91–100 of 176 posts
If you're a senior engineer and you're sort of wondering "what's beyond senior?", you might be interested in the book "Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track". I found it enlightening, and it's nice seeing companies embracing the whole "Staff plus"-track.
When I see titles, it just makes unhelpful thoughts enter my head, like: are all these people “at my level” really contributing as much as me? Sometimes I even thought the reverse, like: how can this seemingly-junior person still be stuck at that level, when he is clearly doing all this great stuff we depend on every day? Of course the especially soul-crushing case is when you encounter people that clearly suck at what they do, and they’re 1-2 levels above you; and worse, I have occasionally seen those people promoted further!
It is also hard not to look at titles on places like LinkedIn. I know I shouldn’t care, since titles mean different things at every company, and some especially-impressive-sounding titles can range from “meh” to “god-level” depending on where it is. And yet, it gets in my head sometimes, making me wonder every few years if I am at the level I should be.
When the title “matters” at a company, it also makes me consider it a factor in annual reviews. If I get a raise, bonus, etc. but see my damned title stagnate year over year, suddenly I care about this and take it as a complete lack of recognition by the company (that literally would not happen if they simply did not tell me what my title is!).
> To achieve the “org-level” impact, principal engineers need to be very selective on what to work on and use as much leverage as they can. For example, to set them up for success and maximize their influence, a principal engineer usually directly reports to a “director-level” engineering leader. Whoa, that is a cynical take and smells a little of sour grapes. I 100% agree that the PE title is abused both out of nepo…
I think this is very dependent on the incentives that are set up for the GM. If they're being judged on how they're developing their org, and number of promotions is looked at, now they may agree with you that the non-crap thing is the best thing to work on.
There's also the more implicit side of it, where if you're just generally good at what you do (or more cynically, if you're on the manager's good side for whatever reason), they'll be more inclined to let you work on what you want regardless of the motivations.
Always keep in mind that sometimes the "principal engineer" title is just a company's only way of hiring a senior engineer because their pay bands are so far below market rate. Don't let a description of a Google principal engineer scare you away from inquiring and applying for principal engineer positions at other companies. Source: have been that person.
Title inflation is real. 2 years ago I was hired as Staff with pretty high bar to clear. This year I know a team where all the seniors complain they’re not Staff, and now half the team are Staff engs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone whose first job title was "Assistant Director of IT," and who did nothing but write really bad PHP for a couple hours every day, this tracks with my experience. It also made interviewing harder because if you get a resume from someone with one job they've had for two years, and that job is Assistant Director, you're probably - rightfully - trashing that resume. I eventually learned to just change the title…
At one of my jobs, all the developers were given the title "Member of Technical Staff" because our boss had worked at a particle accelerator (he had a PhD in physics) and that's what the scientists running experiments had on their badges. He did it for morale, and it probably did make us feel a bit fancier while we were writing Grails and GWT code.
I almost did it at my last startup, to signal the egalitarian, cooperative engineering culture that I intended. One of the concerns was that it could hurt people's career mobility out (and willingness to join, since the startup was unlikely to be the engineer's home for the next few decades until retirement).
I think it works easily when your organization is known as one of the places to go, everyone knows that they do titles that way, and that anyone there is worth considering as a hire. (But not when recruiters filter their resume keyword searches for senior, staff, or principal.)
I don't know why Google didn't do it, way back when, since they did a few other culture things. I suppose that might've set a different tone for our industry today. (Though what seemed at the time to be low-loyalty culture coming out of California was already in force when Google started, most conspicuously in what I called "IPO-hopping", and maybe Google just had to work within that, at the time.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone whose first job title was "Assistant Director of IT," and who did nothing but write really bad PHP for a couple hours every day, this tracks with my experience. It also made interviewing harder because if you get a resume from someone with one job they've had for two years, and that job is Assistant Director, you're probably - rightfully - trashing that resume. I eventually learned to just change the title…
At one of my jobs, all the developers were given the title "Member of Technical Staff" because our boss had worked at a particle accelerator (he had a PhD in physics) and that's what the scientists running experiments had on their badges. He did it for morale, and it probably did make us feel a bit fancier while we were writing Grails and GWT code.
Having been at several companies, I think I was happiest about my career when I didn’t have a fancy title and did not really know anyone else’s either (aside from obvious managers). It was nicer just knowing who’s in charge of what thing , and seeing your influence grow as you are trusted with more things . When I see titles, it just makes unhelpful thoughts enter my head, like: are all these people “at my level” rea…
Same thing as Senior, but better at office politics. That's what every title above Senior comes down to.
Is that unreasonable?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At one of my jobs, all the developers were given the title "Member of Technical Staff" because our boss had worked at a particle accelerator (he had a PhD in physics) and that's what the scientists running experiments had on their badges. He did it for morale, and it probably did make us feel a bit fancier while we were writing Grails and GWT code.
I've always thought of "Member of Technical Staff" as a Bell Labs thing. I almost did it at my last startup, to signal the egalitarian, cooperative engineering culture that I intended. One of the concerns was that it could hurt people's career mobility out (and willingness to join, since the startup was unlikely to be the engineer's home for the next few decades until retirement). I think it works easily when your or…