Working Titles

Software Engineer Titles Have (Almost) Lost All Their Meaning article?by Trevor I. Lasn highlights the issue of title inflation in the software engineering field, particularly how the "Senior Software Engineer" title has lost its significance due to rapid promotion cycles and misleading job titles. Lasn laments that what was once a title signifying deep technical experience, system architecture prowess, and leadership skills, is now handed out too freely, often to engineers with only three to four years of experience.

The causes of this title inflation are attributed to competitive pressures, companies' retention strategies, and platforms like LinkedIn promoting titles as personal branding tools. HR's attempts to categorize increasingly specialized roles have also complicated the process. Lasn argues that this inflation creates mismatches in expectations and places underqualified individuals in roles they are not ready for, ultimately leading to potential failures and undue stress.

Lasn suggests that companies should focus on meaningful career progression frameworks, avoid using titles as a quick fix for recruitment or retention, and standardize titles across the industry. This approach would not only ensure clarity but also foster trust and authenticity within teams, clients, and the industry as a whole.

There is very little else further to be said about this apart from I agree, but I don't think it is as easy as not doing it. It's a tricky situation. Title inflation feels almost like an arms race where no one wants to be left behind. Once a few companies start inflating titles to attract talent, it forces others to follow suit to remain competitive, even if they recognize the long-term harm it does to their organizational structure and the industry as a whole. It's like a collective action problem where individual organizations know the system is flawed but feel pressured to participate to avoid losing out on talent or appearing less appealing.

In many ways, it's not unlike a 'leave car unlocked in safe area' analogy because - once one person starts breaking the norms - everyone has to adjust their behaviour to protect themselves, whether they want to or not. Even companies that would prefer to maintain the integrity of their title structures often end up inflating titles just to keep pace with market expectations. And once those inflated titles become the standard, it's incredibly difficult to reverse.

Another way to tackle this would be for companies, particularly influential ones, to take a stand collectively but that's much easier said than done in a competitive landscape. As long as individual companies are rewarded with talent for inflating titles, it will be hard to reverse the trend. To stay relevant, organisations are forced into following the trend, no matter how nonsensical.

However, there is a point of view that we may not have considered enough.

That point being - who cares?

Does anyone of any actual influence and pedigree in the industry actually care what some bad reputation developer has in their email footer? Or a good reputation developer for that matter?

Titles are only important to the salary bracket discussions and that, I feel, is more market forces pushing back on current salaries via the proxy of title labels than anything else. It's confusing to people like Lasn and that is a problem to be sure, but, having said that, it is also a problem of lower priority (given all the technology trends happening right now).

So once all the developers are all special and all sufficiently senior and once the consumer price index has leveled the salary brackets for all of them, the next job title level will be Super Senior Developer. Then Hyper Snr. Dev. Then it will be mega, giga, extra, grande and then, finally, we will have realised that the arms race is stupid, it serves no purpose and all developers worth their salt will begin negotiating their salary expectations based on their merit and engagement with the organisation - you know like adults are supposed to - and the organisations will assign them their roles based on their salaries (not the other way around).