Grade inflation has spilled over into the corporate world. I’ve interviewed people titled “principal” who would barely qualify as “senior” a few decades ago.
"Senior" was already a weird title, given it could have been anything from 3-10 years of experience even back in 2021.
I've seen people with 10 years experience blindly duplicate C++ classes rather than subclass them, and when questioned they seemed to think the mere existence of `private:` access specifiers justified it. There were two full time developers including him, and no code review, so it's not like any of the access specifiers even did anything useful.
The jump from junior to senior means you can self start and have created enough of a network to seek out help. Junior used to be a 1-3 year training period. Senior to principal means you have signififcant positive impact across the company: upper management relies on you to define the roadmap. Most people hang out in ‘senior’ for their entire careers because they never have that drive to stand out. Thats why there are titles like “staff” and “senior staff” to promote people who don’t have what it takes to get to principal.
There are specific cultures where titles and steady title progression are Really Important.
Me being from a place where they definitely aren't found this hilarious.
I've had meetings with Principal Architects with less experience than me (title: Backend Programmer).
Bigger organisations really should standardise their titles to specific experience/responsibility/capability milestones so people from other sides of the org can use the title to estimate the skill level of the other person they're talking with.
ben_w|4 months ago
I've seen people with 10 years experience blindly duplicate C++ classes rather than subclass them, and when questioned they seemed to think the mere existence of `private:` access specifiers justified it. There were two full time developers including him, and no code review, so it's not like any of the access specifiers even did anything useful.
spaceballbat|4 months ago
theshrike79|4 months ago
Me being from a place where they definitely aren't found this hilarious.
I've had meetings with Principal Architects with less experience than me (title: Backend Programmer).
Bigger organisations really should standardise their titles to specific experience/responsibility/capability milestones so people from other sides of the org can use the title to estimate the skill level of the other person they're talking with.