Tech Job Title Inflation

My former employer (not tech) was notorious for “under titling” roles compared to other companies.What they called a senior manager would be a Director in another company.I checked LinkedIn and they retitled everyone.Now Directors are Senior Executive Directors and so on.But otherwise the org chart was the same.Ridiculous.

Or more generally: Job titles aren’t portable between companies in the tech industry. Don’t assume that they mean the same thing at every company. Don’t assume a company is underpaying people just because they’re giving out Principal Software Engineer titles. Principal Software Engineer at one company could just be the equivalent of Senior Software Engineer II at another company.On the hiring side, everyone knows that titles only indicate relative seniority within a company. Interviewers must

all titles except for the ones indicating executive or direct reports are meaningless.It is a game, where workers strife to be granted higher and higher titles, just because their peers and the industry does.There is no inherit requirements, I can start a company today and call everyone super duper staff engineer

They do at my company. Everyone is just "Software Developer". I don't see anything wrong with it, I find that titles are largely meaningless anyways. At some companies "principal engineer" is handed out after 3-4 years of experience, and at others principal engineer is the highest title with only 1-2% of devs holding it.

Some years ago they introduced job titles at the place where I work. My boss asked me: which job title do you want? I said: senior developer. Her said: ok. Master of the universe would have passed too.

Titles are often relative to an orgs size. At a 4 person company I was a director in my twenties. At a 10,000 person company I was a staff engineer in my 30's. At a 150,000 person company I was a senior software engineer (i think? i don't think I ever knew my title, the titles of the people I worked with, or my managers title). I've had a "worse" title at each job while each job was a significant step up from the previous.

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.Bac

My title is senior application engineer. I don't think I've ever actually said that out loud. I just tell people I'm a developer. Titles are meaningless beyond letting HR know what salary band I should be in.

I think the issue is that people sometimes incorrectly assume job titles are standard and used the same across different companies. At some companies titles are more about pay bands. I’ve worked places with a bunch of “senior” engineers, but that was mainly because the company pay bands couldn’t compete with the market for junior engineers so they’d hire them as seniors. It’s bad too because sometimes once an employee gets that title they expect it at other companies even if the experience level

My title says Senior Software Engineer. I didn't choose it. In fact it said Lead Software Engineer in my offer letter but a reorganization changed a lot of people's title to be more generic. I don't get to choose my title. I have always considered myself a programmer but what my employer calls me is their business.