Comment by Aurornis
10 hours ago
> that it really depends on the organisation.
This is entirely it. Titles should be consistently ordered within an organization, but they are not portable from one organization to another.
This is a lesson I’ve had to explain over and over to people at the beginning of their careers. I’ve been asked for advice about which offer to take from people thinking about leaving 10s of thousands of dollars on the table because another company will give them a Senior Engineer title and they think that’s important.
When hiring, titles are basically ignored unless the person is coming from a company like Microsoft or Google where their leveling system is publicly known.
I’ve interviewed so many “Prinicpal Staff Engineers” or even “CTO” people who would barely qualify as senior engineers at an average company. I’ve also interviewed “Senior Software Engineers” who had more experience than knowledge than anyone on our teams (and that’s saying a lot!)
Hiring managers know this, but it’s not obvious if you haven’t done a lot of hiring or worked at a lot of different companies.
> When hiring, titles are basically ignored
As a hiring manager, this is completely accurate. I don't look at your title, I look at your scope. Tell me what you did, for whom, and what was the impact. That's all I care about.
We all know that Senior Principal Architect Engineer at 3-person startup is somewhere around junior to mid-level at a real company. Whereas some poor schmuck at a larger company with a title like "Senior Engineer I" probably owns and runs more impressive systems and works with more stakeholders than that 3-person startup will see in a year.
I think that engineering at a large organisation and engineering at a startup are two completely different disciplines with very little crossover.
Interesting, you've got it absolutely the wrong way around.
> Interesting, you've got it absolutely the wrong way around.
Maybe. That's why you need to put your scope on the resume :)
I had a CTO title 15 years ago. The complexity of what we were building was a joke compared to what I own now as a lowly "tech lead manager". And in fact back then I wouldn't even be able to comprehend how complex things can get.
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There's a lot of cogs at big companies, but the impact of the entire company is huge. Startups usually have small impact. Usually at these big companies there's quite a few atlases holding the entire world up.
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100%
This is complicated during acquisitions… you have a new company coming in and leveling them is hard because it’s a mass title migration exercise, and nobody wants to be down-titled.
In the 2 examples I’ve seen gone wrong:
-the people at the parent company look at the acquisition’s team and think, “there’s no way this idiot should be a director.”
-the people at the startup think they’re geniuses because they got acquired but their tech is crap and they’re actually just 28 year olds running around without adult supervision
-the startup guys will all leave once they vest or be pushed out for being lousy
-the tech gets even more unstable because no one left knows how the code works
In pretty much any software startup acquisition by a much larger company, even if they do technical due diligence up front they have to assume that all the code will need to be rewritten within a couple years. It's good to keep a few key technical resources around during the transition period but otherwise a high attrition level is acceptable.
This is why I align on comp ranges rather than title. I've been a "Lead" where all I contributed was a new imaging pipeline and introducing NAT to the product line, a "Manager" of a failing company where I had no managerial authority or direct reports, and a "Senior" at a SV firm where I actually behaved a level above a Senior Engineer - owning outcomes, doing research, mentoring juniors, building relationships across silos, governance councils, etc.
Titles are fungible, but your comp isn't. Don't let a company sell you on a better title for less comp, especially when the JD or role doesn't align with the title; the next place won't give a shit what your title was if all you did was Junior-level work because you bought into someone else's narrative rather than control your own.
"Lead" is a funny one, because its just not a level that exists where I currently work.
A few teams have a "lead" role, but its mostly ceremonial.
I've worked with several "Directors" that all had between 0 and 3 reports. Vanity titles make people feel good and look nice on a resume, but that's about it.
>> I’ve interviewed so many “Prinicpal Staff Engineers” or even “CTO” people who would barely qualify as senior engineers at an average company
Failed to design Quantum Lattice Bloom Cascade algorithm in 5 minutes?
More like: Couldn't cite anything they accomplished and had no real responsibilities.
For a good interviewer these people are obvious even without any coding tests.