This was true 25 years ago when I was in the software industry in SF (I'm retired now), and has probably always been true in the corporate world.
I worked for an old cell phone company called Air Touch, and my job mostly consisted of writing and maintaining some scripts and solving the occasional data cleanup or import/export problem. My training and experience were minimal, although I did a good job even if I do say so myself. My title? Software engineer.
Other engineering disciplines require certification/licenses/exams, for software lots of people refuse to even do simple coding tests during interviews. I'm doubtful that software engineer titles have ever had any meaning.
I've got bad news for you. I've worked in some of those those other disiplines, and the certifications/licenses/exams just make things worse. Instead of having a lot of unqualified people with big titles, you have unqualified people with big titles and it's now harder to recruit good talent because of the gatekeeping effect and expense of the certifications/licenses/exams.
The problem the article doesn't address is that the original system of just having 'Software Engineer' and 'Senior Software Engineer' failed to capture the experience of someone with 5 years of experience moving company.
Either you introduce titles below or above.
In practice the industry did both - Graduate, Associate, SE, SSE, Staff SSE, Principal SSE.
I think part of the problem is how companies shove everything and anything into the engineering role. They have long lists of all your 'core priorities', many of which have nothing to do with engineering. They confuse engineering with "being a good employee of XYZ company".
I don't understand all the hand-wringing here. This always happens eventually in every industry under the sun and is going to keep happening.
Why? Because if you as an employer or manager don't inflate titles, you're eventually going to lose people. Sure, maybe the "right thing to do" is to resist title inflation, but when your good engineers with 5 or 10 years experience see people at other companies getting a Senior title with half the experience, they're going to want a similar title. Are you as an individual manager or company really going to die on that hill and lose good engineers just because it's "better for the industry", when you can keep them at no additional cost just by changing a few words in the HR system?
This may an annoying problem, but it's a pretty small one as far as problems go.
Before we had software engineers, we had sanitation engineers. At that time, it highlighted the absurdity of 1) title inflation and 2) assigning a tightly qualified moniker to jobs that require far less prequalification and oversight.
I guess it was one of those memorized-but-not-learned lessons.
This was true 25 years ago when I was in the software industry in SF (I'm retired now), and has probably always been true in the corporate world.
I worked for an old cell phone company called Air Touch, and my job mostly consisted of writing and maintaining some scripts and solving the occasional data cleanup or import/export problem. My training and experience were minimal, although I did a good job even if I do say so myself. My title? Software engineer.
Other engineering disciplines require certification/licenses/exams, for software lots of people refuse to even do simple coding tests during interviews. I'm doubtful that software engineer titles have ever had any meaning.
I've got bad news for you. I've worked in some of those those other disiplines, and the certifications/licenses/exams just make things worse. Instead of having a lot of unqualified people with big titles, you have unqualified people with big titles and it's now harder to recruit good talent because of the gatekeeping effect and expense of the certifications/licenses/exams.
The problem the article doesn't address is that the original system of just having 'Software Engineer' and 'Senior Software Engineer' failed to capture the experience of someone with 5 years of experience moving company.
Either you introduce titles below or above.
In practice the industry did both - Graduate, Associate, SE, SSE, Staff SSE, Principal SSE.
I think part of the problem is how companies shove everything and anything into the engineering role. They have long lists of all your 'core priorities', many of which have nothing to do with engineering. They confuse engineering with "being a good employee of XYZ company".
A 'VP' in a brokerage firm became 'any new hire' or nearly, quite a long time ago. Now it's reached software? OK.
I don't understand all the hand-wringing here. This always happens eventually in every industry under the sun and is going to keep happening.
Why? Because if you as an employer or manager don't inflate titles, you're eventually going to lose people. Sure, maybe the "right thing to do" is to resist title inflation, but when your good engineers with 5 or 10 years experience see people at other companies getting a Senior title with half the experience, they're going to want a similar title. Are you as an individual manager or company really going to die on that hill and lose good engineers just because it's "better for the industry", when you can keep them at no additional cost just by changing a few words in the HR system?
This may an annoying problem, but it's a pretty small one as far as problems go.
We now have “senior software engineers” who have written zero lines of production code and are masters of jira and confluence.
:/
Before we had software engineers, we had sanitation engineers. At that time, it highlighted the absurdity of 1) title inflation and 2) assigning a tightly qualified moniker to jobs that require far less prequalification and oversight.
I guess it was one of those memorized-but-not-learned lessons.
So a software engineer job is the tech equivalent of taking out the trash and sweeping the floor? Trying to make sure I understand what you’re saying.
> So a software engineer job is the tech equivalent of taking out the trash and sweeping the floor?
Actually it was you who said that. I said it was title inflation.
> Before we had software engineers, we had sanitation engineers