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Outside of the context of avoiding overtime payments, job title inflation is definitely used to help attract and retain employees. A few decades ago, a directo
by jdlyga 4y ago
Outside of the context of avoiding overtime payments, job title inflation is definitely used to help attract and retain employees. A few decades ago, a director level position was a manager of managers, and usually one of the key decision makers at a firm. Nowadays, you have many people with "director" in their job title who are team leads or senior individual contributors. It's not even really a problem. In fact, it's great to have a nice title and makes people feel important. It's more about adjusting your expectations of what someone's job title is vs what they actually do day to day.
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- taskforcegemini 4y agoinflate all the things! on a related note: to some people a phd has become a sign that that person has something to compensate for. a lot of equally or better skilled/knowledgable people do not have one
- pcthrowaway 4y agoI thought it was a sign that a candidate has poor cost-benefit analytical skills. Only half joking
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoHah. The same joke persists in MBA circles, where, as the joke goes, during your time here you learn how to evaluate why MBA degree was not a good idea.
- notesinthefield 4y agoMy MBA was free , got me a better job and I still think it was a waste of time.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoI want to say that a good chunk of it was a waste for me as well. The network effect, as far as I can tell, was minimal. That said, two classes did make a difference ( fraud in accounting and analytics with R ). Even taking those into account though, I honestly can't say my degree was as valuable as it is sometimes portrayed ( definitely not the asking price ). I sometimes wonder whether it is possible I could have stumbled onto R on my own ( I was already playing with Python at the time ) and would I have the patience to go through sample exercises on my own. It is hard to tell. I can't honestly say it was a complete waste of time.
- BeFlatXIII 4y agoOne of my professors said that half the lack of women in STEM professorships could be explained by female students who are smart enough to earn a PhD instead also being smart enough to earn an MD or DVM instead.
- opportune 4y agoThis seems a bit of a broad brush. You can hardly fault someone for getting a PhD because of something like graduating into a recession, because they actually wanted to into academia but changed their mind, or so that they could immigrate.
- Alupis 4y agoA lot like how everyone is an Engineer these days. Software Engineers that just write CRUD apps, Software Architects who just read docs, Systems Engineers who just follow guides, Support Engineers who just answer phone calls and tickets, etc. Title inflation has been creeping up for many years. It's everywhere.
- notyourwork 4y agoWhat is a software engineer?
- brian_herman 4y agoSoftware engineers design and develop computer programs and applications.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoI thought that’s a software developer?
- gongle 4y agoSo a programmer
- rhtgrg 4y agoI'd say a programmer is to a software engineer as a handyman is to an architect. Can a handyman do the "dirty work" of most projects? Sure. Can they design a skyscraper to spec, tell you exactly what to expect in terms of resources and timeline, and roll with the punches of logistics and competing priorities? Probably not, unless they were already an architect just doing the job of a handyman. That being said, as someone with a software engineering degree, I can safely say that most companies don't need engineers and can get by just fine with programmers. Anyway, in this industry there are many architects working as handymen and vice versa.
- 4y ago
- up2isomorphism 4y agoYes, like drugs, inflations everything can be great just as long as you can “adjust” your expectations. I think next step is to adjust time for some people so they think you have lived 100 years while they actually just lived 30.
- Waterluvian 4y agoI hit “staff engineer” about four years into my career, and kept it when switching jobs. Kinda ridiculous. I was even offered a director level job months later. I’m good but I’m nowhere near that good. Title inflation is silly and ten years in, I’m done paying attention to them at all. They tell me nothing.
- neon_electro 4y agoIt's still happening today. I just discussed a role with a recruiter hiring for the same kind of thing: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3443314062/?refId=xpvVYRn8ns377tL90uXAqw%3D%3D&trackingId=11fBz7pG%2Bv6K3BN5VuucAw%3D%3D https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3443314062/?refId=xpvVYRn... (Staff) titling with a 4+ years of experience ask is incredibly confusing to me.
- spamizbad 4y agoIts even weirder on the interview side. We had someone apply as a Principle who I could only describe as "solidly mid level" I wasn't a jerk about it in the interview, but I said something to the effect of "I know titles are different at all other companies, but here the expectations for PEs is that they're tasked on the most critical technical initiatives and are held to high standards for execution. You're also going to be expected to mentor not just Junior technical staff, but also mid and senior level engineers. Does this sound like a role you're interested in? It's fairly demanding." Guy didn't flinch and said "Yeah, that's exactly what I'm looking for!" :| (We did not hire)
- duped 4y agoWhy did you even bother asking a question like that instead of telling the candidate directly that the role you're hiring for is beyond their level/expertise/experience/etc? From the candidate side, the only way to differentiate between "senior" "staff" "principle" "lead" or whatever between companies is the required years of experience on the job listing. Which is a terrible metric, but it's more informative than the title or job duties.
- importantbrian 4y agoWhere I see this mostly is in non-tech companies that don't have IC tracks. Often these companies have pay-bands that necessitate this. If you have a SWE that you're worried about losing you can't just keep them in the same job title and give them a big raise. You have to give them a manager, senior manager, or director title in order to get them into the pay-band you need them to be in. So it really isn't about making the employee feel good about the title they have. It's about getting them into the right pay band.