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Comment by rfrey | Hacker News Reader

Isn’t that solved by specifying “junior developer” or “intermediate developer”? Or by including the salary range?

It should be - but I’m positive that everybody with over 10 years experience is calling themselves a “senior developer” by now. There’s no level after that, so most everybody over 35 is a senior developer.

There are “principal developers” and architects, but just like with products and the “Innovator’s Dilemma” at some point, your skillset overserves the market. After a certain level of competence, experience doesn’t add value if you’re applying to be a developer for yet another software as a service crud app. Either be happy with salary stagnation and cost of living raises (if that) or move on to greener pastures.

Well, I’d be way happy if I could spend the next 20 years making what I’m making now (adjusted for inflation) doing what I’m doing now, but it seems like there’s a certain age where your salary expectation is $0 - IF you’re in software. I don’t get why this doesn’t happen to doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc.

I keep reading that. But from what I’ve seen from corporate America and outside of the startup culture, if you keep your skills and network current, there are still opportunities. That being said, I’m 45 and the oldest ICs that I know are late 40s early 50s. One has started only applying for remote work.

If you make it to Senior Principal Staff Engineer they'll bring coffee to you.

I wish it were "over 10 years." I help review resumes for my company and on a nearly daily basis I see people with one or even two "senior software engineer" jobs and 6-7 years of experience.

It always sticks out as an, "Oh REALLY?" But without talking to the candidate you never know if it reflects poorly on their knowledge of their own limitations, or is just a sign they happened to work for companies with title inflation. I've seen both.

Don't blame me, I had 4 years experience when my company had a mass exodus so everyone who was left there got a salary bump (+23% for me), and of course they had to title bump since that was way past 'Software Developer'.

3 years after that, I went to work for a company that had the same thing happen and now I'm a 'Technical Lead / Software Architect'. I didn't choose the title life, the title life chose the shitty companies I worked for :(

There's pretty severe title inflation going on at some companies. I know of one company that awarded the "senior" title for people with as little as 3-4 years experience and had several more grandiose titles for people above that level.

Well, as a rule, I never included salary range. I ask for salary requirements. Then only proceed down the evaluation and hiring path with applicants where the salary matches what is available in the budget. Better chance you get an employee who's happy with the pay that way.

I always specified entry level, intermediate, etc, but as times get harder, what you start to realize out here in flyover country is that everyone is applying for all positions. They don't really care about the title or labels. (At least, I suspect it's because times are getting harder? I don't know of any other reason highly experienced people would be applying for some of these kinds of positions.)

Will that expose the company to accusations of age discrimination? They aren’t even interested in applications from developers with more than ten years of experience!

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