this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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What was your experience climbing the career ladder in tech? (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I've seen people call themselves "senior" after 3 years on the job, other become CTOs in the same time, and others still have a senior title after 20(!) years in the industry yet have a fuckton of technical experience.

I've heard that they are all just titles and opinions from "if you don't have the technical skill you can't call yourself a senior", to "senior and staff are just a feeling, principal is the actual senior" and "staff? above senior? we call that manager".

What's your story? Is there a ladder? Do you feel like you belong on it? Where are you on it? Does it make sense? Did you see major bumps in salary? Did titles count at all?

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[–] Pencilnoob 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You definitely described it perfectly: total chaos.

Titles are just "how valuable you are to that team".

Every team has different needs, so a senior engineer in one team might be a junior on another team that has a totally different set of needs. There is also no standardized titles, so it mostly is just "whatever they want to call it".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

There is also no standardized titles, so it mostly is just “whatever they want to call it”.

This fits my experience. Wasn't sure if I was hallucinating or living in a bubble. Had the misfortune of working with a very, let's say confident, junior who convinced the recruiter they were senior. It did teach me to be a bit more confident in selling myself.