I’ve seen people call themselves “senior” after 3 years on the job, other become CTOs in the same time, and others still have a senior title after 20(!) years in the industry yet have a fuckton of technical experience.

I’ve heard that they are all just titles and opinions from “if you don’t have the technical skill you can’t call yourself a senior”, to “senior and staff are just a feeling, principal is the actual senior” and “staff? above senior? we call that manager”.

What’s your story? Is there a ladder? Do you feel like you belong on it? Where are you on it? Does it make sense? Did you see major bumps in salary? Did titles count at all?

You definitely described it perfectly: total chaos.

Titles are just “how valuable you are to that team”.

Every team has different needs, so a senior engineer in one team might be a junior on another team that has a totally different set of needs. There is also no standardized titles, so it mostly is just “whatever they want to call it”.

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There is also no standardized titles, so it mostly is just “whatever they want to call it”.

This fits my experience. Wasn’t sure if I was hallucinating or living in a bubble. Had the misfortune of working with a very, let’s say confident, junior who convinced the recruiter they were senior. It did teach me to be a bit more confident in selling myself.

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