We don't have senior engineers anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: We don't have senior engineers anymore

#31

Post by xyzelement » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 4:04 PM UTC

I think it's pretty hard to get a sense of what is out there unless you work across a wide variety of companies.

I've been blessed to mainly work in companies that had very high engineering bars (finance, faang) but I spent two years at a scale up and the difference in engineers was crazy. Senior engineers who, when faced with an outage just threw up their hands and said "we dunno".

And this was still a place that was large enough and tried to have a bar. I can only imagine the next tiers down (eg, where do people who can't cut it at these places go?)

I don't know how much of this is 'innate' caliber vs benefit of working along others who has high expectations and taught you (vs not)

Re: We don't have senior engineers anymore

#32

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 4:04 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: We don't have senior engineers anymore

#33

Post by whoopsie » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 4:04 PM UTC

Ah, the older you get the more you lament the youngin’s aren’t what they used to be in the good ol’ days.

Re: We don't have senior engineers anymore

#34

Post by rubicon33 » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 4:05 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #2

In all the companies I work for in the last 20 years "senior engineer" effectively meant someone with about 5 years of experience. In general the bar is low, indeed, and the title tends to be quite aggrandizing. The title that shows seniority ("been there, done that"), again in my experience, is the next one, which usually is "principal engineer".

Director? Architect?

Re: We don't have senior engineers anymore

#35

Post by tayo42 » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 4:05 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #2

In all the companies I work for in the last 20 years "senior engineer" effectively meant someone with about 5 years of experience. In general the bar is low, indeed, and the title tends to be quite aggrandizing. The title that shows seniority ("been there, done that"), again in my experience, is the next one, which usually is "principal engineer".

people aren't going to be happy if they don't get a promotion or continuous raises though after 5 years though. what else are you going to call them? have 4 different types of mid level because they can't be 'senior' until they reached 15 yoe? Really after 5 years in the same company, more so in software, you probably are actually one of the more experienced people in the company. idk what you are doing if you dont have senior level domain expertise.

Re: We don't have senior engineers anymore

#36

Post by philosopher1234 » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 4:06 PM UTC

boo-ga-ga wrote: post #18

Any article that splits people into two groups and says one group cannot inherently be good at something immediately puts me off, sorry.

You might find this interesting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)

Re: We don't have senior engineers anymore

#37

Post by expertentipp » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

We don't have senior salaries anymore. For the budget you have you get what you're complaining about.

Re: We don't have senior engineers anymore

#38

Post by mistrial9 » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

boredemployee wrote: post #8

But whose fault is it? I just got hired by a company that was looking for a data product leader. I only have 3 years of experience in data analysis, but the owner of the company thinks I am extremely capable of leading the company's data front. Since I'm not attached to titles, concepts, and job definitions, I obviously accepted the offer because my salary doubled.

.. perhaps there are other considerations among management that resulted in selecting you, that are not obvious or even divulged

Re: We don't have senior engineers anymore

#39

Post by philosopher1234 » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #21

boo-ga-ga wrote: post #18

Any article that splits people into two groups and says one group cannot inherently be good at something immediately puts me off, sorry.

So you are saying there are those who split people into two groups and those two do not, and the first group is inherently bad at writing articles?

This is the flaw in having an entirely hateful view of splitting, that view is itself an example of splitting. You have to instead believe that there is a time where it is appropriate and useful to split (e.g, war) and times where it isn’t (general thinking)

Re: We don't have senior engineers anymore

#40

Post by baz00 » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

I'm sure I'll get downvoted for this one, but can we stop using the word engineer in the commercial software and startup sector entirely. It's mostly hacking, fucked up things that make you cry, turds smeared all over stuff, religious factions fighting over faith (marketing) arguments and embarrassing catwalk fashion show bullshit. None of that is engineering.

I'm only here because for some insane fucked up reason, the money is at least 4x better than electrical engineering was and I really like lots of money and will quite happily sell my soul to the machine above for it.