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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

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 ).
  - jxramos 4y ago
    https://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/ takes a good stab at matching up bands across companies. Seemed accurate to me last time I checked.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
      Thank you! It is hard to believe I was not aware of that tool. I am glad someone saw an issue and attempted to solve it. It actually gave me a clearer picture of a path forward that until now was kinda shrouded in a fog of war. I hate information asymmetry.
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
If you were doing principal work at Netflix, shouldn't it have been a massive step down in pay to do senior work elsewhere? That seems like a larger issue... Even staff-level pay should've been a big step down unless you were going to Apple or Google or something...
- jedberg 4y ago
  Yes, that's why it was a problem.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jiveturkey 4y ago
Why wouldn't you just put an appropriate level for the destination company on your resume? Or leave the level off altogether if "translating" the title is offensive to you somehow.
- jedberg 4y ago
  Some people did in fact do that. But others felt it was immoral to give oneself a fake title.
flashgordon 4y ago
So I really don't care about titles. But the problem is titles are really important as other companies care about them enough to withhold them! The other thing is it is really hard to define "scope". With titles and hierarchies sadly all the scope below is attributes to you (and this reflects in the pay). You also hear a lot of making "impact". But seriously shipping a line of code (amidst 10s of millions) to a phone os update used by a billion users isn't that exciting to me. I care more about the % of attributable impact.
mateo411 4y ago
I guess Netflix suffered from job title deflation.
jxramos 4y ago
I always thought total comp and base salary would be the compensating signals for title inflation and lateral moves and all those transitions that aren't 1:1. Money is money after all.
emodendroket 4y ago
I haven't really seen that be an issue, moving from puffed up title at unknown company to regular title at known one.
- Frost1x 4y ago
  Businesses use title inflation selectively. If I want to toss a carrot that costs virtually nothing to someone, I can give a title promotion of sorts. To some labor, that's attractive because they see it as a way to grow their career: someone else at another company may value that title higher to improve my mobility to jump positions, whether or not I'm fully qualified already. Meanwhile, when companies are hiring, they tend to ignore your previous titles and focus on evaluating things objectively. They're aware of title ambiguities because it's a charade they all play. They want to see your actual skillset, look at what you did in your previous role and assess that. During salary and role negotiations, they can use titles against you if they find your previous title wasn't inflated, even if they know you're actually more qualified than the title projects. It can be a way to rationalize lower pay bands or roles at another business. So companies tend to project value in titles when they give them away yet value them as worthless when it matters to them, meanwhile leverage titles any way they can to their advantage. It's an intangible commodity for manipulation.
chinchilla2020 4y ago
The funny part of this whole discussion is that it is all relative. Titles are a made up thing. We assign an english word to label an employee, then make value judgements about it. Is title inflation really a thing? OK then, how was the value of a title set in the first place? Is there some natural phenomena to measure what an 'executive' should be?
ams92 4y ago
Before introducing levels Netflix paid up to 550k in cash to people with the title of "senior software engineer". My title could be "dumbest person in the world" and I'd be happy with it if I were paid that much.

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 ).
- jxramos 4y ago
  https://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/ takes a good stab at matching up bands across companies. Seemed accurate to me last time I checked.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    Thank you! It is hard to believe I was not aware of that tool. I am glad someone saw an issue and attempted to solve it. It actually gave me a clearer picture of a path forward that until now was kinda shrouded in a fog of war. I hate information asymmetry.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

If you were doing principal work at Netflix, shouldn't it have been a massive step down in pay to do senior work elsewhere? That seems like a larger issue... Even staff-level pay should've been a big step down unless you were going to Apple or Google or something...

jedberg 4y ago
Yes, that's why it was a problem.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jiveturkey 4y ago

Why wouldn't you just put an appropriate level for the destination company on your resume? Or leave the level off altogether if "translating" the title is offensive to you somehow.

jedberg 4y ago
Some people did in fact do that. But others felt it was immoral to give oneself a fake title.

flashgordon 4y ago

So I really don't care about titles. But the problem is titles are really important as other companies care about them enough to withhold them! The other thing is it is really hard to define "scope". With titles and hierarchies sadly all the scope below is attributes to you (and this reflects in the pay). You also hear a lot of making "impact". But seriously shipping a line of code (amidst 10s of millions) to a phone os update used by a billion users isn't that exciting to me. I care more about the % of attributable impact.

mateo411 4y ago

I guess Netflix suffered from job title deflation.

jxramos 4y ago

I always thought total comp and base salary would be the compensating signals for title inflation and lateral moves and all those transitions that aren't 1:1. Money is money after all.

emodendroket 4y ago

I haven't really seen that be an issue, moving from puffed up title at unknown company to regular title at known one.

Frost1x 4y ago
Businesses use title inflation selectively. If I want to toss a carrot that costs virtually nothing to someone, I can give a title promotion of sorts. To some labor, that's attractive because they see it as a way to grow their career: someone else at another company may value that title higher to improve my mobility to jump positions, whether or not I'm fully qualified already. Meanwhile, when companies are hiring, they tend to ignore your previous titles and focus on evaluating things objectively. They're aware of title ambiguities because it's a charade they all play. They want to see your actual skillset, look at what you did in your previous role and assess that. During salary and role negotiations, they can use titles against you if they find your previous title wasn't inflated, even if they know you're actually more qualified than the title projects. It can be a way to rationalize lower pay bands or roles at another business. So companies tend to project value in titles when they give them away yet value them as worthless when it matters to them, meanwhile leverage titles any way they can to their advantage. It's an intangible commodity for manipulation.

chinchilla2020 4y ago

The funny part of this whole discussion is that it is all relative. Titles are a made up thing. We assign an english word to label an employee, then make value judgements about it. Is title inflation really a thing? OK then, how was the value of a title set in the first place? Is there some natural phenomena to measure what an 'executive' should be?

ams92 4y ago

Before introducing levels Netflix paid up to 550k in cash to people with the title of "senior software engineer". My title could be "dumbest person in the world" and I'd be happy with it if I were paid that much.