Career Asymtotes

Measuring oneself as an engineer by the title of the salary band you're in is a disservice.

I remember at Bell Labs they had one title: MTS (Member of Technical Staff). You were an engineer, and that was that. (disclaimer: there were a handful of DMTSes (Distinguished Member of Technical Staff)).

No one said, "I'm an E7" or "I'm a Staff Engineer II". Those statements strike me as distasteful. And begs the question if we're being suckered by Human Resource's gamification of work.

I worked at a company, Pivotal Labs, where everyone's title was "Pivot". It made for an egalitarian workplace. That changed after the acquisition, and we got titles. My proudest moment? Not when I was promoted from Senior Engineer to Staff Engineer, but rather the after-hours work I did with Dimtriy to expand our offering to include IPv6.

At my current startup, there are no titles, and I'm grateful for that.

> Measuring oneself as an engineer by the title of the salary band you're in is a disservice.

It's really not that deep - people do this because both a title and salary are effectively money you can bank and that's the only thing that matters - we don't work grueling, stressful, tedious, jobs just the sake of "a hard day's work".

> Not when I was promoted from Senior Engineer to Staff Engineer, but rather the after-hours work I did with Dimtriy to expand our offering to include IPv6.

I wish people would introspect more deeply instead of perpetuating toxic relationships with corporations; you're basically saying your most gratifying experience at work (where you are given a small slice of the net on your labor) was when you did something completely abstract and not when you got more money, more status, more whatever? Ok that's like saying my most gratifying experience at school was not when I graduated but when I had to sit in detention. Note I could've said "when I discovered XYZ mathematical principle" but I didn't because they're both equally as arbitrary in the overall scheme (learn skills and move into the workforce).

I think this is the first time I disagree with everything said. A properly motivated man can be whatever they want. Astronaut is absolutely within reach, along with anything else, with the exception of POTUS if you weren't born on US soil. Do not conflate your lack of 110% motivation to a cause/goal/solution as lies.

For the first 10 years or so of my career, I didn’t even know my job title. I knew my pay, which is what I cared (and still care) about. They could call me the janitor as long as they paid me a good salary and the work didn’t change.

It wasn’t until one of my startups was bought by a big corp that I came to learn my job title, because suddenly it was tied to compensation. That mattered.

I mean that's just obviously, objectively, not true. If you're born with 12-inch legs you are _not_ going to be an elite marathon runner. Heck, even if you're born with average genetics, you're not going to be an elite runner.

What would make us think the same thing isn't true of mental activities? Obviously there's a lot more noise in the signal, and it's a lot more subjective, but there's pretty much 0% chance that if anyone just "tries hard enough" they can become a genius.