If you’ve been in the tech industry long enough, you probably know that titles don’t mean much when comparing across different companies.
But titles are a constant discussion topic when I’ve mentored younger people. It’s a common tactic for smaller companies to try to lure juniors in by offering them more prestigious job titles. If you’re fresh out of college and half of your career advice comes from your parents’ outdated knowledge of how businesses work, it can be tempting to pick the job that offers the highest job title, ignoring other factors. Companies know this and use it to their advantage.
On the hiring side, titles on a resume don’t mean much unless it’s coming from a company with a well-known advancement structure. If you’re coming from a 50-person startup I’ve never heard of before, I don’t care if you’re a “software engineer” or “principal software architect”. I’m going to be asking you what you did, what you shipped, what your role was in decision making, and other questions to figure out how you fit into our advancement hierarchy.