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?
That’s an interesting career, thanks for sharing. Another confirmation that titles really don’t mean much in tech. Now I’m actually curious where titles do mean something. I imagine in a science career and other engineering fields maybe? Can’t just invent new ways to do things there as you’re bound to the real world.
I once worked with someone with the title Vice President of Awesome. We worked for a consultancy where you could just pick your own title.