7 ms·

5 years for junior for better or worse is well out of step with the industry - while you're right that you can get some massively inflated titles that are out o

5 years for junior for better or worse is well out of step with the industry - while you're right that you can get some massively inflated titles that are out of step with the norm, the norm is that you're an intermediate developer at a minimum and most likely a senior after 5 years. It's dumb, but it is the standard nowadays.

pc86 3y ago
Intermediate/mid for sure, but if I get a resume from someone whose first programming job was 2018 and they're calling themselves senior, I'm throwing that in the trash unless like you said they're from VC-funded startups that are going to have massive title inflation and they're applying for a realistic (mid-level) role.
- ryanbrunner 3y ago
  Sure, I guess my point is to consider the context of the person applying. If they are coming from a place with title inflation, it's not their fault that the company they worked for inflated titles. If you're exclusively hiring seniors and they are an inflated "senior", for sure you're under no obligation to hire them, but if you're open to intermediates, I think it's worth explaining how your titles might differ from their experiences and that intermediate is a better fit.
  - bigbinary 3y ago
    Anyone tossing resumes because of title/time spent not matching up with their expectations is out of touch
- School-Cotton 3y ago
  It wouldn't be unusual to be an E5 at Facebook (err, sorry, "Meta") after 5 years, which is considered "senior" level. The point I'm making is that this title inflation has happened more broadly than just at VC-funded startups.
  - benreesman 3y ago
    I was hired at L5 at Meta in 2011, they’ve done a pretty good job at keeping the bar high but it’s mathematically impossible for it to stay at 2011 levels on multi order of magnitude growth. Back when I was even bothering in Jan/Feb it was me and 20 other L8s interviewing for the same L6 opening. It’s a coin toss at that point. Price discovery is not functioning at the moment, there are plenty of theories why. But high-end tech hiring is a slot machine and will be until monetary policy lets the bond market stabilize a bit.
    - memetomancer 3y ago
      Your comment is almost completely incomprehensible to me, as someone that doesn't work in the Meta context... I take it being an L5 is a good thing? but just six months ago you were an L8, and competition to become an L6 was a coin toss? No idea what 'price discovery' could mean in this situation, other than a fairly weird way to say 'salary range'? And any of this having to do with 'the bond market' is just baffling! The reason I bring it up is that I'm genuinely curious what life is like in other corners of the tech world. Any way you could translate the above into non-Meta terms?
      - School-Cotton 3y ago
        I worked at Facebook for 4 years and also don't understand that comment. I think it's just worded confusingly.
        Supermancho 3y ago
        > I worked at Facebook for 4 years and also don't understand that comment. I have never worked for FB and I thought it was fine. None of that is FB-specific. > I take it being an L5 is a good thing? It's implied lower numbers are better. >> it was me and 20 other L8s interviewing for the same L6 opening > but just six months ago you were an L8, and competition to become an L6 was a coin toss? Yes, due to the number of people competing for the same position. > No idea what 'price discovery' could mean in this situation, other than a fairly weird way to say 'salary range'? Salary range implies stability. eg What a company is willing to pay for what positions. There has been a lack of standardization in talent across tech and instability in compensation. Another way to think of it is an increased risk tolerance in wages. This has been fueled by leniency in promotion/raises/hiring when profits were higher. > And any of this having to do with 'the bond market' is just baffling! Monetary policy (around interest rates) is directly related to profit margins and hiring. Suffice to say, this is common knowledge for anyone who owns property (beyond a car, maybe) or tracks the job market.
- dkarl 3y ago
  That doesn't seem fair, and it doesn't seem like an effective filter, either. Titles vary wildly for a lot of different reasons, and you can't expect candidates to present themselves to you in your terms. You can't expect them to take your job descriptions at face value, either. If mismatched title expectations bother you, blame the industry, blame other companies, blame hiring managers, but don't blame an engineer who has only been working for five years. It's on you to explain how titles and compensation work at your company and work out what their position would be. I wouldn't pigeonhole someone into a level based on their years of experience or previous job titles, either. Interviews can reveal some surprising things. I've worked with people with less than five years of experience who were senior-quality developers at all aspects of the job, and I've worked with people with ten years of experience who just wanted to sit in their cube and write code without making any decisions or talking to anyone except their boss. And these people aren't going to straightforwardly tell you what their position should be. The one who wants to sit in his cube with no responsibilities might tell you he's senior (and his resume might back that up) and the one who is ready for a senior position might tell you they're mid-level, because at their last job they worked with extraordinary people.
  - JauntyHatAngle 3y ago
    Along similar lines to what you are saying, I think one of the more general problems that I see with titles is that people do tend to gravitate around specific industries/sizes of companies, even within IT, and then tend to associate their own experience as "normal" when it comes to seniority. I've moved a bit between different sizes and government vs startup vs mid-sized etc, and the titles vary wildly. Some government jobs had people with 4 years experience be "senior" or even "tech leads" because they weren't paying enough so they simply promoted any bright spark that was going to last to senior roles so they could at least get a few more years out of them before they left, as HR wouldn't pay more money without them getting the a specific title. Other place I've worked, your title was essentially a lottery system, others you were hard pressed to be a Senior without anything less than 10 years experience. But each of those places, I encountered people with very specific ideas of exactly what a senior was, and they were convinced their own standards were the "accepted" ones. There are definitely general guidelines for senior, associate etc, but they aren't normalised, just like you are saying. So point is, in support of your post, you can't dismiss someone just based on the title they give themselves, as it might have been perfectly normal thing to call themselves in previous positions.
- habosa 3y ago
  There are tons of Senior engineers from Google and Facebook (and other large companies) with only 5ish yeahs of experience.
- webdood90 3y ago
  great example of why hiring in tech is broken. decision makers making blanket generalizations because candidates don't fit the mold they've invented in their own minds using only their personal experience as a baseline. tech experience is wildly diverse. looking at candidates with a one size fits all approach is passing up plenty of qualified people, but everybody wants to hire like Google.
- jimbokun 3y ago
  Might be better to just ignore job titles altogether and only look at descriptions of what they actually did. Employees generally don't decide on the job titles used in their company.
  - the_only_law 3y ago
    I don’t even have titles on my resume. Everything is “software developer” or occasionally something slightly different if I think it’s relevant to the particular work I did there.
- vasili111 3y ago
  Any senior developer using in resume term "senior"?
  - Supermancho 3y ago
    Since 2005ish.
WinLychee 3y ago
We just rebranded senior as staff+
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Staff Pro Max
nonethewiser 3y ago
Actually I think its pretty rare to even have a junior title nowadays. You can claim anyone with less than 2 YOE is a junior or whatever but when jobs require you to “hit the ground running” AKA run migrations in prod and resolve things when shit hits the fan then you’re not really doing junior level work. Of course, there are also junior level jobs by responsibility but not title.
pluijzer 3y ago
I have to read a lot of cv's and the job title part is just some empty noise for me. Developer, engineer, programmer they're just terms that go in and out of fashion. At first they will become more and more pompous, Senior 10x-Ninja, or whatever, until they become so ridiculous that the actual capable people will call themselves humbly just a programmer.

pc86 3y ago

Intermediate/mid for sure, but if I get a resume from someone whose first programming job was 2018 and they're calling themselves senior, I'm throwing that in the trash unless like you said they're from VC-funded startups that are going to have massive title inflation and they're applying for a realistic (mid-level) role.

ryanbrunner 3y ago
Sure, I guess my point is to consider the context of the person applying. If they are coming from a place with title inflation, it's not their fault that the company they worked for inflated titles. If you're exclusively hiring seniors and they are an inflated "senior", for sure you're under no obligation to hire them, but if you're open to intermediates, I think it's worth explaining how your titles might differ from their experiences and that intermediate is a better fit.
- bigbinary 3y ago
  Anyone tossing resumes because of title/time spent not matching up with their expectations is out of touch
School-Cotton 3y ago
It wouldn't be unusual to be an E5 at Facebook (err, sorry, "Meta") after 5 years, which is considered "senior" level. The point I'm making is that this title inflation has happened more broadly than just at VC-funded startups.
- benreesman 3y ago
  I was hired at L5 at Meta in 2011, they’ve done a pretty good job at keeping the bar high but it’s mathematically impossible for it to stay at 2011 levels on multi order of magnitude growth. Back when I was even bothering in Jan/Feb it was me and 20 other L8s interviewing for the same L6 opening. It’s a coin toss at that point. Price discovery is not functioning at the moment, there are plenty of theories why. But high-end tech hiring is a slot machine and will be until monetary policy lets the bond market stabilize a bit.
  - memetomancer 3y ago
    Your comment is almost completely incomprehensible to me, as someone that doesn't work in the Meta context... I take it being an L5 is a good thing? but just six months ago you were an L8, and competition to become an L6 was a coin toss? No idea what 'price discovery' could mean in this situation, other than a fairly weird way to say 'salary range'? And any of this having to do with 'the bond market' is just baffling! The reason I bring it up is that I'm genuinely curious what life is like in other corners of the tech world. Any way you could translate the above into non-Meta terms?
    - School-Cotton 3y ago
      I worked at Facebook for 4 years and also don't understand that comment. I think it's just worded confusingly.
      - Supermancho 3y ago
        > I worked at Facebook for 4 years and also don't understand that comment. I have never worked for FB and I thought it was fine. None of that is FB-specific. > I take it being an L5 is a good thing? It's implied lower numbers are better. >> it was me and 20 other L8s interviewing for the same L6 opening > but just six months ago you were an L8, and competition to become an L6 was a coin toss? Yes, due to the number of people competing for the same position. > No idea what 'price discovery' could mean in this situation, other than a fairly weird way to say 'salary range'? Salary range implies stability. eg What a company is willing to pay for what positions. There has been a lack of standardization in talent across tech and instability in compensation. Another way to think of it is an increased risk tolerance in wages. This has been fueled by leniency in promotion/raises/hiring when profits were higher. > And any of this having to do with 'the bond market' is just baffling! Monetary policy (around interest rates) is directly related to profit margins and hiring. Suffice to say, this is common knowledge for anyone who owns property (beyond a car, maybe) or tracks the job market.
dkarl 3y ago
That doesn't seem fair, and it doesn't seem like an effective filter, either. Titles vary wildly for a lot of different reasons, and you can't expect candidates to present themselves to you in your terms. You can't expect them to take your job descriptions at face value, either. If mismatched title expectations bother you, blame the industry, blame other companies, blame hiring managers, but don't blame an engineer who has only been working for five years. It's on you to explain how titles and compensation work at your company and work out what their position would be. I wouldn't pigeonhole someone into a level based on their years of experience or previous job titles, either. Interviews can reveal some surprising things. I've worked with people with less than five years of experience who were senior-quality developers at all aspects of the job, and I've worked with people with ten years of experience who just wanted to sit in their cube and write code without making any decisions or talking to anyone except their boss. And these people aren't going to straightforwardly tell you what their position should be. The one who wants to sit in his cube with no responsibilities might tell you he's senior (and his resume might back that up) and the one who is ready for a senior position might tell you they're mid-level, because at their last job they worked with extraordinary people.
- JauntyHatAngle 3y ago
  Along similar lines to what you are saying, I think one of the more general problems that I see with titles is that people do tend to gravitate around specific industries/sizes of companies, even within IT, and then tend to associate their own experience as "normal" when it comes to seniority. I've moved a bit between different sizes and government vs startup vs mid-sized etc, and the titles vary wildly. Some government jobs had people with 4 years experience be "senior" or even "tech leads" because they weren't paying enough so they simply promoted any bright spark that was going to last to senior roles so they could at least get a few more years out of them before they left, as HR wouldn't pay more money without them getting the a specific title. Other place I've worked, your title was essentially a lottery system, others you were hard pressed to be a Senior without anything less than 10 years experience. But each of those places, I encountered people with very specific ideas of exactly what a senior was, and they were convinced their own standards were the "accepted" ones. There are definitely general guidelines for senior, associate etc, but they aren't normalised, just like you are saying. So point is, in support of your post, you can't dismiss someone just based on the title they give themselves, as it might have been perfectly normal thing to call themselves in previous positions.
habosa 3y ago
There are tons of Senior engineers from Google and Facebook (and other large companies) with only 5ish yeahs of experience.
webdood90 3y ago
great example of why hiring in tech is broken. decision makers making blanket generalizations because candidates don't fit the mold they've invented in their own minds using only their personal experience as a baseline. tech experience is wildly diverse. looking at candidates with a one size fits all approach is passing up plenty of qualified people, but everybody wants to hire like Google.
jimbokun 3y ago
Might be better to just ignore job titles altogether and only look at descriptions of what they actually did. Employees generally don't decide on the job titles used in their company.
- the_only_law 3y ago
  I don’t even have titles on my resume. Everything is “software developer” or occasionally something slightly different if I think it’s relevant to the particular work I did there.
vasili111 3y ago
Any senior developer using in resume term "senior"?
- Supermancho 3y ago
  Since 2005ish.

WinLychee 3y ago

We just rebranded senior as staff+

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Staff Pro Max

nonethewiser 3y ago

Actually I think its pretty rare to even have a junior title nowadays. You can claim anyone with less than 2 YOE is a junior or whatever but when jobs require you to “hit the ground running” AKA run migrations in prod and resolve things when shit hits the fan then you’re not really doing junior level work. Of course, there are also junior level jobs by responsibility but not title.

pluijzer 3y ago

I have to read a lot of cv's and the job title part is just some empty noise for me. Developer, engineer, programmer they're just terms that go in and out of fashion. At first they will become more and more pompous, Senior 10x-Ninja, or whatever, until they become so ridiculous that the actual capable people will call themselves humbly just a programmer.