4 ms·

> it's a different sort of job than being an individual contributor Well, I've never understood the IC thing either - and it is so horribly impersonal - why no

> it's a different sort of job than being an individual contributor Well, I've never understood the IC thing either - and it is so horribly impersonal - why not just call them "components", or indeed "integrated circuits"? And I think people should worry a lot less about job titles - for example, the whole "junior" and "senior" stuff is a bit worrying to me. Basically, I think all this crap is just a way of paying people differently, regardless of actual worth.

jaggederest 2y ago
Generally agree, I am reminded of a possibly apocryphal story about Thoughtworks, which apparently back in 1999 only had one title - if you wrote software, you were a programmer. One of the clients got really mad, they wanted principal technical architects "not just a programmer" and someone had to point out that one of the "just a programmers" working on their project was in fact Martin Fowler. I've always wanted to get a business card that said "Just A Programmer" on it.
- zabzonk 2y ago
  The most accurate job description I ever had was when I worked at Middlesex Poly in the mid-1980s - "Analyst Programmer". Where did all the "Analysts" disappear to? They could be useful. And all those "System Architects"? Much less so?
zdragnar 2y ago
Unfortunately, you don't get a job title created specifically for your social snowflake expertise, even if you're the only person who knows how to do some particular thing. That's a major red flag for legal and HR everywhere that screams "sue us for discrimination" because some disgruntled employee didn't get the title they wanted. So, instead we get vanilla titles that apply to groups of people. Unfortunately, nobody likes to apply for or be called "junior", and "software engineer" is passe because the "senior" in senior software engineer doesn't refer to seniority at all. IC also better describes the nature of the job requirements. You're not expected to lead, design or plan timelines. The expectation is that you make contributions at the individual level (write code, maybe spec out your own work) as opposed to planning work others will do or leading a team. "Actual worth", as you say, is really quite subjective. Someone could be the lynchpin of the company by being the sole person that understands some component. They might be 10x more productive at writing code. That's actually bad for the company if they aren't able or willing to lift others up with them- they become a bus factor of one, and planning on them being around forever is just bad planning, period.
- zabzonk 2y ago
  > you don't get a job title created specifically for your social snowflake expertise I have never applied for a job based on anything "social" or "snowflake" - only on salary and tech stuff, such as "C++, Windows, some PM experience".
  - zdragnar 2y ago
    I meant to say special snowflake, as in a job title created for you, to represent you better than "individual contributor" or "swe II" or what not. Alas, I didn't really proof read my post very well.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
>Basically, I think all this crap is just a way of paying people differently, regardless of actual worth. That's what titles are always about for HR. You can't determine how skilled someone with 10yoe is by looking at work experience. Because every work has different teams and different deadlines and different contributionz and so on. So they default to a title as a shorthand of years of experience and level of responsibility. You can be a genius but without that 5 YoE you're probably going to at best be a mid level engineer. Meanwhile you can probably find some inadequate principals but they've been in industry for 20+ years. I wouldn't over think it if you're not money focused or trying to leverage your experience for some startup pitch. Titles aren't for the sake of the engineers themselves.

jaggederest 2y ago

Generally agree, I am reminded of a possibly apocryphal story about Thoughtworks, which apparently back in 1999 only had one title - if you wrote software, you were a programmer. One of the clients got really mad, they wanted principal technical architects "not just a programmer" and someone had to point out that one of the "just a programmers" working on their project was in fact Martin Fowler. I've always wanted to get a business card that said "Just A Programmer" on it.

zabzonk 2y ago
The most accurate job description I ever had was when I worked at Middlesex Poly in the mid-1980s - "Analyst Programmer". Where did all the "Analysts" disappear to? They could be useful. And all those "System Architects"? Much less so?

zdragnar 2y ago

Unfortunately, you don't get a job title created specifically for your social snowflake expertise, even if you're the only person who knows how to do some particular thing. That's a major red flag for legal and HR everywhere that screams "sue us for discrimination" because some disgruntled employee didn't get the title they wanted. So, instead we get vanilla titles that apply to groups of people. Unfortunately, nobody likes to apply for or be called "junior", and "software engineer" is passe because the "senior" in senior software engineer doesn't refer to seniority at all. IC also better describes the nature of the job requirements. You're not expected to lead, design or plan timelines. The expectation is that you make contributions at the individual level (write code, maybe spec out your own work) as opposed to planning work others will do or leading a team. "Actual worth", as you say, is really quite subjective. Someone could be the lynchpin of the company by being the sole person that understands some component. They might be 10x more productive at writing code. That's actually bad for the company if they aren't able or willing to lift others up with them- they become a bus factor of one, and planning on them being around forever is just bad planning, period.

zabzonk 2y ago
> you don't get a job title created specifically for your social snowflake expertise I have never applied for a job based on anything "social" or "snowflake" - only on salary and tech stuff, such as "C++, Windows, some PM experience".
- zdragnar 2y ago
  I meant to say special snowflake, as in a job title created for you, to represent you better than "individual contributor" or "swe II" or what not. Alas, I didn't really proof read my post very well.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

>Basically, I think all this crap is just a way of paying people differently, regardless of actual worth. That's what titles are always about for HR. You can't determine how skilled someone with 10yoe is by looking at work experience. Because every work has different teams and different deadlines and different contributionz and so on. So they default to a title as a shorthand of years of experience and level of responsibility. You can be a genius but without that 5 YoE you're probably going to at best be a mid level engineer. Meanwhile you can probably find some inadequate principals but they've been in industry for 20+ years. I wouldn't over think it if you're not money focused or trying to leverage your experience for some startup pitch. Titles aren't for the sake of the engineers themselves.