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Out Of Scope - #8

Senior Title Inflation

Emily Kager
Apr 25, 2022
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Out Of Scope - #8

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Happy Sunday everyone! Hope everyone had an awesome week.

Getting a message that says “these changes reminded me of your TikTok” at work is never a good sign. I got that message from a coworker on Slack with a link to a diff. I looked at the changes and.. he was right. 😬

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Emily Kager @EmilyKager
In engineering we don’t say “hack” we say “workaround” and I think that’s beautiful
1:05 AM ∙ Apr 21, 2022
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Inflation

Inflation is SO hot right now - so what about title inflation? There seems to be a ton of confusion/anger/various other emotions around the shorter tenure required these days to make senior and staff level roles at Bay Area HQ-ed companies. Unfortunately there’s also research that shows title inflation can actually discourage applicants, especially from underrepresented groups, from applying. My understanding is that years ago the “Senior” title usually meant 10+ years of experience. Over the past decade and especially during the Great Resignation, we’re seeing that title given to people who are traditionally “mid-level” of experience (between 4-10 years of experience). The same applies to “Staff” level roles being downshifted in years of experience required to what was the norm years ago.

This is not a brand new phenomena but why has this happened? I assume the shift has been happening partly because of the forever tightening job market and a gamble of giving a higher title as a way to attract talent. But my main guess is that people didn’t like to wait around 10 years to get their first real promotion. I think this all could have been solved by more quickly achievable levels in the IC track but I don’t think it’s something that can be easily “corrected” at this point. Just like normal inflation, a $5 tank of gas or 4YOE senior won’t sound so wild eventually.

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Emily Kager @EmilyKager
tech gets shit for how quickly people become "senior engineers" but banking literally gives people the title "vice president" in the same time frame
6:25 PM ∙ Apr 22, 2022
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ICYMI

This is kind of how all coding works except you’re losing the company’s money usually.

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cool guy moon @MoonOverlord
crypto really be like sorry 1 line of code was wrong everyone just lost $50 million
12:36 AM ∙ Apr 23, 2022
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I sent this tweet to my entire team because we are drowning in Google docs right now. How are we organizing these things now?? Because having 23 open tabs of docs is not really working for me.

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Laurie @laurieontech
I'm making a google doc of google docs... Save me
7:44 PM ∙ Apr 22, 2022
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Work smarter not harder.

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Kitten 💖🐈 @kitten_beloved
Everybody wants to be a 10x programmer, but consider The x/10 programmers make almost as much
2:31 PM ∙ Apr 22, 2022
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Hot tip: you can still say this even from WFH. 😌

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Jen Person @ThatJenPerson
WFH is great, but I do miss being able to say, “whoops, getting kicked out!” so all meeting end on time
5:58 PM ∙ Apr 22, 2022
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That’s all folks! See ya’ll next week!

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Out Of Scope - #8

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Out Of Scope - #8

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Elena
Apr 25, 2022

I think "you have done this for X years" is arbitrary measurement in many ways. Seniority of time does not mean seniority of skill. I absolutely think that there is nuance in total time served that absolutely has a value, but if you build a progression ladder that includes "you've held this role for X time" is actually really infuriating when in SaaS you're often wearing many hats, doing designated work/ taking responsibilities you're not being compensated for because it improves your experience. Where I am at, if you do the work and meet the requirements for a higher title for six months or more, you should be able to be promoted to that title.

I'd love to know how you might see this differently. This feels like a contentious thing I haven't been exposed to reasonable arguments on from the other perspective yet other than "serve your time, child".

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Søren Eriksen
Apr 25, 2022·edited Apr 25, 2022

Would the solution to this Senior inflation, be to have multiple levels? Junior -> Associate -> Engineer -> Senior -> Lead -> Principal etc? I guess it would make the Senior title more of upper-middle class title? We have just implemented this at my company. I have yet to see if it solves anything...

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