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I see the impact of this with devs on my teams. They come to me saying that company XYZ down the road are paying their senior developers 50% more than the compa

I see the impact of this with devs on my teams. They come to me saying that company XYZ down the road are paying their senior developers 50% more than the company I work for, but if you dig into the role profile a bit it's clear that a senior at XYZ is the equivalent of a principal at my company. People see the title and make assumptions that the roles are the same. It'd be helpful if we had normalized titles across the industry.

darkwater 3y ago
It's already an HR nightmare to have levels standardized across the same company, I don't know if this would be humanly possible across the industry. It would probably be a point-based system heavily relying on certifications, degrees, titles, tenure in a position in a company etc. Hell on Earth, basically, in my opinion.
sarchertech 3y ago
Written role profiles for the company are likely grossly exaggerated. For example at my last company we had 9 principal engineers, but the responsibility matrix for described maybe a half dozen people in the entire language ecosystem. My guess is that if you regularly have seniors telling you other comparable companies are paying 50% more for the same job, they probably actually are.
- onion2k 3y ago
  My guess is that if you regularly have seniors telling you other comparable companies are paying 50% more for the same job, they probably actually are. I've checked. Our expectations of a senior are a lot lower than the other company. Plus, if it was true, then I'd expect all my seniors to be leaving. The fact they're not indicates that our salaries aren't that bad.
  - sarchertech 3y ago
    >I’ve checked. My point is that the only way to really check is to talk to someone who’s done both jobs without a lot of data points. Can you disclose the ranges you’re talking about?
    - onion2k 3y ago
      My point is that the only way to really check is to talk to someone who’s done both jobs without a lot of data points. I talk to people from the other company quite often when they apply for jobs at my company...
      - sarchertech 3y ago
        Talking to people who want you to hire them is going to introduce a lot of bias with respect to responsibilities and expectations at their current company. No one is going to tell you: “They say senior engineers are supposed to lead large scale cutting edge projects from beginning to end but really I’ve just been working on a login page for the past 3 months.” Do you regularly hire the seniors you talk to as principals? Really a better question is do you hire juniors from that company who are ready to be promoted to senior there as principals at your company?

darkwater 3y ago

It's already an HR nightmare to have levels standardized across the same company, I don't know if this would be humanly possible across the industry. It would probably be a point-based system heavily relying on certifications, degrees, titles, tenure in a position in a company etc. Hell on Earth, basically, in my opinion.

sarchertech 3y ago

Written role profiles for the company are likely grossly exaggerated. For example at my last company we had 9 principal engineers, but the responsibility matrix for described maybe a half dozen people in the entire language ecosystem. My guess is that if you regularly have seniors telling you other comparable companies are paying 50% more for the same job, they probably actually are.

onion2k 3y ago
My guess is that if you regularly have seniors telling you other comparable companies are paying 50% more for the same job, they probably actually are. I've checked. Our expectations of a senior are a lot lower than the other company. Plus, if it was true, then I'd expect all my seniors to be leaving. The fact they're not indicates that our salaries aren't that bad.
- sarchertech 3y ago
  >I’ve checked. My point is that the only way to really check is to talk to someone who’s done both jobs without a lot of data points. Can you disclose the ranges you’re talking about?
  - onion2k 3y ago
    My point is that the only way to really check is to talk to someone who’s done both jobs without a lot of data points. I talk to people from the other company quite often when they apply for jobs at my company...
    - sarchertech 3y ago
      Talking to people who want you to hire them is going to introduce a lot of bias with respect to responsibilities and expectations at their current company. No one is going to tell you: “They say senior engineers are supposed to lead large scale cutting edge projects from beginning to end but really I’ve just been working on a login page for the past 3 months.” Do you regularly hire the seniors you talk to as principals? Really a better question is do you hire juniors from that company who are ready to be promoted to senior there as principals at your company?