I caught the car

I interviewed with a company that said that.

They promoted an engineer 18 months out of undergrad to senior. They said it to indicate growth potential at the company, but I saw it as a big red flag.

I remember discovering a long time ago there were lots of VPs at yahoo.

Ha! It's funny I didn't notice that juxtaposition when I was writing it.

Understandable take. One counterpoint I would offer (with no proof, so take it or leave it) is that what I mostly see is engineers get passed up for promos that I feel they deserve. I think a large part of that is cutbacks - they haven't done layoffs, but around the time I started, they started cutting benefits, cutting RSUs, and my manager literally told me "due to budget constraints they are going to scrutinize promos very heavily going forward."

But! I don't work at a FAANG or an AI firm or anywhere with an extreme performance culture either. So regardless of YOE, if you're skilled, motivated, and a little lucky, you can really shine...

Typically it is expected that a software engineer gets their first promotion between 12-24 months. At the 6-12 month timeframe the managers will be having discussions around if they are on track, what they need help on (everyone needs a little help), or if there clear performance warnings going on and we need to take action of some sort.

I will congratulate everyone on their first promotion, it is worth celebrating, not everyone can do this job. But this first promotion is given to everyone who can actually do the work.

Get someone good, in a greenfield project, the right start timing aligned with promo committee time, add in some luck, and sure two promos in two years are possible.

Seen this before and the worry is that they are learning is the game of the promos system, not engineering. I would have to sit them down and ask them how many years away from being the CEO do they think they are. The next promo will come slower no matter their skill and even slower after that and one day the promos will probably stop. The validation that they might be addicted to will get harder to obtain over time. Not getting a promos shouldn't "crush" you. If they assume that merit is always rewarded they should ask their boss how promo committees actually work. Many people don't get promos for reasons unrelated to merit.

The second question is where is the engineering? Only two years into a long career there is a lifetime to learn and explore. If they only chase promo they are going to burn out very quickly.

Senior Software Engineer after 2 years is common. It’s a signal that someone has been promoted one step past the level right after college.

Some companies do it differently but honestly this is one of the more consistent ones I’ve seen based on years of reviewing resumes. I’d never penalize someone for not having a Senior title on their resume unless I knew the company’s leveling system.

I don’t take Senior Software Engineer to mean the person is a highly advanced engineer with loads of experience though.

Everyone who reviews applicants knows that leveling systems are very different depending on the company. What you should read these articles as is: The person managed to go through their first leveling up process at work. The title for the next level happens to be Senior Software Engineer at this company.

The title could have been Software Engineer II, Software Engineer Lebel Lvl 44, or anything arbitrary. The title is not the point.

> I'd already been programming for like 10 years when I started this job

The first 6-12 months after university are largely about 'learning how to work'. I'd say getting that out of the way is a pretty nice head start.

This isn’t foolproof either and plenty of people can talk convincingly about running projects that they had little to nothing to do with.

I agree, it feels like roles help the most by getting you through the recruiter and in front of a hiring manager. Which is unfortunate.

Haha, I know people who have worked on designing a single part smaller than a closed fist for over 5 years and were still considered just over junior because they didn't have enough experience with the system it was used in.

I disagree and think the software model described works better when done well. I have seen this within a company, where both the hardware side and software side used the same titles (senior, staff, senior staff, principal). The hardware side used largely a combination of industry tenure and especially whether they had PHDs/patents/inventions or not to determine these titles, while the software org was very gung ho on using responsibility and influence to determine promotions. The other thing this led to is in the hardware org, often people would get hired on as senior staff or principal, while this almost never happened on the software side (nobody could get hired on as these roles as they couldn't possibly meet the rubric, as it required some outsized impact in the company with thousands of people using software you near singlehandedly developed and maintained).

As other people pointed out in this post in a roundabout way, titles only matter at all internally to a given company. And considering that, compare these two systems; yes the software org in this system does end up in a position where a 25 year old that's been at the company for 3 years could be senior staff, but that's very telling, to do that, they absolutely had to ship something novel, useful to many, and keep it running and good. Knowing that someone is a very well educated graybeard that invented something at Sun in 1989 is also some good information, but from the context of communicating with people in other orgs within a company I don't know so well, it's more valuable to me personally to understand whether they are responsible for a large running process and to what degree, moreso than how long they have been around and what they did elsewhere.

Senior Engineer means many different things, even within the same company. It could mean, "This person is more productive than everybody else around them" or it could mean, "This person isn't that great at software development but they know some product area so deeply that it would be too expensive to replace them."

Kind of reminds me of martial arts. You got what some call McDojo's where a 13 year old can be a "black belt" after 9 months vs. more "traditional" styles where after 5 years of hard work you get there. For the traditional styles this black belt is generally views as "serious beginner" or internalizing the basics.

Real learning takes time. Someone with 3 years of experience writing software is at the beginning of their professional development.

Ofcourse time alone is not enough. But time x work x aptitude = progression.

The inflation of "senior engineer" makes us look to many like the McDojo black belts.

Maybe not neccesarily exactly ten years, but you couldn't be both a junior and a senior so far as the roles have meaning. A senior is supposed to know how to function within the company and obstinately perform certain roles in their certain way, but a junior is supposed to come into the company fresh and try to simplify the work with their eyes that are not trained to do it the senior's way. Neither person is wrong but the roles need to be in opposition.

That's why it's so annoying to read about companies who think they can replace junior workers with AI. While imagining they're living in the future, they're not thinking about the future at all.

That’s sort of how it works in banks where basically everyone is a VP.

I like the insight of luck combined with incredible talent. Too many people get a bad taste in their mouth by leaders who only attribute success to hard work and dedication. Knowing what battles to really fight and die for is a talent in and of itself, but it's also a bit of luck to both have access to systems to allow you to impact important projects and also to end up impacting the right ones.

It's very frustrating to be able to have a massive impact, but not get any sort of notice for it. Many people just start punching a clock when that happens. I've done it.

Thanks for sharing. Really impressive journey, congrats and nicely done.

I touched on it a little bit in my post but yeah I can not overstate the role of luck, both "internal luck" (do I have a good manager) and "external luck" (did I choose the right offer out of college).

I mean sure, pat myself on the back for doing well in my intern interview, doing well in the internship and getting the return offer, doing well when I returned after school, etc... but I was damn lucky that recruiter plucked my resume out of the stack and put it on the "send a coding screen" pile when I was still in school. So yeah, the way I view it is that you have to be ready to take advantage when the luck breaks your way.

Eh, kinda. But there was enough self-deprecation there that it doesn't leave a bad taste in my mouth, and I consider this a genuine reflection.

> Why did I need validation from my org chart? > Pretty quickly realized I was being kind of a bitch. > I have a bad case of Why Not Me syndrome.

These cut deeper than faux modesty and are clearly insecurities. It's the rebelling of a sensible superego against an id hungry for validation, and the author doesn't downplay either of the two.

But yes, I'm sure he also gets a perverse thrill out of advertising his achievement, even if he intends to disparage it. It's a complicated psyche I'm rather familiar with.

I think that's rather unkind.

From my perspective: it looks like a coming of age ... blinking into adulthood sort of voyage of discovery.

Oh man. That means I'm _so_ obsessed with my new title that I've gone meta and found a sneaky, disingenuous way to brag about it on HN. Thanks for pointing that out. I must have a serious personality disorder. I should probably see a shrink

When you work for a company like Google, that title change determines whether or not you are taken seriously. People that get stuck at the same level are often pushed out of teams with performance improvement plans. They expect you to strive for promotion and the culture in these places is reinforcing this progression. It's mostly theater but the outcomes for people's pay is very real, thus the focus on title.

The title often relates to the money, which is the bit you probably want.

Junior programmers are the idiot foil of all anecdotes on HN in the last three years. Only juniors do that; everything went fine until the junior...; anyway, the junior sent me a eight thousand diff of obvious slop; so now I got my first gray hairs, thanks Jane Junior; juniors writing naive, clearly quadratic code.[1]

Naturally these are the least skilled of your colleagues so that part is a given. But almost all anecdotes are about them as foils. Very few about them as the next generation being mentored.

It’s so slanted that people have to actively temper the euphoria shared by tech billionaires and 100X engineers with 25+ years of non-slop code experience: well until the seniors get an immortality pill you still need to raise new 100X engineers.

Of course the response to this will be, “I never cared about titles! The “juniors I talk about have work experience ranging from zero to thirty years!”...

[1] Sources: all made up.

I think there are pragmatic reasons to care that extend beyond vanity. If I want Staff-level pay, responsibilities, and organizational influence I need to make it to Senior first.

Perhaps it's a bad signal if an engineer cares _only_ about their title though.

I had to learn the hard way that HR people and MBA people do not care about anything to do with the quality of your work. They're playing power and status games and they expect you to be playing power and status games, otherwise you just seem weak and low status. As a logically-thinking programmer, I hate it, obviously.

I don't typically care about title, but it does matter a bit when you are talking to others outside your company (or even inside of its big enough)

I recall giving talks where I was principal on important projects, but my title didn't reflect that so during chats after the presentation I had people ask who I was and I didn't really feel satisfied with the answer I was giving. I could tell I was being undersold just by my title. Is that their mistake? Kinda, but they're acting on the info they had available and to their read, I was not principal so someone else must have been the one who architected the project.

Of course those clued in, other devs or experienced management could tell by the talk that I lead the technical side. As much as I love just building stuff, getting my career dues would be nice.

I have no idea what goes on in the minds of HR people.

> Do we have thoughts on how important "senior"/"staff" is vs bullet points on resumes and the years of service?

As a hiring manager, I only read the bullet points. I’ve interviewed startup CTOs who were mid-level engineers at best and “Software Engineer” vanilla titled engineers who have shipped and owned impressive things over years.

The scale, complexity, and variety of the systems you’ve built, shipped, owned, and maintained trumps all else.

And yes we can see through the bullshit. Everyone has built a “semantic document retrieval system” in the last 3 years. That’s a weekend project, gonna need a little more to be impressive :)

I ignore job titles on resumes. I want to know what they did, I don't care what their company called them.

Role is a combination of title + company.

Head of Eng at 50 person startup (with 25 engineers) might be Manager 2 at FAANG.

So I mostly ignore the title and look at the work history and YOE.

Important to who?

As an engineer, I just want to get an idea of where this person is at in their learning journey and what their personality is like, do they have certain intangibles, etc.

The recruiter who screens the person before they ever talk to me, on the other hand...

Thanks! Good luck as you work your way towards Scrum Master ;)