I've observed a concerning trend on LinkedIn lately that warrants a discussion within our profession. It appears that individuals with relatively minimal experience, typically in the range of 2 to 4 years, are increasingly adopting the title of "Senior Software Engineer." This practice is concering, as it may dilute the significance and respect associated with the senior designation within our field and it's inappropriate for this title to be used so callously. By prematurely adopting such titles, individuals may inadvertently undermine the true value and recognition of seniority in our profession. It's essential for the software engineering community to maintain a standard that accurately reflects the level of expertise and experience that comes with the senior role. This will not only ensure that employers can make informed decisions when hiring but also help in maintaining the integrity of our field as a whole.
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A Senior at a shop building web sites and apps for small/local businesses will not have the same experience as a Senior at a company scaling into millions of transactions per minute. There should be no disrespect in either direction. The stereotypical Senior working on high volume apps/sites (knows algorithms really well, can sniff out N+1 issues in their sleep, etc.) probably couldn't cut it at a small web/app shop. They may not have the social skills to sit down with local business owners and go through a web design process and make the customer happy whilst avoiding things like "I want a pink glowing button".
Titles don't mean anything across companies. When interviewing someone I don't care what their titles were, I care about the experience they gained and if that and their personality is a match for the organization.
1. The individual has an incomplete LinkedIn that is not representative of their experience.
2. The title doesn’t matter much at the company in any meaningful way beyond pay scale
At this point, senior just means: competent with hands and mouth.
And no they're not "adopting" the title, they're being given it by companies, partly due to title inflation.
And experience doesn't matter that much. I've managed devs with 3 years of experience who were excellent. I've also known devs with 20yrs+ who were absolutely useless. There's no substitute for IQ and conscientiousness.
So no, nothing's been undermined except the word "senior" taking it's original meaning of "old".
4 years is a lot of time. A smart and learning junior, can definitely get to senior in that timeframe. In fact, seniority should not be measured in years.
The problem isn't just an across-companies thing, within companies people generally don't really do work scoped to that role. They more-or-less continue chugging along in their role. Nobody is the "bad guy" to come and point out the mismatch.
There's also general lack of calibration across organizations at companies. Where a staff in one org is really a senior in another. And companies with poor engineering cultures don't have enough across team mobility to calibrate well.
This also happens because people want to get paid more and managers want to retain them. Seniors cap out at a certain pay level. We probably should have a route for people to be really good seniors and still get paid a lot just crushing code.
This also happens just because social pressures that you should progress in your career. When I sort of think we should reward people for their growth in different ways (their ability to learn and crush any type of code) -- not just for somehow acquiring org or company wide scope, coaching others, or taking on architecture.
I think we generally don't hold high enough expectations in our field too. Depending on the culture, people basically "get away with" more without getting blunt feedback on where they should be held to a higher standard.
Other “engineers” get an engineering degree, have a system of licensure, etc. People don’t ordinarily get a degree in “software engineering” instead they get a degree in “computer science”. If you are an academic CS person you get ahead by writing papers, not writing software. Many CS academics are great programmers but they don’t necessarily have to be.
There are all sorts of divisions in our field, for instance some people will call me an idiot because I run a Windows desktop. 20 years ago that kind of hatred and ignorance was often extended towards Linux and open source by enterprises and Microsoft-culture developers.
Another thing that bugs me is the blog postings describing career paths in what used to be called FAANG where job titles are weirdly specialized like the language used by sexual subcultures like BDSM and polyarmory. I realized that those people don’t just have a fetish for talking strange, it is an interpersonal activity and that weird language helps them find each other and materializes their anxieties and power relationships. The same kind of thing is going on in the formerly called FAANG pyramids but it is not about the work it is about the social structure of those particular organizations which is quite different from where the rest of it work and like OKRs it gets appropriated like a cargo cult elsewhere.
I usually describe myself as a “software developer” and only call myself an engineer when there is a political or ideological reason to do so like those days I am shapeshifting Henry Petroski.
On the other side, we do have our certifications for some career paths though, like cloud and security, but I'm not sure if they instill confidence for hiring managers if such is not required by government.
Programming is supposed to be reachable and doable by anyone who loves it. We already have walls for many other things, let's keep programming from the mindset.
For instance I had no problem at all switching from Java to C# and there's a certain kind of developer who is not intimidated at all in starting in a new job in a language they don't know. (e.g. even as a consultant I had other people pay me to get started in Python)
The certifications however are always for Red Hat or Microsoft or Oracle or AWS, something that is either proprietary or that tries to package something open source as if it was proprietary. In some cases these programs are pretty good (MSCE was pretty rigorous back in the day) but they add to the fragmentation of the industry.
What?? Do you have a link to something like this? BDSM-references seem highly inappropriate in a work setting.
Links would be really NSFW but if you really want to know I suggest you create an account on Fetlife though the way I see it, that site is what you'd get if Eternal September had an Eternal September and that had an Eternal September again.
But in general, nah. I mean, the percentage of people in software who call themselves an engineers who are actually performing an engineering function is pretty small but doesn't seem to have ended the world (yet).
And tbh, if an organisation is making hiring decisions based on what someone called themselves on their resume in an unregulated field, then I'd argue that the problem is with the hirer not the hiree.