppose i was part of the problem from an early age. on topic - my only real complaints about title inflation are 2 fold: first, interview screens; second, annimosity generated within departments between engineers holding the perception they "are better" than x yet x has a "higher" title. both are frustrating situations
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
> "When money is tight, a bump in title is a way of recognising someone’s efforts cheaply." that's the real scourge right there. > "Baristas at Starbucks are called “partners”...to create a sense of shared endeavour and to disguise the cold reality of corporate hierarchies. "
trilobyte 4y ago
This was a headache for me when I had teams reporting to me from Mumbai. I had to create artificial layers of job titles that didn't exist in any of our other regions because there was an expectation of moving up on a regular cadence. On one hand it rubbed me the wrong way personally, but that's not a big deal and something I could get over, but on the other hand I was regularly having to explain to team members in other regions why promotions in Mumbai were happening so much faster than everywhere else. It was a people and perception problem, but still had people who couldn't let it go.
glonq 4y ago
I just left a project where I architected the system and managed multiple dev teams for two years. The manager who replaced me is doing maintenance and updates with a pared-down team, yet took "principal software architect" as his job title -- which is definitely a loftier title than I took. Maybe I need to ask my boss for a "title raise" ;)

155 points by i13e 4y ago

https://www.bullseyeinteractivegroup.com/forms/B2B-Email-Marketing-List-of-Titles.pdf https://www.bullseyeinteractivegroup.com/forms/B2B-Email-Mar...

robocat 4y ago

https://archive.ph/Ms9Tq https://archive.ph/Ms9Tq

neonate 4y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20221212232047/https://www.economist.com/business/2022/12/08/the-scourge-of-job-title-inflation http://web.archive.org/web/20221212232047/https://www.econom...

twiddling 4y ago

The amount of folks with titles that contain executive, manager, and/or director but have no direct reports or hire/fire has truly ballooned.

thwayunion 4y ago
Isn't that still specific to finance and certain types of consulting?
- gamerDude 4y ago
  Also in sales. Because people want to talk to directors not reps.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pesfandiar 4y ago
While I agree with your point in general, the "manager" in the title doesn't necessarily refer to managing people. e.g. a "social media manager" only needs to manage the function.
RunSet 4y ago
It is like a zen koan: What is a "senior developer" in an environment with zero "junior developers"?
- nowherebeen 4y ago
  It’s so prevalent that if you don’t play this game, you are going to be questioned. This is why I don’t trust titles anymore.
hgsgm 4y ago
lotsofpulp 4y ago
They also have no ability to decide how to spend money or negotiate payrates.

RunSet 4y ago

When I encounter the term "engineer", I take it to mean someone who, if they screw up, people die. I know a "Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer" is a thing that exists, but it seems to me rather a contradiction in terms, suggestive as it is of an engineer who is expected or even required to make mistakes. https://i.imgur.com/CNr1vdD.png https://i.imgur.com/CNr1vdD.png

JamesBarney 4y ago
Most mechanical and electrical engineers don't work on projects that would lead to any deaths if they screw up. Many construction workers and electricians do. I don't know if that's a good proxy for engineering.
- PostOnce 4y ago
  There's (I think) a difference between an "engineer" (someone with a degree in their field, say) and a Professional Engineer (aka a Chartered Engineer), someone who is responsible for serious fuckups.
- glitchc 4y ago
  They are not engineers and need to stop using that term. A PE is absolutely culpable if their design or the project they are managing leads to injury and loss of life.
  - toast0 4y ago
    A PE doesn't operate a train, so why is it ok for them to coopt a term, and not others?
    - projektfu 4y ago
      Engines were likely made by engineers before engineers started operating them.
    - glitchc 4y ago
      A professional engineer is a protected term. Stop calling yourself that if you aren't qualified as one. You are breaking the law.

jemmyw 4y ago

That was something that could have done with analysis rather than a very short article pointing out that its a thing. I'd be interested to know if it really is a thing. For all I know this has always happened and the language around these titles are just a little different.

epolanski 4y ago
The Stupidity Paradox[1] Goes in length about that too, it's real and it started in the 80s and balooned as more graduates entered the workforce: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30209127-the-stupidity-paradox https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30209127-the-stupidity-p...

balderdash 4y ago

This has become a pretty prickly issue that I’ve seen in mergers where one company has title inflation and the other doesn’t. What’s perverse is that while having an inflated title may be a benefit with regards to external lateral employment, it’s a huge detriment to internal advancement as employees with inflated titles aren’t qualified for roles their title might imply, but aren’t considered for what could actually be career advancing roles as they’re considered too “senior” on a title basis

calmlynarczyk 4y ago
One of the pieces of advice I received from the founder of a startup I once worked for is that you don't give out C-level titles at a young company other than what is legally required (i.e. a CEO). The reason is that when you likely get acquired there isn't a massive shock for those C-level employees since they're almost certainly not getting a C-suite position at the acquiring organization. Instead, all of the startup execs had VP titles. When we got acquired by a large corporation, many of them went down to Senior Manager titles, a few being able to get Director titles. I suppose a cynic might argue this is actually about the ego of the startup CEO, but after seeing it in action I believe it was good advice and have used it in my own startup.

gtramont 4y ago

Reminds me of the late David Graeber' BS Jobs: https://web.archive.org/web/20220901173213/https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220901173213/https://www.strik... and the book that followed.

thwayunion 4y ago
These aren't bullshit jobs, or at least the two on mostly unrelated. These are "real" jobs that need title inflation because title is cheaper than cash. The article uses the example of building receptionists. Receptionist may or may not be strictly necessary for any particular building, of course, but it's indisputable that a building receptionist is a real job. Eg a large office or residential building where you have a large number of people coming and going throughout the day. Part security guard, part front office mail clerk, part janitor, part concierge. More than enough random little tasks that are difficult enough to automate in the edge cases. The article also mentions "Sanitation technicians", which are about as far from a bullshit job as you can get... someone has to clean the shit.
- gtramont 4y ago
  Hence "reminds me". Indeed they aren't the same, but I disagree that they're unrelated. I'd recommend getting past the article and book titles to understand how these jobs come to be in the first place.
- rippercushions 4y ago
  There is notable overlap between bullshit jobs and inflated titles though. Poke around any large corp and you'll find plenty of "Global Head of Value Engineering Strategy" types, often 'heading' a team of 1, namely themselves.

version_five 4y ago

I think it's in "Managing the professional service firm" by Maister that he talks about giving people various titles so they can't really compare themselves within a firm. Famously (maybe) there is a scene in The Office where Dwight and Andy square off as Assistant Regional Manager and Managing Director in charge of sales, and each thinks their title places them above the other. There's an element of this in the article, which I think is different than the Walmart Associate / Metamate thing which I think is somehow meant to instill comaraderie. And then there is the actual inflation - "lead" is the new one I see. Are you a lead or the lead. Nowadays it's almost always the former, and it means you have about two years experience, like most current uses of senior

californical 4y ago
I think your wording could confuse people. I am a lead in the context of my company, as there are a few different leads. But each of us is the only lead of our own team. So if you asked me, I’d probably say “I’m one of our leads”, because the company has several teams which serve different functions. But I am the singular tech lead of my team. Had no idea that a team would have multiple leads, wouldn’t have even crossed my mind to disambiguate that for you, and I’m guessing that same confusion has happened with others
- happytoexplain 4y ago
  Having multiple people on the same team with "lead" in their title, with no clear definition of what they are leading, is in fact a phenomenon I have seen in practice. I am aware of one major company that simply promotes everybody from "senior software developer" to "lead software developer" at a certain point, with no regard for how many people have that title on each team. In practice, the lead position seems to be more like what is called senior in other companies.

jedberg 4y ago

I was just talking to someone about this the other day. I personally don't care what my title is, as far as things like self-worth and ego are concerned. But what I do care about is scope of work and who I get to influence with my work. And for that, it seems like most everyone else cares about titles. And so I'm forced to care too if I want to get done what I need to get done. Up until recently everyone at Netflix was a Senior Software Engineer if they were an individual contributor. This worked great within Netflix, as you just did what you needed to do and everyone respected that you were doing the right thing. But it was troublesome if you ever wanted to leave Netflix, because you may have been doing what Principle Engineers do at other companies, but when you apply there they tell you "Well you were a Senior Engineer so the best we can do is Staff Engineer". Until it became well known what Netflix was doing, it was hard to get even an equivalent set of duties elsewhere.

colechristensen 4y ago
One of my largest career mistakes was telling my employer i didn’t care about titles when they were offering to do something for me when they didn’t have the money to give me a raise. I have thus been stuck for quite a long time in “Sr” purgatory.
- ramesh31 4y ago
  > I have thus been stuck for quite a long time in “Sr” purgatory. The move beyond senior becomes almost entirely political. You have to play the game or you’ll be stuck there forever (or until interviewing into a higher role elsewhere). It’s all about doing the right things for the right people at the right time, with your name prominently attached.
  - thriftwy 4y ago
    Or leading teams, starting new projects and stuff like that. Kind of carries your name for you
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  This is effectively what I was initially going to add ( I made a similar mistake ), but let me elaborate on it a little bit. While in an abstract there is no reason to care about the title ( I have a ridiculous title compared to what I actually do now despite being an IC ), but depending on the environment you are in ( finance comes to mind ), you will almost automatically fall under different band with HR for salary/benefits package. I wish this stuff was properly standardized, but every company does their own thing ( and does what it can to ensure it is hard to compare your job title to one at another company just in case employee has a bright idea they can compare competing salaries ).

cowlby 4y ago

Obligatory "The Inflation of Everything" from 2012 https://www.economist.com/leaders/2012/04/07/the-perils-of-panflation https://www.economist.com/leaders/2012/04/07/the-perils-of-p... https://archive.ph/mrEtL https://archive.ph/mrEtL

tabtab 4y ago

I'm not a troll, I'm an "agitation engineer!"

IncRnd 4y ago
I tried that career path, but it was far too competitive!

Patrol8394 4y ago

Unfortunately, titles do matter.

politician 4y ago

I wonder if anyone has ever tried negotiating an inflated title as a severance benefit. That would really push this to the next level.

nsxwolf 4y ago
Why not? Severance is all about signing away your rights to sue for discrimination or misconduct in exchange for some token. It's all negotiable - I don't see why they wouldn't grant you a silly title in future reference checks, especially if you go as far as to refuse the cash payment.

bitwize 4y ago

I switched jobs recently and took a step down in title. My pay increased and the team dynamic and management is decidedly less toxic than my previous job, so... win overall!

BurningFrog 4y ago

One of the perks of working at a tiny and probably doomed startup is that everyone can be "Senior VP" of whatever they want :)

gumby 4y ago
At one company we had a policy that you could have any title you want but it had to reflect your work and not provoke mockery. The example of the latter was "Sure, you can have cards that read 'Software Wizard' but what will happen if you show that card to a colleague?" There was only one person whom everybody else agreed was a true software wizard and that person just wanted the title "Programmer" -- actually they didn't want cards at all. One wag said he wanted the title CFO. We said that would be OK but he'd have to actually do the job, including taking on the liability. He decided to pick something else. The main purpose for titles was so that when you talked to someone outside the company they'd know who they were talking to "Oh, a VP. This person can sign my contract" or "Oh, a VP. THis is a waste of time; I need to talk to a developer" === OTOH I have worked in an industry where titles are super important: pharma. That's because you can get a job on a drug program that's already been under way for a few years, work on it for several years, and then move on with it still not approced. The NDAs are actually observed in that industry so you can't talk about your work. So the fact that you had a continuous rise to senior associate director showed that you had been at least valued by your employer.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  IT should have the title Software Warlock because their job is to wrangle daemons into place. QA can be the Software Paladin or Cleric. If you write source code your title is obviously supposed to be Sorcerer, why is there even a question here.
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    IT has to be Computer Necromancer, surely? Their job is to resurrect dead systems. I mean you go to IT complaining about a miscreant computer and the very first thing they'll do is tell you to kill the thing then raise it from the grave.

roland35 4y ago

I don't see title inflation being too big an issue at large companies. At my megacorp we have fairly well defined expectations at each level and managers calibrate across teams. It's basically: - junior, fresh out of school and is basically expected to do whatever task they are told to - mid, a few years in and can define their own work within a project - senior (many stop here), can manage their own projects, but limited influence outside the team. Expected to mentor juniors and work with partners - staff, a lot less coding, lots of digital ink spilled recently on what staff engineers do :) basically influence the entire team and help set technical direction - principal, basically a mega staff engineer, influences a larger organization. Called in to solve the hairiest problems. - senior principal, can bend spacetime at will

alfalfasprout 4y ago

This is already a rampant issue in software engineering and means that there's an enormous gamut of what "Sr. Software Engineer" means between someone who knows how to "code" and someone who can solve large technical problems at an organizational level.

jschveibinz 4y ago

If you could specify, model, design, build, document, promote, test and verify a solution—-whether that was in software or any other field—-then you were an “engineer” in the sense that the title was used in the 20th century. In the 21st century, the term “engineer” has lost that meaning and it is now used mostly to identify programming professionals of various skill levels.

tigerlily 4y ago

Anyone think of any good joke job titles? Here's mine: Executive Professor

ggm 4y ago
Contextually the word Professor means different things in the US to almost anywhere else. In the UK and Australia it means a senior academic who can be head of department, occupies a "chair" which may be personal or functional, and who has moved beyond the pedestrian state of teaching to a more exalted level we call "many fine dinners" In America, it appears to mean "is paid to teach" "Dean" might work. Dean of cleaning. Dean of Catering.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  That seems like an oversimplification of American usage. It certainly doesn’t refer to a K12 teacher, and many people distinguish between adjuncts/instructors and tenure-track professors. Technically though, one is not a professor until reaching the rank of “full professor”, which typically happens no younger than 40, after being promoted from “assistant professor” to “associate professor” (and then coming up for full several years later). Assistant professors will say “I am a professor” when asked what they do for a living. But when being introduced at academic conferences they would normally be referred to as “an assistant/associate professor at university X”. Some of this is inside baseball among academics, but the first paragraph applies pretty widely.
  - ggm 4y ago
    You didn't use the words Lecturer or Senior Lecturer there at all. They're terms used in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. There's another fine British/Imperial academic title: Reader. I never quite worked out what it meant. Most of the professors told me it meant "not to be trusted" but they would say that. Emeritus and Adjunct are a bit like "executive producer" in "State and Maine" grace-titles handed out to keep people happy. Emeritus get use of a room and access to the coffee machine.
    - 4y ago

mberning 4y ago

I’m more concerned with skillset deflation. It’s super common to run in to people with 10 years experience, a nice resume, and an impressive title that can’t do much of anything.

rabuse 4y ago
I think this happens because employers are expecting too much from their employees nowadays, where everyone needs to bounce around 10 flavor-of-the-month languages/frameworks, so you never master anything, and later turns into code smell. The better path to more skilled individuals is going back to the "training for the role" days, and sticking to what works to just deliver a solid product.
- im3w1l 4y ago
  There is a some amount of useless churn, but it's also the case that things are getting better, so that being decent at the current thing can be more productive and useful than being a master of the old.
cratermoon 4y ago
It's not 10 years of experience, it's 1 year of experience 10 times.
- urthor 4y ago
  People keep repeating "1 year of experience 10 times" like it's a bad thing. The problem with the "1 year of experience n times" career trajectory is it pays incredibly well. And it's extraordinarily fulfilling to tackle a new project and a new tech stack every 18 months. Everyone keeps saying establishing yourself is worthwhile... the money and the exciting projects say otherwise. I'm not sure how to feel.
  - atraac 4y ago
    I would also that the benefit is not only better pay, but also being able to onboard efficiently and working with varying styles of orgs and people. If you work at a single place for a very long time, you get used to the way people work, think, approach problems. It's really nice to see how 'others' do it, what 'others' think, validate what you know and do.

paxys 4y ago

I have seen this happen more and more in tech as well. Engineers join a company right out of college, are promoted to "senior" in a couple of years, and "staff" another two or three years after that. Now because everyone is staff you have to keep making up fancier titles – senior staff, principal engineer, technical lead, architect, senior architect, chief of staff, partner engineer, distinguished engineer, technical fellow... I asked a higher up why this was the case, and the response was simply that people quit if they aren't promoted quick enough. Titles are free, and smaller companies have zero problems handing them out like candy to keep people happy.

JSavageOne 4y ago
People are getting promotions without pay increases? That's news to me. If you're getting promoted and being assigned greater responsibility, than your compensation should increase accordingly.
- wodenokoto 4y ago
  If you are 2 years out of college you might not know what that compensation should be. You might not even know what the increased responsibility of the title should be. But you do appreciate the bragging rights of the title, and so that is all you get. E.g., senior means I'm officially leet. Not that I have responsibilities.
- thenoblesunfish 4y ago
  The title change itself has real value to people. People love to feel a sense of progress, and they love to feel appreciated. Promoting the same person twicw over N years, instead of once, may cost the same but will make the employee happier. That's the free part.
  - taneq 4y ago
    And just like monetary inflation, this inflation's cost is hidden in the devaluation of the inflated commodity. 'Senior Engineer' used to be a title that people valued highly, as a result of the years of work it took to earn. Now nobody's impressed by such a title.

rabuse 4y ago

I absolutely abhor job titles, but in the corporate world, especially when seeking new employment and building that buzzword-laden resume, it's an unfortunate reality.

civilized 4y ago

The finance sector started this decades ago. A Vice President is just a spreadsheet slinger and there are at least five different kinds of Director.

pestatije 4y ago
I saw this too...i wondered how could a single bank have so many VP's
MagnumOpus 4y ago
But it now is an established convention. When you hear "VP at a bank", for the last 50 years it has been common knowledge that it is an individual contributor with 4-8ish years of experience, and when you hear "Managing Director", you translate it to "10yr+ experience and some people under him". Whereas in software, you don't really know how much authority a "senior architect" or "engineering fellow" or "principal staff developer" really has...
- mejutoco 4y ago
  tbh, there are fewer banks. If you limit the software titles to FAANG you get a pretty good idea of what they mean too.
notahacker 4y ago
And the startup scene does it far more aggressively than the corporate sector, where founders dish out C level titles to their interns. My favourite 'Director' I've encountered so far was an Associate Director who was a fresh graduate doing LinkedIn outreach for an SME.

ugurnot 4y ago

There are people who join to chess tournaments in small countries, just to obtain the GM or IM titles. Those titles are hard to obtain in bigger tournaments. Not the same thing, but they belong to the same cluster.

galmactima 4y ago

We need to have some kind of standard in the industry. It's just like how here in Canada we have the plague of regulatory bodies given the legal right to make it illegal to call yourself "Software Engineer" as a protected term unless you have a B.Eng. and spend 3 years in gov't controlled training programs. What a joke. What we really need to do is set up some fucking standards so that braindead developers can't cheese their way into industry and get promoted to "Senior Developer" by writing mediocre, barely functional JavaScript code among other monkey-brained developers writing barely functional code of a similar caliber. It's becoming an epidemic of self-taught bootcamp idiots who're destroying the industry and decimating uptime and availability which competent developers are then required to fix on-call, and I'm tired of pretending it's not.

klodolph 4y ago
It's not just this industry though, it's lots of industries. "Communications director" is something you have to fucking decipher with a code you get on the back of your Froot Loops box, because it means one thing at one company and something radically different at another. Just to give an example. Reading somebody's resume can be hell.
briga 4y ago
So on the one hand you’re complaining about regulatory bodies keeping standards for job titles. But on the other you’re gatekeeping the industry against people who don’t have traditional education. Surely the problem isn’t bootcamp grads, but rather the companies that would let an incompetent engineer get promoted to senior in the first place. I do agree that keeping preventing Canadian developers from calling themselves engineers is a joke (let’s see them try and stop me)

thenoblesunfish 4y ago

The article doesn't seem to make a very strong case for the severity of this "scourge". Just like grades or degrees mean little without knowing about the school they came from, job titles, especially their implied seniority, don't mean much without knowledge of the company. Is this a problem worth worrying about, or just a fun rant?

emodendroket 4y ago
Yeah, I agree and it's how I've seen people react to my resume with a nominal "step down."
nicbou 4y ago
I never learn anything meaningful from articles titled "the [growth/rise/fall/death/scourge/epidemic] of [a thing that happens on Twitter/in California]".
futureproofd 4y ago
Personally, I take it seriously and I think that we at least have the opportunity to make our concerns known here as well. To boil down my job title would reduce me to a computer programmer. I'm fine with that and it's what I tell to people I meet. In the industry though, it's another story, because we have to play the game in order to succeed. The result of this is that everyone on my team is a senior software person, while I reside in North America, and them, all overseas. You can imagine the pay-gap. So where does this put me as the more experienced person on the team, getting paid double the salary of those who share the same job title? As the organization expands and goes through its cost cutting phases, I imagine that spot is directly in the sights of, well a coat saving opportunity. Am I paranoid? Maybe.

combatentropy 4y ago

It reminds me of Newspeak, from Orwell's 1984. Leaders, especially of bureaucracies, perennially hope to shape belief by just renaming things. I've been to Wal-Mart or Target or any number of places, where I have read a sign or overheard a prerecorded announcement referring to the workers as "team members", "associates", "specialists", "customer advocates", and so on. The illusion dissipates instantaneously. I immediately see it as pretentious, and the reflex is to cringe. I suspect that most employees roll their eyes at it too. I don't believe that the executives who came up with these fancy names are fooled by them either --- and that's part of the problem, it's condescending. The executive thinks, "I see right through these words, into the real thing, but my employees and customers are stupider than me, and I believe these names can sway their thinking." Another problem is that it is just like inflation, in that it doesn't stop spiraling upward. I believe that the word "employee" was once a fancy replacement for something plainer, like "worker". But H.R. told me, when I was making an app for them, that it's a dirty word: We don't "employ" people. That makes it sound like we are using them. (Well, you are, but they know you are, and after all you are paying them. It was all agreed upon at the outset. Also it's not so bad. Everyone wants, in the end, to be "useful".) But no, now they are called "associates". It won't end. There is even a chance that it will go in circles. I would not be surprised if some years later, a new executive arrives, says "associate" is too loose: "They aren't merely associated with us in some tangential way. We need them and employ them for our success. Let us call them 'employees'."

janalsncm 4y ago
George Carlin on “soft language”: https://youtu.be/o25I2fzFGoY https://youtu.be/o25I2fzFGoY
- molteanu 4y ago
  I've noticed this a few months ago where I live (Romania), namely, that we've used to go to the "Dentist", which is an actual Romanian word, but now the town where I live is full of "Dental Spas" and "Dental Studios". Yes, we're using English terminology, even though that's not the official language here.
4y ago

hintymad 4y ago

A friend of mine, who works at Amazon as a principal engineer, also mentioned that Amazon had been inflating title too. Per his words, Sr. SDE in Amazon used to be a big deal. People usually got such title after > 10 years of grinding, and they would be happy to stay in that title forever. Principal engineers were treated like demigods. There was even a page on Amazon wiki that cautioned new principal engineers not to think of themselves so. But now engineers expected to get promoted to principal in three years after being promoted to L6. An L6 engineers could be promoted to L7 if they could launch a product.

urthor 4y ago
While that's true, what's also true is that the money in the industry has quadrupled since that era (stock options lottery aside). Yes, those "old style genuine seniors" in the industry have had their titles inflated up the waxoo. I don't think they're that unhappy about the change.
ZephyrBlu 4y ago
As a young engineer, I expect to get promoted quickly because that's what I see happening pretty commonly for other people. The kicker is that most people who get these titles quickly don't even seem to be exceptional. It's pure inflation. It's likely I'll end up with the title of Senior with ~3 YOE at a big tech co. I think it's extremely dumb and feel like Senior and sometimes Staff titles are often undeserved, but it feels like if you don't play along you're just falling behind.

pflenker 4y ago

Fun fact: one of the accused in the fraud scandal around Wirecard claims that he had no important role in the company, as evidenced by his „fantasy title“: Deputy CFO. Source in German: https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/wirecard-prozess-verteidigung-103.html https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/wirecard-prozess-vertei...

durnygbur 4y ago
haha non-CFO of non-company, except billions of € were real...

no_wrk 4y ago

The Economist complaining about people having fancy job titles despite not doing the work is rich coming from the boot-lickiest of the capitalist bootlickers.

noyesno 4y ago

Reminds me of my favorite Dilbert comic on promotions in title: https://dilbert.com/strip/2000-08-02 https://dilbert.com/strip/2000-08-02

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

That opening paragraph is great. "Greetings Engineer II"

dave4420 4y ago

> Puffed-up titles may put good candidates off. This is absolutely true. If someone is advertising for a VP of software engineering but asking for a skill set that matches mine, I conclude that they don’t know what they’re doing.

pfoof 4y ago

There was that meme about LinkedIn: - LinkedIn: Blockchain Evangelist, Serial Entrepreneur, AI in Web3 Enthusiast, ex-IoT Devices Department Manager - Reality: unemployed, failed in 5 businesses, but bought some Philips Hue lightbulbs

smadge 4y ago

Does this apply to big tech companies, which usually have generic numbered “levels” which have a relatively fixed distribution?

mkl95 4y ago

Job title inflation is an inverse function of compensation and inequality. When a few people are getting paid a ton of money and you are not being paid much, getting a "promotion" is one of the few ways to land a highly paid position. If your current company gives you more responsibility without increasing your pay, you can usually switch jobs for a higher salary.

MarchM 4y ago

You’re forgetting Chief Solution Architect… at an advertising agency.. wtf?

welder 4y ago

In bay area big tech, eng titles are tied to levels and if you don't move up then you're let go. Naturally people work hard to level up, which also comes with a new title.

theBobBob 4y ago

I work in a smallish company (around 150 employees I believe) and we recently went through this career framework development and standardisation and as part of that we came up with standard levels and titles across the company but we had to make an exception for our USA office. They would all still have the standard titles internally for pay bands, career progression etc but because of customer expectations, everyone had to be a VP of this or Senior VP of that where VP elsewhere in the company was a very senior position. Kinda funny really.

bane 4y ago

It's almost beyond unreal. In the past two weeks I've had multiple discussions about promoting staff with 1-3 years of experience in this, their first job out of undergrad, into positions that have typically required 15-20 years of broad industry experience with various responsibilities or accomplishments (successful P&L management, regarding in their field, etc.). My management has basically just shrugged, "it's the market right now" without considering any long-term ramifications. I'd almost be fine with it if the rising tide lifted all boats, but it seems to be highly particular to the incoming <5 years of experience people. Before too long, I'm going to end up working for people who know almost nothing, and don't even have the experience to know it. That'll be the moment I retire.

Victerius 4y ago
Sorry, but I think it's you who are out of touch here. Requiring 15-20 years of experience? Just... no. Software engineers are so well paid that many of them retire from the job market permanently after 15-20 years. You might as well ask people to be 65 years old until they can occupy the position. 20 years is 25% of a lifespan, and 33% of an adult lifespan. Why isn't 10 years good enough? Unless it's an executive position for people who are at the end of their careers. You can become a Brigadier General in 20 years in the military, which would be broadly equivalent to a SVP.
- chinchilla2020 4y ago
  Yeah this is a weird mentality that I encounter pretty often. It is completely juxtaposed with the reality of most senior managers, who are identified by companies in their early 20s. Companies tend to promote high velocity career climbers and want to promote them young in order to get plenty of years of service from them.
trifurcate 4y ago
One thing that you haven't touched on here (and most people don't) is that "professional experience" is highly nebulous in a field like software development where you may have a >10 year head start compared to your peers in terms of life stage. I started programming when I was 8, and have been a contributor to many software projects from age 11 onwards, with a lot of those contributions still publicly visible on my GitHub profile. Straight out of college, sure I have "~1 year of experience" (that is, if you even count my internships) but I've been programming for more than half my life. If you sum my ad hoc experience contributing to FOSS projects, doing one-off contract work, personal projects, and just tinkering over 15 years I might very well be as good as someone with "15-20 years of broad industry experience", but it doesn't show on my resume as an easily quantified number. I've definitely come across and worked with these kinds of tenured, experienced workers who went into software development not as a hobby or interest but as a mere career and ended up falling behind in their later years due to a lack of drive. This kind of thing is rare in most professions, so people aren't used to it (and I'm not saying that it's 100% what's happening in your anecdote), but I believe it is becoming increasingly common in software development.

rapjr9 4y ago

Acadamia often makes up inflated titles for themselves in several ways. A professor starts an "institute" which is just a banner slapped on their work, and now they are the "Director of the Institute for the Study of...". Or they get a donation from some rich person and they add the rich persons name as a title, as in "I. Am Important, the Dovey and Sam Pekinpaw professor of Engineering". Or they join a group of their colloborators and give out awards to themselves and add the award names to their titles as in "I. Also Important, the International Superior Professor". Or they give their group of grad students and their workspace a name as in "Aint I. Great, Director of the Great Research Lab". Many of them collect multiple such titles which can make their titles go on to fill a large paragraph. Some of the titles have merit, some are selling their name to get donations, some are entirely made up. You can do the same. Take your side project, call it a company, and now you are CEO of that company. You don't even need to incorporate the company or give info about it (you are in "stealth mode").

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

t312227 4y ago

imho. this is an old wisdom: titles are free (and they are much cheaper than a pay-rise :))

harimau777 4y ago

I think that a lot of the problem is that programmers are treated like expendable cogs to be run as fast as possible until they burn out and are replaced. So people desperately race up the title ladder in an attempt to get to the point where they aren't treated like crap.

jmclnx 4y ago

Deleted, I was aming for an emacs thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33951866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33951866

teddyh 4y ago
I think you meant to comment on this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33951866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33951866

epage 4y ago

My first job out of college had 3 basic titles that broke down into - New grad, takes more than give - Individual contributor - Team technical lead I really liked it as it was clear what the roles where and how to move up. We kept running into problems with people wanting smaller career milestones. Unsure if it was due to smaller milestones from college, gamification, or what. Since that company switched titles to match industry and at each job since, job titles have been a mystery to me.

jmclnx 4y ago

Years ago I realized titles mean nothing these days. Everyone new hire out of school where I work is hired as a "senior programmer". About the only thing that does not happen is a significant pay increase, but the titles with promotion keep getting more grandiose, pay, maybe a 0.5% increase if any.

theshrike79 4y ago

In my opinion titles should be for communicating your approximate skill/experience level to people inside and outside the company who already don't know you. But this falls down when I, with over 20 years of actual work experience, am a "Senior Server Engineer" and I talk with a "Principal Server Engineer" from India who has problems logging in to AWS and checking CloudWatch logs. Titles shouldn't be a reward used instead of pay rises or just for being in the company long enough. You shouldn't become Principal Software Architect just by being in the same job for a decade.

xyzelement 4y ago

I learned a while ago to ground the seniority conversation in comp. Titles are whatever, how much you are willing to pay me is a better indicator of the scope and impact you expect.

mk89 4y ago
Absolutely true! I still remember a team member some years who was promoted to "Principal SW Eng" - when titles were still a little bit of "something". And then he added: yeah, but no raise. And we both laughed, because clearly it was ridiculous what they had done to keep him.

jdmtheNth 4y ago

"Sanitation expert and a maintenance engineer Garbage man, a janitor and you my dear A real union flight attendant, my oh my You ain't nothin' but a waitress in the sky" Waitress in the Sky, by The Replacements.

dhosek 4y ago

When I was hired to work for a bank, the offer had a title of “Vice President.” I almost turned it down because I was worried that they were offering me a management role.

jdlyga 4y ago

I get this a lot. On paper, I'm a technical director of software development. This sounds like I'm a manager, but in practice I'm a senior software engineer.

jcolman 4y ago

This is a rant in search of a problem to solve. It doesn’t make a strong case for a “scourge”. The issues it points out have less to do with title inflation and more to do with bad leadership, planning, and comms.

pizzaknife 4y ago

when i was 16, i held a position at now defunct Kmart, which i candidly referred to as 'Stock Logistics Technician" yes, i was a stock-boy. i suppose i was part of the problem from an early age. on topic - my only real complaints about title inflation are 2 fold: first, interview screens; second, annimosity generated within departments between engineers holding the perception they "are better" than x yet x has a "higher" title. both are frustrating situations

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

> "When money is tight, a bump in title is a way of recognising someone’s efforts cheaply." that's the real scourge right there. > "Baristas at Starbucks are called “partners”...to create a sense of shared endeavour and to disguise the cold reality of corporate hierarchies. "

trilobyte 4y ago

This was a headache for me when I had teams reporting to me from Mumbai. I had to create artificial layers of job titles that didn't exist in any of our other regions because there was an expectation of moving up on a regular cadence. On one hand it rubbed me the wrong way personally, but that's not a big deal and something I could get over, but on the other hand I was regularly having to explain to team members in other regions why promotions in Mumbai were happening so much faster than everywhere else. It was a people and perception problem, but still had people who couldn't let it go.

glonq 4y ago

I just left a project where I architected the system and managed multiple dev teams for two years. The manager who replaced me is doing maintenance and updates with a pared-down team, yet took "principal software architect" as his job title -- which is definitely a loftier title than I took. Maybe I need to ask my boss for a "title raise" ;)