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Titles are very much diluted. I've seen companies hire college sophomores who have never heard of the concept of a database and make them Sr Engineers on a ana

Titles are very much diluted. I've seen companies hire college sophomores who have never heard of the concept of a database and make them Sr Engineers on a analytics teams. I've seen Sr Engineers hired with one year of relevant experience. At this point, "Sr Engineer" is just the new "Jr Engineer". There's nothing wrong with this, but indeed, Staff Engineer tends to mean 8+ years of experience.

0xbadcafebee 3y ago
It's because we still have no standards as a profession. Whatever bullshit trends in silicon valley, suddenly everyone follows it, petrified that they might get left behind or are missing some important new thing. I remember when Systems Administrator was a noble and important profession full of smart, talented people. But a lot of people misunderstood it and made fun of it, so it became an unattractive title, and instead of changing the role, they just made up new titles. Now they're cool and in-demand, and still nobody understands what they do.
- gabereiser 3y ago
  This is the way. ("Sr. Prompt Engineer", "Visual Strategist", "Director of Front of House") People want to have some leverage to get things they want done, done. Sys Admin -> DevOps (Cloud) Engineer. Things change. Adapt or die. If you read IBM's coding standards from 1980 and compared them to Google's from 2000s and then to Today's AI journey, you would have complaints about each. Processes form from people. Change comes from people.
- superfrank 3y ago
  Title inflation isn't specific to tech. Look at the banking industry, pretty much everyone is a VP or SVP of something.
  - jdwithit 3y ago
    Or sales. The startup I used to work at, absolutely everyone in sales had some kind of Director or higher title regardless of seniority or role. I guess the theory being you're more likely to take a call from the Senior Executive Director of Business Development (never mind that said Senior Executive Director is 23 years old and has zero decision making authority). I always wondered if people actually fell for this crap.
  - di456 3y ago
    It's prolific because banking clients want to work with someone in a position of authority.
- rhtgrg 3y ago
  Funnily enough, the author of this book started out as a systems admin.
yieldcrv 3y ago
Thats because nobody can get hired as an entry level or junior engineer If you arent internalizing the senior title immediately then you will get nowhere If you’re not forming an LLC and putting yourself as an junior employee of that shell company with some verifiable information or project, then I dont know how to help you

0xbadcafebee 3y ago

It's because we still have no standards as a profession. Whatever bullshit trends in silicon valley, suddenly everyone follows it, petrified that they might get left behind or are missing some important new thing. I remember when Systems Administrator was a noble and important profession full of smart, talented people. But a lot of people misunderstood it and made fun of it, so it became an unattractive title, and instead of changing the role, they just made up new titles. Now they're cool and in-demand, and still nobody understands what they do.

gabereiser 3y ago
This is the way. ("Sr. Prompt Engineer", "Visual Strategist", "Director of Front of House") People want to have some leverage to get things they want done, done. Sys Admin -> DevOps (Cloud) Engineer. Things change. Adapt or die. If you read IBM's coding standards from 1980 and compared them to Google's from 2000s and then to Today's AI journey, you would have complaints about each. Processes form from people. Change comes from people.
superfrank 3y ago
Title inflation isn't specific to tech. Look at the banking industry, pretty much everyone is a VP or SVP of something.
- jdwithit 3y ago
  Or sales. The startup I used to work at, absolutely everyone in sales had some kind of Director or higher title regardless of seniority or role. I guess the theory being you're more likely to take a call from the Senior Executive Director of Business Development (never mind that said Senior Executive Director is 23 years old and has zero decision making authority). I always wondered if people actually fell for this crap.
- di456 3y ago
  It's prolific because banking clients want to work with someone in a position of authority.
rhtgrg 3y ago
Funnily enough, the author of this book started out as a systems admin.

yieldcrv 3y ago

Thats because nobody can get hired as an entry level or junior engineer If you arent internalizing the senior title immediately then you will get nowhere If you’re not forming an LLC and putting yourself as an junior employee of that shell company with some verifiable information or project, then I dont know how to help you