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Comment by scott_s | Hacker News Reader

I don't even really know what this means. It implies that titles are laurels without responsibility. I think what it really means is that titles are a tool for management to hold on a stick in front of employees.

I understood it to be something different. If someone gets the title "Senior Engineer", that means they have been acting like a senior engineer. The alternative would be not acting like a senior engineer until promoted to Senior Engineer.

This is part of the author's larger point: your title does not limit your contributions. You don't need permission (a title) to act a certain way. Titles, then, are an acknowledgement, not a license.

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This is a slight twist on "dress for the job you want." I've been living by this rule my entire life. Do the job you want. Don't be restricted by what you're told and don't go looking for permission, approval, and especially kudos.

This doesn't always work of course, but why would you want to be where you are pigeonholed? I find most people don't stop you from doing more and assuming more responsibility. You do the job you want or believe needs doing and in many cases it's handed to you.

I showed up at my last job in a support role and started doing engineer work. Got promoted to engineer. Started doing architect work and then got promoted to architect.

I've been doing a lot more people management lately, so who knows.

Not at my last employer. Titles were frequently used as a reason to increase or discount the value of opinions or authority on matters. You didn't get the moral authority to act like a senior engineer until promoted to such.

The only real exception to this was when the person with the title was The Outsider. Being a defense contractor, we had many long-running programs and people fairly regularly spent a decade or more on a single program. Among other things this led ti cliques of "old-timers" on programs who would be automatically suspicious of high-level people from outside who were brought in to "help".

And very common and a lot stronger in some cultures than others.

I suspect that some recent SV hiring trends will have incresed this tendancy - this could cause problems as a comapny coudl turn into a civil serivce orgaiastion but with out the flexability that has developed over the centurys in the british civil service

Charlie Stoss's descriptions of the laundy are only a slight exageration and he only worked in local govenment :-)

I am not stating "this is how it is, everywhere." I am stating "this is how the author thinks it is at his company."

> This is part of the author's larger point: your title does not limit your contributions. You don't need permission (a title) to act a certain way. Titles, then, are an acknowledgement, not a license.

While it's true you can do whatever you want, titling generally functions as a way to control or punish the output of a worker. I have seen folks with lesser titles do something that a manager doesn't agree with and then been censured for it being outside of their job duties. I have seen people with high titles be chided for doing small work that someone felt was below them. I have seen managers become untouchable by anyone below them because the manager title became a shield against any other non-manager's criticism or input.

Titles service to reinforce the employee hierarchy that most business utilize. All the usual problems with that hierarchy are expressed through titles.

> If someone gets the title "Senior Engineer", that means they have been acting like a senior engineer. The alternative would be not acting like a senior engineer until promoted to Senior Engineer.

Oh man, I wish that were true. Reality is, if the company needs someone to take responsibility, they'll promote the person they like the most and hope they rise up to that challenge. Most of the time, the person making the decision doesn't know much about what it really takes to do the job. They're managers, not engineers. The engineer-manager is a rare breed, indeed.

Promotions are driven by company needs, not by merit. If there's someone available that actually merits the promotion, wow, great. If not, lets roll the dice and hope we get sixes.

This is part of the author's larger point: your title does not limit your contributions. You don't need permission (a title) to act a certain way. Titles, then, are an acknowledgement, not a license.

One of the reasons why engineers get dicked relative to executives is that engineers tend to be promoted "confirmationally" (i.e. you're promoted to X once you're an X already) while executives are promoted aspirationally. At least, that's how it's sold to the engineers. In truth, it's standard-issue corporate stinginess.

The problems with that are multiple. The first is that you can't just ditch your X-1 (and, typically, X-2 and X-3) work while you're still an X-1 in title. Standing up and taking on X work is a way to make yourself a McNulty: you're likely to be perceived as neglecting your assigned work or poking your nose where it doesn't belong. The second is that companies will often give better projects in lieu of the title bump and the raise that typically comes with it, which is why you often have to job hop to get genuine career progress. Google has a lot of SWE 3's and Sr. SWEs who were underpromoted but work on important projects, and ends up handing out $500k+ retention packages when it realizes its mistake (usually because the underpromoted engineer now has a Facebook offer).

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