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Comment by allyant | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me these days that job titles are more an indicator of time-served rather than technical abilities in many organisations in addition to a method of retaining staff.

I recently observed a company move from 'everyone is the same title' to specific jnr, snr, distinguished engineer titles. The primary reasons for this was to create a framework for salaries and provide a defined track for 'progressing' as the organisation got bigger.

But if you think about it - it really comes down to a method of retaining staff and salary banding, I have yet to see any organisations where the titles of engineers defines their abilities, all engineers have the same say.

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I work at a very large company with decades of complex systems. I find titles useful because they let me quickly identify experts on other teams who are good at communicating.

If I have a problem integrating with their service, I will get more useful answers from that team's "senior" or "principal" engineers than from an "engineer I" who just joined the company a year ago.

Higher titles are not given out lightly here, so they still have some usefulness. I have yet to meet a senior who is anything less than highly competent.

>I have yet to meet a senior who is anything less than highly competent.

Where is this mythical land? Are you hiring?

Sounds like Microsoft’s naming scheme. I also found seniors there to be highly competent - but it does vary by org.

Confirmation bias? Other companies may solve you use case better with context-specific titles, e.g. “directly responsible individual on X.”

Yeah, some projects have explicit technical leads, they are usually the best resource but are sometimes pretty busy.

What exactly do you mean by confirmation bias here? As in, the other people on the team are just as competent but I don't find out because I only ask the seniors? It's possible. I have had some relatively unhelpful interactions with junior engineers in the past.

Great point; this kind of codification is absolutely in service of HR-type requirements. It reminds me of the book Seeing Like a State; the entire premise is the way that various administrative forces elide or even erase complex on-the-ground details and nuance in order to make the subject more manageable in some way.

Not to say this is categorically bad or wrong, but it's useful to recognize its purpose. In my current role I have a position as a technical lead, with someone who formally outranks me on my team. In practice all it means is that I'm the one that management comes to for scheduling. :) We work together as equals on any given task. I don't think either of us would ever try to pull rank.

Really funny. I've been through this too. So much that I thought we'd worked together. I do not put much store on titles when I hire as a reason. You just have to reevaluate.

By the way, your Twitter handle in your profile doesn't exist.

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