7 ms·

Software engineer titles have almost lost all their meaning

148 points by doppp 2y ago

sien 2y ago
In my first job there were two 'Senior Engineers' and a 'Chief Software Engineer' when I started. None were over 25. This was over 20 years ago. FWIW one of them was, to this day, the best coder I've ever worked with. I think he's a diving instructor these days. It's been largely meaningless for at least two decades.
Der_Einzige 2y ago
Claiming that companies which resist title inflation has a competitive edge is like claiming schools which resist grade inflation have a competitive edge. Maybe if they are competing on who is the most irrelevant... https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/10/5/faculty-debate-grade-inflation-compression/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/10/5/faculty-debate-... https://www.reddit.com/r/stanford/comments/ja2u6m/how_is_the_average_gpa_so_high/ https://www.reddit.com/r/stanford/comments/ja2u6m/how_is_the...
righthand 2y ago
Also consider that a lot of “senior” level problems have been automated away or even solved (js framework for everything) over the years. This has happened to a lot more than job titles, just look at the red-tape-yaml hell of devops. This will continue with the push of LLMss. Jobs have changed, somewhat for the worse. As the barrier for entry lowers, so does the expected responsibility. If everyone wants to develop on the same damn stack because you’re too bored of teaching and training then don’t expect anything senior level to exist.
irishloop 2y ago
It seems the author has given their own meaning to Senior Engineer as a sort of weird gatekeeping, "you aren't a REAL senior engineer unless you're done X, Y, and Z" My counterargument is that the very few job titles in Software Engineering was a bug, not a feature, and forced good engineers into management, as it was the only way to climb the career ladder. By now creating more defined rungs on the latter, software engineers are able to climb a more reasonable career ladder with more than "junior engineer" and "forged in the crucible."
- ethbr1 2y ago
  There were 3 stages to this. 1. There is no IC progression, so engineers go into management for promotion. 2. There is IC progression, with roughly standardized expectations/naming at the various levels. 3. The standard levels were then exploited by companies to under-pay employees, by over-titling them (title in lieu of compensation). This piece is about the final/current abuse of title stage.
simonw 2y ago
One of the most important roles that titles play in the tech industry (at least the US-centric tech industry) is to help evaluate compensation. Companies subscribe to reports which provide "salary band" compensation data across the industry. When it's time to consider raises, management with access to those reports can then see if their pay is more-or-less in line with other similar companies. This means titles like "Senior Engineer", "Staff Engineer" etc do actually have very meaningful purposes - they can be used to attempt to map together different levels at different companies in order to determine if you are being under- or over-paid for the role you are in. If you've never held a management position that includes decisions around compensation increases you are likely unaware of quite how much thought and effort goes into this process. Don't get me wrong: it sucks, and it's still mainly a bunch of tea-leaf reading (with serious real-world consequences for employees) - but it's important to understand this any time you're wondering why titles work the way they do.
- Apreche 2y ago
  This is exactly it. This is why often people will have titles change along with increases in compensation even though there may not be any change whatsoever in job description or responsibilities.
- devsda 2y ago
  > One of the most important roles that titles play in the tech industry (at least the US-centric tech industry) is to help evaluate compensation. I think there are some hints left by management and HR. We often hear excuses around appraisal like: "we want to give you a hike, but your current job title doesn't allow us to pay beyond xyz and we don't have budget for a promotion". I guess there's an element of truth in it sometimes (often these are excuses) because your title may limit your hike but it doesn't stop your manager from assigning and expecting you to take on work above your pay grade.
  - triyambakam 2y ago
    Yeah I've heard that exact phrase. I was told I was already at the top of the band for my title (Senior Engineer haha) and not eligible for the annual salary increase. Then six months later laid off.
throwaway42668 2y ago
They never had any meaning to begin with. Outside of ostensibly knowing how to program, the title carried with it no firmly held, measured, or maintained any baseline expertise of any kind. It's always been a hodgepodge of ad hoc criteria on a job by job and hype cycle by hype cycle basis.
nextworddev 2y ago
Title inflation generally occurs when a profession becomes old, standardized, and uninteresting. See investment banking, etc, where the median title is a VP
- conductr 2y ago
  Also sometimes a certain word just becomes more fashionable than those used previously, “analyst” is entirely generic title and gets used in every field and that previously had roles of clerk, associate, specialist, etc. which are mostly generic words themselves
- RachelF 2y ago
  Our "Director of First Impressions" (receptionist) would like a word with you ;-)
sigseg1v 2y ago
I can't help but notice the irony in pointing out that Software Engineering titles have lost their meaning without addressing the fact that it may be one of the largest misuses of the title "Engineer" (legally protected in many countries as requiring a professional engineering license by an accredited engineering body) that is in common use today. If the author went a little bit deeper they might be able to make the same arguments about how the title "Engineer" has lost a lot of meaning in the public due to the cavalier attitude with which many organizations throw it around.
- judge2020 2y ago
  This is because the US does not require this, and the US arguably lead the charge in internet innovation, standards, and commercialization and continues to be the highest paying country for SWE roles. Thus, most discussion is US focused. In other countries like Canada, the title is just s/Engineer/Developer. To add, the author is talking about the levels no longer indicating experience due to level inflation. Not word semantics along the lines of “senior no longer means the oldest on their team”.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  The bureaucracy of protecting titles or jobs with licensing is mostly unnecessary, often regulatory capture, and crippling to innovation.
- duped 2y ago
  In the US there's no such protection and it's actually a good thing. We have the formal designation of "professional engineer" (PE) but outside of civil and mechanical engineering (and some government work) it's not that meaningful. You have to complete a 4-year degree at an accredited institution, pass some licensing tests, and then apprentice under a licensed PE for four more years before you can earn a PE license. In some states you can't legally call yourself an "engineer" without your PE license but I have never seen it enforced. I live in one such state, I'm not a PE, I call myself an engineer, I've worked with engineers for years, and even the entry level jobs in this state the title is "engineer." No one cares about it and not many people see it as worth much, unless they're doing engineering work for local governments in which case it's required. Not surprisingly, it just makes that work more expensive for everyone involved. Creating barriers to entry that benefit existing players in the market are not good if they don't add value. For certain projects where there is legal liability (like building a bridge, and some human needs to certify it's "good" and if they're wrong, people die), that makes sense. For everyone else it just adds overhead that doesn't need to be there. And given that the US has led the world in engineering for the back half of the 20th century, the attitude that there must be some professional licensing body to tell us who is and is not an engineer is nothing if not smug and elitist. Some of the best software is built by people who would never have become PEs, and the entire establishment is contrary to innovation.
Uptrenda 2y ago
I'm a BBCode engineer specialising in AI prompts.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  BBCode?
  - tdeck 2y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCode https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCode I just experienced a wave of nostalgia.
manojlds 2y ago
I worked with a very popular and senior journalist in India and after decades of experience he was, well, a Senior Journalist. I was, at about 3 years of experience then, a Senior Software Engineer. It felt so funny for me at that time.
mplewis 2y ago
There was never a time in human history when Senior Software Engineer had a consistent definition. It’s fine to write a nostalgia piece about your past experiences, but this blog post doesn’t go very far beyond that.
- s-lambert 2y ago
  And from his bio: "I've been coding professionally since 2014", that wasn't that long ago, I started around the same time and senior was definitely just as meaningless.
  - suzzer99 2y ago
    I've been coding since 1998. Wherever I've worked, 'senior' has always just meant 'doesn't need to be supervised'. The standard pattern is to work 2 years as a junior developer, then jump ship for a senior job and double your salary.
EricRasputin 2y ago
Completely agree. I've seen people with like 1 year experience being in "Manager" roles without any prior experience. Title inflation is real.
econcon 2y ago
They all just write code, imho - software guys are considered very low status and have no pull compared to other professions like doctor, lawyers - i never seen a woman being excited about a programmer haha.
- electronbeam 2y ago
  In the bay area it’s mildly different as its known that the wages are high
  - econcon 2y ago
    Wages do not matter anymore, i've seen guys making 300K+ a year struggling to get women interested in them. Also, if you want to lose all your assets - only then lead with your wallet.
bbrunner 2y ago
The author isn't wrong that "Senior" is probably a bit of an inflation for what it means in the industry - competent enough to work on medium to large projects with little oversight - but Staff, Senior Staff and Principal titles all exist to fill the gap the author is talking about, as does architect, although I don't see that one as often. It's definitely confusing if you aren't intimately familiar with the industry though. For what it's worth, I can't think of any notable company where senior is anywhere close to the terminal level for a software engineer.
- lucumo 2y ago
  Over here it's mostly just the tech companies that do Staff+ titling. The oher big organizations, home-grown agencies and similar, usually go from junior and medior to senior. Juniors aren't hired, because "what we do is too complex for them". After senior you sometimes have an architect role, and sometimes even a senior architect, but that's about it for ICs. Architects are generally not expected to code, or even know how to code. It's more about landscapes of applications. In practice, senior engineer is a terminal level, though I don't think these companies ever really made a considered choice regarding terminal levels. Up or out would run into problems with employment law very quickly after two years, so it's not a policy that will work well here. People looking for raises can get them. There's a band for salaries and people can get a few percent raise for performance. Always too little of course. In general, once you reach the end of senior you can eiter do lead or management functions, or do the architect thing, or leave to be a rent-a-dev. Though employment law has recently made that last one harder, due to union pressure.
gregjor 2y ago
I don't think this article describes a new thing. I got my first real job as a Programmer/Analyst (that was the entry-level title) back in 1979, at Nike. In less than two years I got promoted to Senior Programmer/Analyst. I clearly didn't count as "senior" in the industry at large, but within the logistics/inventory group at Nike I had significant seniority. Like at a lot of companies titles corresponded to pay ranges, so a raise came with a new title. Back then Nike laid out their business cards vertically. When I got my new cards the title read "Senior Prog/Anal," a title I still cherish. My manager noticed and had the cards reprinted with the title on two lines. I got a Senior title at my next job, and by 23 I got named Manager and reported to the CTO at a mid-size logistics company. All of the programmers there got Senior in their title. I have worked with people all through my career who had inflated and meaningless titles. At some point in my career I realized titles don't communicate anything meaningful. I started using Programmer. Even now with 40+ years experience I use Programmer if I have to give a title. That at least describes what I do most of the time. I have never willingly called myself an "engineer," though I have worked at places that called all of their programmers "engineers." That seems like stolen valor to me, I didn't get an engineering degree and I don't think of programming as an engineering discipline. Every company has its own hierarchy of titles, but those don't correspond to other companies. I got asked in an interview once why I hadn't made it to senior after so many years in the business, I just laughed and said I made senior at 21 after two years working, and didn't think titles said much -- my actual experience speaks for itself.
- smelendez 2y ago
  I’ve always thought that “senior” has evolved to be a relatively, well, junior title because you don’t want to give it to anyone potentially perceived as old, which could be legally problematic or just awkward.
  - gregjor 2y ago
    I think people understand that "senior" can have different meanings depending on the context. As an actual senior (over 60 years old) I don't take offense -- give me the senior discount! As part of a job title "Senior" doesn't mean anything, and probably never did, but it certainly never referred to age.
CSMastermind 2y ago
Completely agree with this article. I essentially ignore titles at this point. Senior has no meaning for me anymore.
Hashex129542 2y ago
I always have doubt on this, who is developer and who is engineer? I think, Who are capable to using existing languages, frameworks are developers. Engineers are the one who can design & create those frameworks, can understand algorithms and techniques / working principle. A engineer can reinvent the wheel (worst or better engineering from existing one makes good or bad engineer) The term `Senior` always refer the working experience on the field more than 1 time. Not necessarily the years.
- gregjor 2y ago
  Programmer, developer, software engineer, etc. get used interchangeably, they don't indicate any real distinction except maybe within a single organization. Similarly "senior" doesn't mean anything other than "I got promoted." In the last decade "architect" started to show up as a euphemism for what we used to call "analyst," someone who gathers, makes sense of, and translates business requirements into software development plans. But I have seen relatively junior programmers call themselves "architect," I suppose because it sounds cool. For me an architect designs buildings.
  - strken 2y ago
    One of my friends decided to change his job title from "technical project manager" to "solutions architect" for the sole purpose of sales. He and the boss agreed that it sounded more impressive to the clients we were going after. Exact same day-to-day work. Exact same responsibilities and pay. Everyone within the company agreed that it was a complete joke. And yet, we still did it.
    - gregjor 2y ago
      You see that kind of thing a lot with contract programming firms -- they give all of their programmers fancy titles because it makes them look better to potential clients: "We only have senior software engineers available to work on your project, we don't hire junior people." In that environment the customer probably won't individually vet whomever gets put on their project. I have had recruiters tell me to use more impressive titles too.
AdieuToLogic 2y ago
> Remember when being a “Senior Software Engineer” actually meant something? I do, and I can’t help but feel nostalgic for that clarity. I am one and I do. Thankfully, the post provides a reasonable definition thusly: > A true senior engineer is a battle-tested problem solver. They’ve faced and conquered complex technical challenges across multiple projects, dealing with more than just tricky bugs. These are the architects who’ve untangled system-wide issues that require deep understanding and creative solutions. They’re the ones who can navigate and refactor sprawling legacy codebases with confidence, understanding the delicate balance between maintaining existing systems and building new ones. As the author explains above, being a senior engineer does not require a specific title. It is a mindset, an understanding reached not by years but by enlightenment. A CIO to which I once reported shared with me a perspective that remains with me to this day: You can't take a title to a bank and cash it.
- ryandv 2y ago
  > As the author explains above, being a senior engineer does not require a specific title. It is a mindset, an understanding reached not by years but by enlightenment. And who is capable of recognizing enlightenment in a land where the blind lead the blind? This is an industry where novices who have been programming for 16 weeks sum total are elevated to the level of "senior engineer" for political reasons or for compensation and then, on the basis of this titling, are put on hiring committees and then considered qualified enough to judge the merits of another - who may have been a total weeb shut-in and already put in 30000 hours of obsessive programming but doesn't conform to the whitewashed, diluted, Big Bang Theory-esque cultural notions of what a geek is supposed to look like because they don't abide by Caucasian heteronormative standards of how geeks are supposed to take 30 second reels or themselves writing JavaScript in VSCode.
  - AdieuToLogic 2y ago
    It appears to me that you are expressing a significant amount of frustration and/or disappointment regarding whom is given the title "senior engineer." I, too, have seen similar to what you describe. What I can offer regarding same is to try to separate a title assigned from the positioned earned. To wit, I can give myself the title of "2023 NBA MVP"[0], but that doesn't make me Nikola Jokic. HTH 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Most_Valuable_Player_Award https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Most_Valuable_Player_Award
minitoar 2y ago
My title became what it is purely so employers could fit me into a comp band that was competitive.
forrestthewoods 2y ago
> Remember when being a “Senior Software Engineer” actually meant something? No, I do not. I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years and “senior” was always a title earned in <5 years. It’s never been all that lofty.
hervem 2y ago
I believe that Eng. Manager and HR are mostly at fault for it, confusing seniority and familiarity as creating and giving higher title to keep people without doing the requirement part of the job: accessing the title, drawing a ladder linked to a skills matrix.
moandcompany 2y ago
At some places, the title used to simply be: "Member of Technical Staff"
babl-yc 2y ago
Engineering titles have always had limited external meaning, but it's not an issue that needs to be "solved". At a tech company I worked at, we started with no engineering titles (everyone was a SWE) but management eventually added them. My impression was this was due to (1) some candidate wanted a title in order to join the company and (2) executives wanted to quickly distinguish how respected + compensated someone was within the engineering org. The reality is what one company/team values in terms of engineering skillset could completely differ from another. One company could be working the latest techniques in machine learning, while the other is working on web apps requiring database expertise. Software engineering is far from a single linear skillset, so expecting titles to accurately reflect that doesn't make sense.
nfriedly 2y ago
I've been through a handful of job changes in my career, and it seems that most of the time either my title goes up but my pay goes down, or vice versa: * Software Engineer -> Founder: huge pay cut * Founder -> Principal Engineer: Got a salary again * Principal -> Advisory Engineer: 20% raise * Advisory -> Senior: More than doubled my TC (but the job was stressful and the hours were terrible) * Senior -> Staff: Cut my TC nearly in half (but much better WLB) In general, I'll take the money over the title. But beyond a certain point, I'll take time with my family over the money.
duped 2y ago
Job titles exist in the context of the business and don't mean a lot outside that context, and putting stock into it is not worthwhile. I have worked at businesses where "senior engineer" was equivalent to a "staff engineer" and we had no juniors, so "engineer" was equivalent to being an senior anywhere else. I've also worked places where "VP of engineering" was basically a PM. Title inflation is a thing and big tech has kind of figured it out, somewhat with their own internal rankings that match salary bands and responsibilities. What I've also seen is demand on HR or executives to reclassify roles as "senior" or "staff" from unknown companies because employees felt just being called "engineer" was harming their resumes and future prospects because it didn't reflect their work. Point being, we put too much stock in these things. Ask people what they've done or what their role is and weight it accordingly. If you don't have enough knowledge about the hierarchy of roles in a business than you can't use the title as an indicator into what their role is, you actually have to talk to them about it.
localghost3000 2y ago
These days I equate senior titles with more mid level. You've seen some shit but could use a bit more time in the oven so to speak. I see Staff Engineer and Engineering Lead used for what I would consider a senior role 7 or 8 years back. I fully expect those will become meaningless as well and we'll move on to something else.
josephg 2y ago
My take is that the difference between junior / mid / senior / principle / CTO is the following question: At what scope are you taking responsibility? A junior can take responsibility to take a completely described specification and turn it into code. Eg, "We need a button on the page which looks like this: (mockup). When clicked, it should do this." A senior can take responsibility for broader / more ambiguous problems. For example: "We're getting sporadic reports from users that they can't fill in this web form. But we can't reproduce it - every time we ask them to show us, everything works." / "The website just feels slow". Or: "The web server crashed again last night! That's the third time this month. How do we make this problem go away?" As you keep "going up", the solutions increasingly involve subtle judgement (of the team and the customers) and interacting with other people. "Hey Jenny - I've been looking into a reported bug. I talked to a couple of our users about it. Part of the problem is this particular UX flow. I think it needs another pass. How full is your plate?" / "Ideally we'd scale up the team. Our biggest bottleneck is frontend iOS development. Lets hire 2 more devs. I'll talk to a couple recruiters and get the process started." With this sort of perspective in mind, it gets much easier to judge the seniority of someone. Forget their job title, past or present. The author is right: Thats more signal than noise these days. In an interview, ask them to tell the story of some problems they've faced in their last role. Press for details on how the issue was communicated to them, and what was difficult / rewarding. Juniors will talk about tickets they closed, or tell you a story about a failing test case they were assigned by their lead that they fixed. Seniors will talk about something ambiguous and long running, or how they speced out a problem. Or about a long running issue they found & fixed off their own initiative. CTO level people will talk about hiring, or one time they corrected something that was going wrong in the team's culture. Its pretty clear. Was it a more ambiguous problem? Was the scope broad? Did they take the initiative themselves? Did solving it involve judgement in a broad range of areas (eg technical, social, UX, etc)? All of those things demonstrate that the person is acting at a more senior level. I use the same approach when coaching people at work. Lots of people are capable of operating at a higher level, they just need the right set of challenges and often the right push to take initiative and start stretching themselves. (And plenty of people, sadly, are the opposite.)
neilv 2y ago
> Companies that resist title inflation gain a significant competitive edge. By maintaining meaningful titles, they attract and retain top talent who value authentic growth over inflated roles. This leads to more accurate hiring, improved team dynamics, and enhanced productivity. Realistic titles also foster trust, both internally and with clients, positioning the company as a beacon of integrity in the industry. Ultimately, companies with well-defined, honest title structures build stronger, more capable teams and a reputation for excellence that sets them apart in the market. This argument is more intuitive to me if I consider that these people who value authentic growth are looking for more than just a sensible title system. So, nurture a variety of organizational qualities that appeal to people who want more than just a paycheck and job-hopping, and one of the many things you do in the process is to set a sensible title system.
coding123 2y ago
A true senior engineer doesn't mess with scrolljacking scripts.
rpmisms 2y ago
Eh whatever. I'm a senior engineer by actual job (solo dev everything for a large org), but have a mishmash of actual experience, so I just call myself a developer because it's accurate.
- gregjor 2y ago
  I never adopted "developer" as a title because people who organize construction projects use that title. I never use "engineer" because real engineers have engineering degrees and have to pass standardized tests. "Programmer" best describes what I do, usually I add system admin if I think that will come up. Not knocking programmers who prefer "developer" or "engineer," makes no difference to me what title someone uses. Either they have the necessary skills and experience or they don't, and if they don't a fancy or inflated title won't help them.
rakejake 2y ago
I believe at one point, you could make it to Senior at Google and then never move up i.e it was considered ok to stay there. Staff/Senior Staff were somewhat rare, Principal was insane and anything beyond that meant you were special to the company. I've never worked at G so if someone is better aware of the history they can correct me . Here in India, titles are so inflated it's not even funny. Anyone with 5+ years of experience is considered "Senior". After Senior, you go to "Tech Lead" meaning you're aiming for Manager, or directly to "Principal Engineer". To further differentiate, I believe some places have Principal Engineer 2 and beyond. Because India does leetcode on steroids, achieving these levels is mostly about grinding leetcode and having the adequate years of experience for the position. I guess this is what happens in most industries. A hierarchy is set by management and people jump through hoops and make sure they're "on track" in their career.
- moandcompany 2y ago
  The concept you are describing at Google is the "terminal level" for Software Engineers. At Google, the vast majority of new college hires would begin as Software Engineers at Tech Level 3 (L3), where Tech Level 5 is "Senior Software Engineer." Level 6 is "Staff." The terminal Level concept was one where all Software Engineers are expected to perform in an upward trajectory toward the standards of the next Tech Level, until reaching Tech Level 5. I.e. Software Engineers are expected to be promotable up to Level 5, and after reaching L5, there is no longer an "up or out" expectation. L5 SWEs are not expected to become Staff Engineers. Today, the Terminal Level for Google SWEs is now Level 4. The median Google SWE historically was around L4, and your average Google SWE would be a seasoned L4, potentially ready for a promotion to L5 in the next few promotion cycles. The idea of a "principal" Software engineer is Level equivalent to a Director (Level 8) of which despite there being many at Google/Alphabet, as a percentage of the total population it is quite small.
  - neilv 2y ago
    This is similar to what we had, a few years before Google, at a serious software engineering company. Technician I, Technician II, Engineer I, Engineer II, Sr. Engineer. If you made it to Sr. Engineer, that was as high as most anyone could go. People at that point were focused on the work, not on ladder-climbing, AFAIK. Though there were maybe a couple people who I knew were Principal Engineers. One was brought into the advanced R&D group at that level, as a rare domain expert and methodology expert, and would be key to whether the complex next-gen flagship product did what customers needed. (Incidentally, that person was also literally a Navy SEAL, which is another label obtained only rarely.)
sksxihve 2y ago
dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41897122#41898574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41897122#41898574
MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
> Remember when being a “Senior Software Engineer” actually meant something? Nope. I'm only 35, but within my career I saw "developers" become "engineers" because that's what Facebook and Google were doing. Titles never meant anything. Today, they're a class-like system for labeling pay in large organizations. You can't address title inflation. Years ago, I interviewed at Subway for the position of "sandwich artist." I thought it was cute, but the person who interviewed me seemed to take the title quite seriously. If you get hired as a Principal Wizard Non-Commissioned Bit Slayer, good for you. The title will be used to justify your pay to coworkers and future employers. Maybe you're a wizard bit slayer, and maybe you're not.
strken 2y ago
I find these articles go a bit too far in their rhetoric. This one alleges that the most important factor is that "senior engineers remain humble and curious". Really? Is that what you're looking for in a job interview? You're going to knock back an otherwise exceptional candidate with twenty years of domain-specific experience for only having 50th percentile humbleness?
neilv 2y ago
I used to think that I wouldn't mind working a company where "everyone" was Member of Technical Staff (a la Bell Labs). Then I noticed that the people who decided that everyone would have egalitarian titles... still had grandiose titles for themselves. So, the next time I'm discussing what engineering title system a startup should have as it grows, I'm probably going to suggest something that the early hires will be happy to have on their LinkedIn, and I'd guess that will probably look fairly conventional. (Also, Google could get away with downleveling people only because they paid a lot better, and everyone knew it. So, unless you're paying like Google, good luck telling hiring candidates that you think they were overrated in their most recent role, and you want to put them in their proper, lower place.)
kabdib 2y ago
At Apple, back in the 80s anyway, you could put anything you wanted on your business card except President or CEO. One of my cow-orkers had "Dread Pirate Roberts (retired)"
etchalon 2y ago
I was "Senior Technician" at my salaried job. At 16. I was the first employee, and so, even though they hired a second, I argued I was "Senior".
ccppurcell 2y ago
It was ever thus. "Do you remember when the word engineer meant something?"
mlhpdx 2y ago
As perhaps the penultimate example of the meaningless of (and idiosyncratic requirement of) titles, at one point in a BigCo job I had a business card printer in my office and would print cards with the title needed for a given meeting. I didn’t have an official title at all; just a “grade level” for establishing compensation.
consp 2y ago
It has no meaning whatsoever, the payment stuff is just making sure management is able to control you. We have many companies renting out people here and you always get "seniors" who do not even qualify as juniors. Always in full suit to compensate for lack of any knowledge.
fsloth 2y ago
"Remember when being a “Senior Software Engineer” actually meant something? " As a counterpoint I would argue it has never meant anything specific. The term "engineer" is not at all well defined in software industry. Many other industries whose professionals use the title "engineer" fit a very specific box that is sometimes strictly controlled by law (depending on country). If the title "engineer" is not well defined it's not very surprising any subsequent steps are less so. Of course we hear opinions "as an engineer you should this and that" which how I also describe my role and responsibilities in discussions with non-technical stakeholders. But it's not a specific title as humanity at large understands specific titles. See for example the strict demands on structural engineers. Or lawyers. Or doctors. Software industry has discussed should there be a fixed definition of an engineer and has not come up with one yet. Individual organizations have attempted to create more formal ladder systems of course but those are then particular only to the organization using them.
Uptrenda 2y ago
We've had this discussion many times before and the consensus was always the same: that at small companies / startups they use titles as a way to make people accept low-ball offers. Where the titles there are mostly meaningless. But at larger companies the titles actually do have meaning because the denote responsibility and pay scale.
rswail 2y ago
I'm coming up to my 40th anniversary in computing, started as a programmer on the original IBM PC. There's no such thing as software "engineering" on the same basis as being a professionally licensed "engineer" in other disciplines. We don't have the history, we don't have the licensing infrastructure, we don't have the professional liabilities that require that licensing. What's more, we don't have the industry history or the requirements "written in blood" that civil, mechanical, and other engineering disciplines have. We don't have the methodologies and analysis like structural engineering that can be evaluated and measured independently. Programming is still an artisanal occupation, requiring an apprenticeship, "journeyman" and "master" type progression (apologies for the medieval type terminology). Title inflation is all about compensation and comparison, nothing to do with experience and ability.
anotherevan 2y ago
I've been a Senior Software Developer or, if I had to be, Senior Software Engineer for a long time, but these days when a form asks for my title I put in either Senior Dogsbody or Executive Megafauna depending on my mood.
hintymad 2y ago
Getting promotion used to be hard. Google engineers used to stay in E5 for many years and getting to E6 was considered a great achievement and many considered it impossible. Similarly, getting to L6 was a big deal, and getting to L7 was considered exceptional. As far as I know, it was Meta who broke this tradition. If an engineer had a large enough impact, the engineer would be promoted. So, it was not uncommon to see a engineer in Meta get promoted every year or two. Nowadays, it has become a norm for engineers to expect to get promoted every two years.
heisnotanalien 2y ago
I've experienced this and I think it's due to skills matrix bingo. You're a junior engineer and to become a senior engineer all you need to do is make a line in the skills matrix. Write a test! Be nice to someone in a code review! Boom! BINGO! Senior engineer. Of course it's good to know what you need to do to become a Senior. It used to be more wooly but at the same time even the best thought-out skills matrices don't capture what a Senior engineer really is.
ein0p 2y ago
They never had any meaning. They’re merely HR devices to make you feel like you’re making progress up the ladder in spite of meager increases in pay. They aren’t even portable across companies. The only thing that matters when you move to another company is $$$ you made in your previous job. That determines what “title” they are going to assign if they want to hire you.
theshrike79 2y ago
I've been in a multinational mobile gaming company. My title was "Senior Server Engineer". I worked with Principal Architects who couldn't code themselves out of a wet paper bag. I had (at the time) 20 years of experience in the field. Said Principal had around 5-6. But they were from a country where titles are highly valued, so they used up the "promotion budget" - I didn't get a fancy title (and tbh didn't want one).
000ooo000 2y ago
Ironically, the author became a "senior engineer" after 3 years of professional software development, some of which was contract/part time (their LinkedIn profile is not hard to locate). IIRC the last article on the same topic that was posted to HN was nearly exactly the same scenario.
slowhand09 2y ago
When I started we had a clear distinction between titles and the duties associated: Assistant (entry level) Associate (3-5 yrs) Research (7 or more yrs) Senior (typically >10yrs) We transitioned from Programmer to Software Engineer during my 1st 10 yrs. It was a sore point for other company employees because we had nearly as many electrical engineers as programmers. They weren't happy with us becoming "engineers".
danjl 2y ago
Who uses previous titles to determine capability or compensation? Just look at their job history, call references, and make good hiring decisions. Perhaps the issue is that people are bad at hiring?
binary132 2y ago
“Not my job though. My title is completely real.”
nikolay 2y ago
Well, "Software Engineer" is new, too - it used to be "Software Developer".

148 points by doppp 2y ago

sien 2y ago

In my first job there were two 'Senior Engineers' and a 'Chief Software Engineer' when I started. None were over 25. This was over 20 years ago. FWIW one of them was, to this day, the best coder I've ever worked with. I think he's a diving instructor these days. It's been largely meaningless for at least two decades.

Der_Einzige 2y ago

Claiming that companies which resist title inflation has a competitive edge is like claiming schools which resist grade inflation have a competitive edge. Maybe if they are competing on who is the most irrelevant... https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/10/5/faculty-debate-grade-inflation-compression/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/10/5/faculty-debate-... https://www.reddit.com/r/stanford/comments/ja2u6m/how_is_the_average_gpa_so_high/ https://www.reddit.com/r/stanford/comments/ja2u6m/how_is_the...

righthand 2y ago

Also consider that a lot of “senior” level problems have been automated away or even solved (js framework for everything) over the years. This has happened to a lot more than job titles, just look at the red-tape-yaml hell of devops. This will continue with the push of LLMss. Jobs have changed, somewhat for the worse. As the barrier for entry lowers, so does the expected responsibility. If everyone wants to develop on the same damn stack because you’re too bored of teaching and training then don’t expect anything senior level to exist.

irishloop 2y ago

It seems the author has given their own meaning to Senior Engineer as a sort of weird gatekeeping, "you aren't a REAL senior engineer unless you're done X, Y, and Z" My counterargument is that the very few job titles in Software Engineering was a bug, not a feature, and forced good engineers into management, as it was the only way to climb the career ladder. By now creating more defined rungs on the latter, software engineers are able to climb a more reasonable career ladder with more than "junior engineer" and "forged in the crucible."

ethbr1 2y ago
There were 3 stages to this. 1. There is no IC progression, so engineers go into management for promotion. 2. There is IC progression, with roughly standardized expectations/naming at the various levels. 3. The standard levels were then exploited by companies to under-pay employees, by over-titling them (title in lieu of compensation). This piece is about the final/current abuse of title stage.

simonw 2y ago

One of the most important roles that titles play in the tech industry (at least the US-centric tech industry) is to help evaluate compensation. Companies subscribe to reports which provide "salary band" compensation data across the industry. When it's time to consider raises, management with access to those reports can then see if their pay is more-or-less in line with other similar companies. This means titles like "Senior Engineer", "Staff Engineer" etc do actually have very meaningful purposes - they can be used to attempt to map together different levels at different companies in order to determine if you are being under- or over-paid for the role you are in. If you've never held a management position that includes decisions around compensation increases you are likely unaware of quite how much thought and effort goes into this process. Don't get me wrong: it sucks, and it's still mainly a bunch of tea-leaf reading (with serious real-world consequences for employees) - but it's important to understand this any time you're wondering why titles work the way they do.

Apreche 2y ago
This is exactly it. This is why often people will have titles change along with increases in compensation even though there may not be any change whatsoever in job description or responsibilities.
devsda 2y ago
> One of the most important roles that titles play in the tech industry (at least the US-centric tech industry) is to help evaluate compensation. I think there are some hints left by management and HR. We often hear excuses around appraisal like: "we want to give you a hike, but your current job title doesn't allow us to pay beyond xyz and we don't have budget for a promotion". I guess there's an element of truth in it sometimes (often these are excuses) because your title may limit your hike but it doesn't stop your manager from assigning and expecting you to take on work above your pay grade.
- triyambakam 2y ago
  Yeah I've heard that exact phrase. I was told I was already at the top of the band for my title (Senior Engineer haha) and not eligible for the annual salary increase. Then six months later laid off.

throwaway42668 2y ago

They never had any meaning to begin with. Outside of ostensibly knowing how to program, the title carried with it no firmly held, measured, or maintained any baseline expertise of any kind. It's always been a hodgepodge of ad hoc criteria on a job by job and hype cycle by hype cycle basis.

nextworddev 2y ago

Title inflation generally occurs when a profession becomes old, standardized, and uninteresting. See investment banking, etc, where the median title is a VP

conductr 2y ago
Also sometimes a certain word just becomes more fashionable than those used previously, “analyst” is entirely generic title and gets used in every field and that previously had roles of clerk, associate, specialist, etc. which are mostly generic words themselves
RachelF 2y ago
Our "Director of First Impressions" (receptionist) would like a word with you ;-)

sigseg1v 2y ago

I can't help but notice the irony in pointing out that Software Engineering titles have lost their meaning without addressing the fact that it may be one of the largest misuses of the title "Engineer" (legally protected in many countries as requiring a professional engineering license by an accredited engineering body) that is in common use today. If the author went a little bit deeper they might be able to make the same arguments about how the title "Engineer" has lost a lot of meaning in the public due to the cavalier attitude with which many organizations throw it around.

judge2020 2y ago
This is because the US does not require this, and the US arguably lead the charge in internet innovation, standards, and commercialization and continues to be the highest paying country for SWE roles. Thus, most discussion is US focused. In other countries like Canada, the title is just s/Engineer/Developer. To add, the author is talking about the levels no longer indicating experience due to level inflation. Not word semantics along the lines of “senior no longer means the oldest on their team”.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
The bureaucracy of protecting titles or jobs with licensing is mostly unnecessary, often regulatory capture, and crippling to innovation.
duped 2y ago
In the US there's no such protection and it's actually a good thing. We have the formal designation of "professional engineer" (PE) but outside of civil and mechanical engineering (and some government work) it's not that meaningful. You have to complete a 4-year degree at an accredited institution, pass some licensing tests, and then apprentice under a licensed PE for four more years before you can earn a PE license. In some states you can't legally call yourself an "engineer" without your PE license but I have never seen it enforced. I live in one such state, I'm not a PE, I call myself an engineer, I've worked with engineers for years, and even the entry level jobs in this state the title is "engineer." No one cares about it and not many people see it as worth much, unless they're doing engineering work for local governments in which case it's required. Not surprisingly, it just makes that work more expensive for everyone involved. Creating barriers to entry that benefit existing players in the market are not good if they don't add value. For certain projects where there is legal liability (like building a bridge, and some human needs to certify it's "good" and if they're wrong, people die), that makes sense. For everyone else it just adds overhead that doesn't need to be there. And given that the US has led the world in engineering for the back half of the 20th century, the attitude that there must be some professional licensing body to tell us who is and is not an engineer is nothing if not smug and elitist. Some of the best software is built by people who would never have become PEs, and the entire establishment is contrary to innovation.

Uptrenda 2y ago

I'm a BBCode engineer specialising in AI prompts.

FirmwareBurner 2y ago
BBCode?
- tdeck 2y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCode https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCode I just experienced a wave of nostalgia.

manojlds 2y ago

I worked with a very popular and senior journalist in India and after decades of experience he was, well, a Senior Journalist. I was, at about 3 years of experience then, a Senior Software Engineer. It felt so funny for me at that time.

mplewis 2y ago

There was never a time in human history when Senior Software Engineer had a consistent definition. It’s fine to write a nostalgia piece about your past experiences, but this blog post doesn’t go very far beyond that.

s-lambert 2y ago
And from his bio: "I've been coding professionally since 2014", that wasn't that long ago, I started around the same time and senior was definitely just as meaningless.
- suzzer99 2y ago
  I've been coding since 1998. Wherever I've worked, 'senior' has always just meant 'doesn't need to be supervised'. The standard pattern is to work 2 years as a junior developer, then jump ship for a senior job and double your salary.

EricRasputin 2y ago

Completely agree. I've seen people with like 1 year experience being in "Manager" roles without any prior experience. Title inflation is real.

econcon 2y ago

They all just write code, imho - software guys are considered very low status and have no pull compared to other professions like doctor, lawyers - i never seen a woman being excited about a programmer haha.

electronbeam 2y ago
In the bay area it’s mildly different as its known that the wages are high
- econcon 2y ago
  Wages do not matter anymore, i've seen guys making 300K+ a year struggling to get women interested in them. Also, if you want to lose all your assets - only then lead with your wallet.

bbrunner 2y ago

The author isn't wrong that "Senior" is probably a bit of an inflation for what it means in the industry - competent enough to work on medium to large projects with little oversight - but Staff, Senior Staff and Principal titles all exist to fill the gap the author is talking about, as does architect, although I don't see that one as often. It's definitely confusing if you aren't intimately familiar with the industry though. For what it's worth, I can't think of any notable company where senior is anywhere close to the terminal level for a software engineer.

lucumo 2y ago
Over here it's mostly just the tech companies that do Staff+ titling. The oher big organizations, home-grown agencies and similar, usually go from junior and medior to senior. Juniors aren't hired, because "what we do is too complex for them". After senior you sometimes have an architect role, and sometimes even a senior architect, but that's about it for ICs. Architects are generally not expected to code, or even know how to code. It's more about landscapes of applications. In practice, senior engineer is a terminal level, though I don't think these companies ever really made a considered choice regarding terminal levels. Up or out would run into problems with employment law very quickly after two years, so it's not a policy that will work well here. People looking for raises can get them. There's a band for salaries and people can get a few percent raise for performance. Always too little of course. In general, once you reach the end of senior you can eiter do lead or management functions, or do the architect thing, or leave to be a rent-a-dev. Though employment law has recently made that last one harder, due to union pressure.

gregjor 2y ago

I don't think this article describes a new thing. I got my first real job as a Programmer/Analyst (that was the entry-level title) back in 1979, at Nike. In less than two years I got promoted to Senior Programmer/Analyst. I clearly didn't count as "senior" in the industry at large, but within the logistics/inventory group at Nike I had significant seniority. Like at a lot of companies titles corresponded to pay ranges, so a raise came with a new title. Back then Nike laid out their business cards vertically. When I got my new cards the title read "Senior Prog/Anal," a title I still cherish. My manager noticed and had the cards reprinted with the title on two lines. I got a Senior title at my next job, and by 23 I got named Manager and reported to the CTO at a mid-size logistics company. All of the programmers there got Senior in their title. I have worked with people all through my career who had inflated and meaningless titles. At some point in my career I realized titles don't communicate anything meaningful. I started using Programmer. Even now with 40+ years experience I use Programmer if I have to give a title. That at least describes what I do most of the time. I have never willingly called myself an "engineer," though I have worked at places that called all of their programmers "engineers." That seems like stolen valor to me, I didn't get an engineering degree and I don't think of programming as an engineering discipline. Every company has its own hierarchy of titles, but those don't correspond to other companies. I got asked in an interview once why I hadn't made it to senior after so many years in the business, I just laughed and said I made senior at 21 after two years working, and didn't think titles said much -- my actual experience speaks for itself.

smelendez 2y ago
I’ve always thought that “senior” has evolved to be a relatively, well, junior title because you don’t want to give it to anyone potentially perceived as old, which could be legally problematic or just awkward.
- gregjor 2y ago
  I think people understand that "senior" can have different meanings depending on the context. As an actual senior (over 60 years old) I don't take offense -- give me the senior discount! As part of a job title "Senior" doesn't mean anything, and probably never did, but it certainly never referred to age.

CSMastermind 2y ago

Completely agree with this article. I essentially ignore titles at this point. Senior has no meaning for me anymore.

Hashex129542 2y ago

I always have doubt on this, who is developer and who is engineer? I think, Who are capable to using existing languages, frameworks are developers. Engineers are the one who can design & create those frameworks, can understand algorithms and techniques / working principle. A engineer can reinvent the wheel (worst or better engineering from existing one makes good or bad engineer) The term `Senior` always refer the working experience on the field more than 1 time. Not necessarily the years.

gregjor 2y ago
Programmer, developer, software engineer, etc. get used interchangeably, they don't indicate any real distinction except maybe within a single organization. Similarly "senior" doesn't mean anything other than "I got promoted." In the last decade "architect" started to show up as a euphemism for what we used to call "analyst," someone who gathers, makes sense of, and translates business requirements into software development plans. But I have seen relatively junior programmers call themselves "architect," I suppose because it sounds cool. For me an architect designs buildings.
- strken 2y ago
  One of my friends decided to change his job title from "technical project manager" to "solutions architect" for the sole purpose of sales. He and the boss agreed that it sounded more impressive to the clients we were going after. Exact same day-to-day work. Exact same responsibilities and pay. Everyone within the company agreed that it was a complete joke. And yet, we still did it.
  - gregjor 2y ago
    You see that kind of thing a lot with contract programming firms -- they give all of their programmers fancy titles because it makes them look better to potential clients: "We only have senior software engineers available to work on your project, we don't hire junior people." In that environment the customer probably won't individually vet whomever gets put on their project. I have had recruiters tell me to use more impressive titles too.

AdieuToLogic 2y ago

> Remember when being a “Senior Software Engineer” actually meant something? I do, and I can’t help but feel nostalgic for that clarity. I am one and I do. Thankfully, the post provides a reasonable definition thusly: > A true senior engineer is a battle-tested problem solver. They’ve faced and conquered complex technical challenges across multiple projects, dealing with more than just tricky bugs. These are the architects who’ve untangled system-wide issues that require deep understanding and creative solutions. They’re the ones who can navigate and refactor sprawling legacy codebases with confidence, understanding the delicate balance between maintaining existing systems and building new ones. As the author explains above, being a senior engineer does not require a specific title. It is a mindset, an understanding reached not by years but by enlightenment. A CIO to which I once reported shared with me a perspective that remains with me to this day: You can't take a title to a bank and cash it.

ryandv 2y ago
> As the author explains above, being a senior engineer does not require a specific title. It is a mindset, an understanding reached not by years but by enlightenment. And who is capable of recognizing enlightenment in a land where the blind lead the blind? This is an industry where novices who have been programming for 16 weeks sum total are elevated to the level of "senior engineer" for political reasons or for compensation and then, on the basis of this titling, are put on hiring committees and then considered qualified enough to judge the merits of another - who may have been a total weeb shut-in and already put in 30000 hours of obsessive programming but doesn't conform to the whitewashed, diluted, Big Bang Theory-esque cultural notions of what a geek is supposed to look like because they don't abide by Caucasian heteronormative standards of how geeks are supposed to take 30 second reels or themselves writing JavaScript in VSCode.
- AdieuToLogic 2y ago
  It appears to me that you are expressing a significant amount of frustration and/or disappointment regarding whom is given the title "senior engineer." I, too, have seen similar to what you describe. What I can offer regarding same is to try to separate a title assigned from the positioned earned. To wit, I can give myself the title of "2023 NBA MVP"[0], but that doesn't make me Nikola Jokic. HTH 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Most_Valuable_Player_Award https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Most_Valuable_Player_Award

minitoar 2y ago

My title became what it is purely so employers could fit me into a comp band that was competitive.

forrestthewoods 2y ago

> Remember when being a “Senior Software Engineer” actually meant something? No, I do not. I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years and “senior” was always a title earned in <5 years. It’s never been all that lofty.

hervem 2y ago

I believe that Eng. Manager and HR are mostly at fault for it, confusing seniority and familiarity as creating and giving higher title to keep people without doing the requirement part of the job: accessing the title, drawing a ladder linked to a skills matrix.

moandcompany 2y ago

At some places, the title used to simply be: "Member of Technical Staff"

babl-yc 2y ago

Engineering titles have always had limited external meaning, but it's not an issue that needs to be "solved". At a tech company I worked at, we started with no engineering titles (everyone was a SWE) but management eventually added them. My impression was this was due to (1) some candidate wanted a title in order to join the company and (2) executives wanted to quickly distinguish how respected + compensated someone was within the engineering org. The reality is what one company/team values in terms of engineering skillset could completely differ from another. One company could be working the latest techniques in machine learning, while the other is working on web apps requiring database expertise. Software engineering is far from a single linear skillset, so expecting titles to accurately reflect that doesn't make sense.

nfriedly 2y ago

I've been through a handful of job changes in my career, and it seems that most of the time either my title goes up but my pay goes down, or vice versa: * Software Engineer -> Founder: huge pay cut * Founder -> Principal Engineer: Got a salary again * Principal -> Advisory Engineer: 20% raise * Advisory -> Senior: More than doubled my TC (but the job was stressful and the hours were terrible) * Senior -> Staff: Cut my TC nearly in half (but much better WLB) In general, I'll take the money over the title. But beyond a certain point, I'll take time with my family over the money.

duped 2y ago

Job titles exist in the context of the business and don't mean a lot outside that context, and putting stock into it is not worthwhile. I have worked at businesses where "senior engineer" was equivalent to a "staff engineer" and we had no juniors, so "engineer" was equivalent to being an senior anywhere else. I've also worked places where "VP of engineering" was basically a PM. Title inflation is a thing and big tech has kind of figured it out, somewhat with their own internal rankings that match salary bands and responsibilities. What I've also seen is demand on HR or executives to reclassify roles as "senior" or "staff" from unknown companies because employees felt just being called "engineer" was harming their resumes and future prospects because it didn't reflect their work. Point being, we put too much stock in these things. Ask people what they've done or what their role is and weight it accordingly. If you don't have enough knowledge about the hierarchy of roles in a business than you can't use the title as an indicator into what their role is, you actually have to talk to them about it.

localghost3000 2y ago

These days I equate senior titles with more mid level. You've seen some shit but could use a bit more time in the oven so to speak. I see Staff Engineer and Engineering Lead used for what I would consider a senior role 7 or 8 years back. I fully expect those will become meaningless as well and we'll move on to something else.

josephg 2y ago

My take is that the difference between junior / mid / senior / principle / CTO is the following question: At what scope are you taking responsibility? A junior can take responsibility to take a completely described specification and turn it into code. Eg, "We need a button on the page which looks like this: (mockup). When clicked, it should do this." A senior can take responsibility for broader / more ambiguous problems. For example: "We're getting sporadic reports from users that they can't fill in this web form. But we can't reproduce it - every time we ask them to show us, everything works." / "The website just feels slow". Or: "The web server crashed again last night! That's the third time this month. How do we make this problem go away?" As you keep "going up", the solutions increasingly involve subtle judgement (of the team and the customers) and interacting with other people. "Hey Jenny - I've been looking into a reported bug. I talked to a couple of our users about it. Part of the problem is this particular UX flow. I think it needs another pass. How full is your plate?" / "Ideally we'd scale up the team. Our biggest bottleneck is frontend iOS development. Lets hire 2 more devs. I'll talk to a couple recruiters and get the process started." With this sort of perspective in mind, it gets much easier to judge the seniority of someone. Forget their job title, past or present. The author is right: Thats more signal than noise these days. In an interview, ask them to tell the story of some problems they've faced in their last role. Press for details on how the issue was communicated to them, and what was difficult / rewarding. Juniors will talk about tickets they closed, or tell you a story about a failing test case they were assigned by their lead that they fixed. Seniors will talk about something ambiguous and long running, or how they speced out a problem. Or about a long running issue they found & fixed off their own initiative. CTO level people will talk about hiring, or one time they corrected something that was going wrong in the team's culture. Its pretty clear. Was it a more ambiguous problem? Was the scope broad? Did they take the initiative themselves? Did solving it involve judgement in a broad range of areas (eg technical, social, UX, etc)? All of those things demonstrate that the person is acting at a more senior level. I use the same approach when coaching people at work. Lots of people are capable of operating at a higher level, they just need the right set of challenges and often the right push to take initiative and start stretching themselves. (And plenty of people, sadly, are the opposite.)

neilv 2y ago

> Companies that resist title inflation gain a significant competitive edge. By maintaining meaningful titles, they attract and retain top talent who value authentic growth over inflated roles. This leads to more accurate hiring, improved team dynamics, and enhanced productivity. Realistic titles also foster trust, both internally and with clients, positioning the company as a beacon of integrity in the industry. Ultimately, companies with well-defined, honest title structures build stronger, more capable teams and a reputation for excellence that sets them apart in the market. This argument is more intuitive to me if I consider that these people who value authentic growth are looking for more than just a sensible title system. So, nurture a variety of organizational qualities that appeal to people who want more than just a paycheck and job-hopping, and one of the many things you do in the process is to set a sensible title system.

coding123 2y ago

A true senior engineer doesn't mess with scrolljacking scripts.

rpmisms 2y ago

Eh whatever. I'm a senior engineer by actual job (solo dev everything for a large org), but have a mishmash of actual experience, so I just call myself a developer because it's accurate.

gregjor 2y ago
I never adopted "developer" as a title because people who organize construction projects use that title. I never use "engineer" because real engineers have engineering degrees and have to pass standardized tests. "Programmer" best describes what I do, usually I add system admin if I think that will come up. Not knocking programmers who prefer "developer" or "engineer," makes no difference to me what title someone uses. Either they have the necessary skills and experience or they don't, and if they don't a fancy or inflated title won't help them.

rakejake 2y ago

I believe at one point, you could make it to Senior at Google and then never move up i.e it was considered ok to stay there. Staff/Senior Staff were somewhat rare, Principal was insane and anything beyond that meant you were special to the company. I've never worked at G so if someone is better aware of the history they can correct me . Here in India, titles are so inflated it's not even funny. Anyone with 5+ years of experience is considered "Senior". After Senior, you go to "Tech Lead" meaning you're aiming for Manager, or directly to "Principal Engineer". To further differentiate, I believe some places have Principal Engineer 2 and beyond. Because India does leetcode on steroids, achieving these levels is mostly about grinding leetcode and having the adequate years of experience for the position. I guess this is what happens in most industries. A hierarchy is set by management and people jump through hoops and make sure they're "on track" in their career.

moandcompany 2y ago
The concept you are describing at Google is the "terminal level" for Software Engineers. At Google, the vast majority of new college hires would begin as Software Engineers at Tech Level 3 (L3), where Tech Level 5 is "Senior Software Engineer." Level 6 is "Staff." The terminal Level concept was one where all Software Engineers are expected to perform in an upward trajectory toward the standards of the next Tech Level, until reaching Tech Level 5. I.e. Software Engineers are expected to be promotable up to Level 5, and after reaching L5, there is no longer an "up or out" expectation. L5 SWEs are not expected to become Staff Engineers. Today, the Terminal Level for Google SWEs is now Level 4. The median Google SWE historically was around L4, and your average Google SWE would be a seasoned L4, potentially ready for a promotion to L5 in the next few promotion cycles. The idea of a "principal" Software engineer is Level equivalent to a Director (Level 8) of which despite there being many at Google/Alphabet, as a percentage of the total population it is quite small.
- neilv 2y ago
  This is similar to what we had, a few years before Google, at a serious software engineering company. Technician I, Technician II, Engineer I, Engineer II, Sr. Engineer. If you made it to Sr. Engineer, that was as high as most anyone could go. People at that point were focused on the work, not on ladder-climbing, AFAIK. Though there were maybe a couple people who I knew were Principal Engineers. One was brought into the advanced R&D group at that level, as a rare domain expert and methodology expert, and would be key to whether the complex next-gen flagship product did what customers needed. (Incidentally, that person was also literally a Navy SEAL, which is another label obtained only rarely.)

sksxihve 2y ago

dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41897122#41898574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41897122#41898574

MathMonkeyMan 2y ago

> Remember when being a “Senior Software Engineer” actually meant something? Nope. I'm only 35, but within my career I saw "developers" become "engineers" because that's what Facebook and Google were doing. Titles never meant anything. Today, they're a class-like system for labeling pay in large organizations. You can't address title inflation. Years ago, I interviewed at Subway for the position of "sandwich artist." I thought it was cute, but the person who interviewed me seemed to take the title quite seriously. If you get hired as a Principal Wizard Non-Commissioned Bit Slayer, good for you. The title will be used to justify your pay to coworkers and future employers. Maybe you're a wizard bit slayer, and maybe you're not.

strken 2y ago

I find these articles go a bit too far in their rhetoric. This one alleges that the most important factor is that "senior engineers remain humble and curious". Really? Is that what you're looking for in a job interview? You're going to knock back an otherwise exceptional candidate with twenty years of domain-specific experience for only having 50th percentile humbleness?

neilv 2y ago

I used to think that I wouldn't mind working a company where "everyone" was Member of Technical Staff (a la Bell Labs). Then I noticed that the people who decided that everyone would have egalitarian titles... still had grandiose titles for themselves. So, the next time I'm discussing what engineering title system a startup should have as it grows, I'm probably going to suggest something that the early hires will be happy to have on their LinkedIn, and I'd guess that will probably look fairly conventional. (Also, Google could get away with downleveling people only because they paid a lot better, and everyone knew it. So, unless you're paying like Google, good luck telling hiring candidates that you think they were overrated in their most recent role, and you want to put them in their proper, lower place.)

kabdib 2y ago

At Apple, back in the 80s anyway, you could put anything you wanted on your business card except President or CEO. One of my cow-orkers had "Dread Pirate Roberts (retired)"

etchalon 2y ago

I was "Senior Technician" at my salaried job. At 16. I was the first employee, and so, even though they hired a second, I argued I was "Senior".

ccppurcell 2y ago

It was ever thus. "Do you remember when the word engineer meant something?"

mlhpdx 2y ago

As perhaps the penultimate example of the meaningless of (and idiosyncratic requirement of) titles, at one point in a BigCo job I had a business card printer in my office and would print cards with the title needed for a given meeting. I didn’t have an official title at all; just a “grade level” for establishing compensation.

consp 2y ago

It has no meaning whatsoever, the payment stuff is just making sure management is able to control you. We have many companies renting out people here and you always get "seniors" who do not even qualify as juniors. Always in full suit to compensate for lack of any knowledge.

fsloth 2y ago

"Remember when being a “Senior Software Engineer” actually meant something? " As a counterpoint I would argue it has never meant anything specific. The term "engineer" is not at all well defined in software industry. Many other industries whose professionals use the title "engineer" fit a very specific box that is sometimes strictly controlled by law (depending on country). If the title "engineer" is not well defined it's not very surprising any subsequent steps are less so. Of course we hear opinions "as an engineer you should this and that" which how I also describe my role and responsibilities in discussions with non-technical stakeholders. But it's not a specific title as humanity at large understands specific titles. See for example the strict demands on structural engineers. Or lawyers. Or doctors. Software industry has discussed should there be a fixed definition of an engineer and has not come up with one yet. Individual organizations have attempted to create more formal ladder systems of course but those are then particular only to the organization using them.

Uptrenda 2y ago

We've had this discussion many times before and the consensus was always the same: that at small companies / startups they use titles as a way to make people accept low-ball offers. Where the titles there are mostly meaningless. But at larger companies the titles actually do have meaning because the denote responsibility and pay scale.

rswail 2y ago

I'm coming up to my 40th anniversary in computing, started as a programmer on the original IBM PC. There's no such thing as software "engineering" on the same basis as being a professionally licensed "engineer" in other disciplines. We don't have the history, we don't have the licensing infrastructure, we don't have the professional liabilities that require that licensing. What's more, we don't have the industry history or the requirements "written in blood" that civil, mechanical, and other engineering disciplines have. We don't have the methodologies and analysis like structural engineering that can be evaluated and measured independently. Programming is still an artisanal occupation, requiring an apprenticeship, "journeyman" and "master" type progression (apologies for the medieval type terminology). Title inflation is all about compensation and comparison, nothing to do with experience and ability.

anotherevan 2y ago

I've been a Senior Software Developer or, if I had to be, Senior Software Engineer for a long time, but these days when a form asks for my title I put in either Senior Dogsbody or Executive Megafauna depending on my mood.

hintymad 2y ago

Getting promotion used to be hard. Google engineers used to stay in E5 for many years and getting to E6 was considered a great achievement and many considered it impossible. Similarly, getting to L6 was a big deal, and getting to L7 was considered exceptional. As far as I know, it was Meta who broke this tradition. If an engineer had a large enough impact, the engineer would be promoted. So, it was not uncommon to see a engineer in Meta get promoted every year or two. Nowadays, it has become a norm for engineers to expect to get promoted every two years.

heisnotanalien 2y ago

I've experienced this and I think it's due to skills matrix bingo. You're a junior engineer and to become a senior engineer all you need to do is make a line in the skills matrix. Write a test! Be nice to someone in a code review! Boom! BINGO! Senior engineer. Of course it's good to know what you need to do to become a Senior. It used to be more wooly but at the same time even the best thought-out skills matrices don't capture what a Senior engineer really is.

ein0p 2y ago

They never had any meaning. They’re merely HR devices to make you feel like you’re making progress up the ladder in spite of meager increases in pay. They aren’t even portable across companies. The only thing that matters when you move to another company is $$$ you made in your previous job. That determines what “title” they are going to assign if they want to hire you.

theshrike79 2y ago

I've been in a multinational mobile gaming company. My title was "Senior Server Engineer". I worked with Principal Architects who couldn't code themselves out of a wet paper bag. I had (at the time) 20 years of experience in the field. Said Principal had around 5-6. But they were from a country where titles are highly valued, so they used up the "promotion budget" - I didn't get a fancy title (and tbh didn't want one).

000ooo000 2y ago

Ironically, the author became a "senior engineer" after 3 years of professional software development, some of which was contract/part time (their LinkedIn profile is not hard to locate). IIRC the last article on the same topic that was posted to HN was nearly exactly the same scenario.

slowhand09 2y ago

When I started we had a clear distinction between titles and the duties associated: Assistant (entry level) Associate (3-5 yrs) Research (7 or more yrs) Senior (typically >10yrs) We transitioned from Programmer to Software Engineer during my 1st 10 yrs. It was a sore point for other company employees because we had nearly as many electrical engineers as programmers. They weren't happy with us becoming "engineers".

danjl 2y ago

Who uses previous titles to determine capability or compensation? Just look at their job history, call references, and make good hiring decisions. Perhaps the issue is that people are bad at hiring?

binary132 2y ago

“Not my job though. My title is completely real.”

nikolay 2y ago

Well, "Software Engineer" is new, too - it used to be "Software Developer".