3 ms·
Why is that?
by patch_cable 3y ago
Why is that?
- wlesieutre 3y agoBecause they're older and on average so are their children
- makeitdouble 3y ago"senior" in our field has lost any of the original age related meaning. You'll see senior engineers aged 24 in many companies.
- Alupis 3y ago> senior engineers aged 24 in many companies The very concept of this is so absurd as to be entirely ridiculous. Title inflation at it's finest. To think a person can have enough real-world experience to become "senior" in any field within 3-4 years is absolute insanity. I do suspect if I ran into a 24 year old that called themself a "senior engineer" with a straight face, I'd likely burst out laughing...
- jeffbee 3y agoAll it means is the individual has any amount of experience. It's OK if you didn't know that, but go ahead and absorb it now. It is not weird or unique to software. People on other engineering career paths, like mechanical engineers, will also be called "senior engineer" after a few years on the job, to distinguish them from inexperienced ones.
- Alupis 3y agoA person with at-most 3-4 years experience, but much more likely a lot less is not senior or experienced. I entirely disagree with your assessment. Someone has to have actual experience to be considered senior. Being a couple years out of college is not experienced. > All it means is the individual has any amount of experience. By this logic - what would we call someone with 15 years of experience? What about 25 years? Super Supreme Senior Engineer, Level 9000? The field needs to stop inflating titles. It's bad enough having people willy-nilly call themselves "engineers", let alone tack-on qualifiers like "senior".
- jeffbee 3y agoWords are meant to communicate things through shared meaning and this is what seniority means to ~everybody else except you, so although nobody will stop you from adopting your private definition that nobody else uses, I think persistence in doing so will make you look a little silly.
- Alupis 3y agoThe thing you're glossing over is Senior at Company A != Senior at Company B. If your company wants to grossly inflate titles, fair enough - but your next job will then look like a demotion. Counting someone as senior purely by a clock is also absurd. It's about knowledge, depth and breadth. A person with 3ish years of experience does not have either... we used to just call that "engineer". But... go ahead, keep assigning recent graduates absurd titles. Inflating people's egos helps keep salaries low.
- robertlagrant 3y agoHow is this something that no one else thinks? > Being a couple years out of college is not experienced.
- hutzlibu 3y ago"Words are meant to communicate things through shared meaning and this is what seniority means to ~everybody else except you" Apparently you need one more counterexample? I certainly do not think one can be considered senior after 3-4 years as well. But I would also be curious, how you would then call someone with 15 years, or oh my, 25 years of experience?
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y agoI do suspect that if I saw you do that, that I’d think that you were being an asshole, regardless of how much I agree with your views about title inflation. Taking out your displeasure on one a cog in the machine with little agency reeks of the exact lack of life experience that you otherwise appear to be speaking out against. Though maybe in your organisations an utter lack of interpersonal skill can be overlooked if someone is REALLY good at C or something.
- robertlagrant 3y ago> Taking out your displeasure on... Laughing is not taking out one's displeasure on someone.
- stevenAthompson 3y agoWhen you openly laugh at someone, who isn't being intentionally funny, it is widely regarded as a sign that you don't respect them. Those sorts of things are commonly apprehended as something called an "insult" in modern society.
- robertlagrant 3y agoThat would still not be taking out one's displeasure on someone.
- bmicraft 3y agoYou can take out your displeasure at someone without physically doing so
- robertlagrant 3y agoSorry - I can't tell what you mean. Define physically?
- 3y ago
- SkyPuncher 3y agoI think it partially reflects the accessibility of the field. You can start hacking on things as a kid with little more than a computer and an internet connection. You can literally have junior engineer knowledge when graduating high school. Add in a bit of formal education and a few years of experience, you can be a legitimate senior engineer at 24. In fact, one of the best engineers I ever worked with was 21 and working at staff level. Things just clicked with him, so it didn't take long in the professional world for him to round out his knowledge. By contrast, most other fields require expensive equipment or advanced techniques to gain actual, real experience. A high schooler might be able to weld a track car together, but it's a lot harder for them to do FEA (finite element analysis) or load testing without serious equipment.
- bsdpufferfish 3y ago> within 3-4 years Life doesn't start at age 21.
- makeitdouble 3y agoThe main issue is how hard it is to stick other qualifiers to titles. You can't have a "makes decent estimations engineer", or "wasn't quit by the team lead engineer", or "gets paid twice as much data scientist". Some company go with "ninja" or "rockstar", or stick level numbers straight in the title but meh...so we settle for "senior" for most of these demarcations.
- frays 3y agoAt Google: L3 is a new graduate L4 is mid level (an engineer who you can generally trust to complete the tasks they're assigned) L5 is Senior (who owns/shapes the direction of the team) L6 is Staff (who has to see upcoming problems and shape efforts across the organization) L7 shapes a product L8 shapes a division L9 shapes an industry It's very possible that a 24 year old could become an L5 with a typical path: college 18-21, straight to Google for 3 years on the same team and becoming one of the main contributors on the team. Considering that Google grew its headcount by over 50% between 2020 and 2022, there could be plenty of mid level engineers joining the 24 year old's team who they are able to lead now since they have an extra 3 years worth of experience + context in the specific area.
- patch_cable 3y agoEven if they are in their mid-30s that strikes me as a common age to have children which require child care.