One thing I've never understood is how developers and engineers gain higher titles or status. I've worked with brilliant, high-level content delivering devs who had the mundane title of "Software Dev" with 10+ years experience. I've also seen "Senior Dev" given to some very undeserving developers with significantly less experience. What gives?
Titles in most of the industry is complete circle jerk bullshit.
So when does it become meaningful? When does a dev/eng break that six figure salary milestone?
Out of college? Six figures is hiring offer nowadays at any large company. It never becomes meaningful ou side the company that applies it, some companies you can trust titles more than others but it’s all relative. You can be “Senior distinguished principal staff engineer” at some rando company and have 25 years of shit meaningless experience with zero skills. That’s why we interview people no matter their title or prior experience. At best it’s a way to entice recruiters who judge a book by its cover or feel good about oneself based on things that don’t cost anyone anything. Inside the company it’s a relative measure of impact and influence and if the company is large enough their internal standards can be understood more broadly but that’s where it stops.
Senior Engineers are generally expected to lead a team of other engineers. That means a lot more management tasks, a lot more meetings, a lot less coding time. Some people just prefer to code.
A lot of engineers prefer to stay in their cubical , not take any risk, hang out with few people and remain busy. Years pass by and then they realize that corporate ladder was always there to climb. It happens lot more than what you think. On an avg, 5% of workforce moves up YoY so it's not that bad if you did not make it for last 10 years.
Is that due to lack of motivation to move up, lack of knowledge of the opportunity, or a combination?