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It’s even worse than just title inflation. Orgs lose the plot when they lose their calibration against the rest of the industry. These senior engineering role

It’s even worse than just title inflation. Orgs lose the plot when they lose their calibration against the rest of the industry. These senior engineering roles have well understood requirements: cross org influence, leading a project independently from inception to completion, understanding business impact and keeping senior management in the loop. The problems come when your cross org engineering influence is “move our source code from shared drive to github” and keeping senior management in the loop means chatting about it over takeout with your roomies who are also the CTO and VP of Design.

eastbound 4y ago
So, the fact that everyone is in a small startup instead of a bug corporate “is” the problem of job inflation (After all, when I started my product alone for 4 years, I sacred myself CEO). - Everyone-in-a-startup is a side-effect of incredible automation where every competent engineer can leverage dozens of automations, CI/CD, automatic accounting and SAAS products. It’s a real capacity of coordinating. - Titles will readjust. Titles will mean nothing. They should mean nothing. We’ve already given up reading the degree/diploma of programmers, skills matter more. Software development is so erratic and devspeed is so much due to individual talent that single founders with 50 employees can sell themselves to Facebook for 18 billions. When we can get predictable results out of software engineering, we’ll discuss how to position each one in a hierarchy.
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  I'm not convinced that big organisations teach you more than smaller ones, given how hands on you have to be at a smaller shop and how sclerotic larger ones are.
  - BigJ1211 4y ago
    You learn a lot more about the process itself in smaller companies across the board. In larger companies that only happens in the higher level roles. In larger companies your secondary and tertiary skills also become significantly more important. Ultimately I prefer working with people that have experience in both. Engineers who've only worked in smaller companies tend to be harder to work *with*, on a social inter-colleague level. Engineers who've only worked in larger companies tend to be less capable when left to their own devices, they need more help if there is less demarcation. Engineers who've worked in smaller teams tend to pick up the slack proactively, from larger teams retro-actively. At least that's been my experience both from within as well as without. (Currently working for a small company that has large corporate clients, have worked for small and corporations before that)
    - LAC-Tech 4y ago
      Engineers who've only worked in smaller companies tend to be harder to work with, on a social inter-colleague level. I definitely skew that way - anything in particular I might want to watch out for, that would play out as "hard to work with" in a big company setting?
      - eastbound 4y ago
        IMO: - Inability to play politics for longer than 2hrs, let alone months, - Self-selection, skilled people go to startups, and people who can maintain interest despite tons of paperwork to fill in, go to large companies (sometimes they’re as skilled, but it’s not the most important, 80% as skilled and able to run through processes is better).

eastbound 4y ago

So, the fact that everyone is in a small startup instead of a bug corporate “is” the problem of job inflation (After all, when I started my product alone for 4 years, I sacred myself CEO). - Everyone-in-a-startup is a side-effect of incredible automation where every competent engineer can leverage dozens of automations, CI/CD, automatic accounting and SAAS products. It’s a real capacity of coordinating. - Titles will readjust. Titles will mean nothing. They should mean nothing. We’ve already given up reading the degree/diploma of programmers, skills matter more. Software development is so erratic and devspeed is so much due to individual talent that single founders with 50 employees can sell themselves to Facebook for 18 billions. When we can get predictable results out of software engineering, we’ll discuss how to position each one in a hierarchy.

LAC-Tech 4y ago
I'm not convinced that big organisations teach you more than smaller ones, given how hands on you have to be at a smaller shop and how sclerotic larger ones are.
- BigJ1211 4y ago
  You learn a lot more about the process itself in smaller companies across the board. In larger companies that only happens in the higher level roles. In larger companies your secondary and tertiary skills also become significantly more important. Ultimately I prefer working with people that have experience in both. Engineers who've only worked in smaller companies tend to be harder to work *with*, on a social inter-colleague level. Engineers who've only worked in larger companies tend to be less capable when left to their own devices, they need more help if there is less demarcation. Engineers who've worked in smaller teams tend to pick up the slack proactively, from larger teams retro-actively. At least that's been my experience both from within as well as without. (Currently working for a small company that has large corporate clients, have worked for small and corporations before that)
  - LAC-Tech 4y ago
    Engineers who've only worked in smaller companies tend to be harder to work with, on a social inter-colleague level. I definitely skew that way - anything in particular I might want to watch out for, that would play out as "hard to work with" in a big company setting?
    - eastbound 4y ago
      IMO: - Inability to play politics for longer than 2hrs, let alone months, - Self-selection, skilled people go to startups, and people who can maintain interest despite tons of paperwork to fill in, go to large companies (sometimes they’re as skilled, but it’s not the most important, 80% as skilled and able to run through processes is better).