The Fancy Job Title Madness

I do have a title on my (non-existent) business card. And I'm pretty sure you also have one (title, not business card). Titles are a normal part of our professional lives. They are everywhere. And my company is no different from most other big organizations. When looking at the org chart, you can find all kinds of interesting things. There is the "Senior Director of Xyz" without a single direct report. A few pages later you can find a department of seven people whose titles reflect five different hierarchical levels. That must be this "communication on an equal footing" everyone is talking about...

"What do you do for a living?"

But sure there are situations when titles are helpful. For example, if someone asks you, what you do for a living.

Well, is it helpful? Let's look at two examples:

Example 1:

A: What do you do for a living?
B: I'm a "Software Engineer"

Example 2:

A: What do you do for a living?
B: I'm an "Engineer II"

Depending on who you are talking to, these answers can be perceived in very different ways. But why? Because "Software Engineer" might be a title, but it's also a job. You are creating software. Most people will understand that or at least have a vague idea of what you are doing. "Engineer II" is a title. I took this concrete example from one of the well-known "career laddering systems" out there. One example is Career Ladders by Sarah Drasner (btw. I highly recommend her book "Engineering Management For The Rest Of Us"). Another one is the "Engineering Ladder" from Ockham. And of course, there are many more systems out there. But back to my point. I said "Engineer II" is a title. What does that title tell people outside of your company? Not very much. Of course not. How should anyone know, what the requirements for the "Engineer II" title in your company are? So, "Engineer II" is a title. The job behind that is (most likely) "Software Engineer".

While writing the last few lines, a scene from "The Big Bang Theory" (one of my favorite TV shows) comes to mind. It's the scene where Sheldon visits Howard in his lab and they have the following conversation:

Sheldon: So, what are we making today?

Howard: A small payload support structure for a European science experimental package that's going up on the next space shuttle.

Sheldon: Really? How does it work?

Howard: When this is done, it will be attached to the payload bay and the sensor apparatus will rest on it.

Sheldon: Uh huh... So, it's a shelf!

Howard: No, you don't understand. During acceleration it needs to stay perfectly level and provide... yeah, ok. It's shelf.

Who wants titles?

I'm pretty sure you already sensed that I'm not the biggest fan of fancy titles. In my ideal world, everyone would stick to the name of the job (for example, "Software Engineer") instead of the career laddering systems I mentioned before. But sure, there are people who do want those titles. Let's take a look.

Employees

Many employees want a title. And I don't mean "Software Engineer". They don't want the "your job is your title", they want the "Staff Engineer II", the "Principal Engineer" or maybe even the "Senior Distinguished Engineer". Who doesn't want to be a "Senior Distinguished Engineer"? It sounds great. But why do we, as employees, strive for nice and shiny titles? They don't provide any obvious value for the business. The truth is they provide value for my/your CV. It helps if you are looking for jobs at other companies. Also, in most companies, bigger raises are tied to promotions. "If you want the money, you need the title."

People outside your company

People outside your company want to know what you do and where you stand in terms of experience and skills. Titles will give them the illusion of an idea of what you do and how experienced you are in what you are doing.

Michael Lopp described it pretty well in his book "Managing Humans"

It’s absurd when you think about it — the fact that I’d hand you a business card that read “VP” and you’d leap to the immediate assumption: “Since his title is VP, he must be important. I should be talking to him.”

-- from Michael Lopp's "Managing Humans"

Employers

Not only employees love titles. Companies love titles as well. Isn't it great to have titles to motivate your employees? If they are going the extra mile just a little longer, they might have a chance to get the next promotion. It's a way to grow for the employees.

Ok... Enough sarcasm. Let's be serious. Do employees need titles to grow? I doubt it. What stops them from improving and growing without promotions and shiny titles? Nothing. The truth is, that employees will learn, grow, and improve because they are intrinsically motivated. If people would only be motivated to get the next promotion, what would happen to the employees who reached the highest title in their respective growth/career path? Will the "Senior Distinguished Engineer" stop learning just because he can't "grow" further in terms of promotions? Again: I doubt it.

Why I don't like titles

Trust the expert, not the title

In discussions, every voice should be heard. Every vote should count the same. And I strongly believe that titles get in the way of open-ended discussions. Of course, the impact that titles have on the discussion heavily depends on how well the participants know each other. If you are discussing a technical topic in your team and everyone knows the other participants well enough, people will tend to listen to the engineer who is known for his/her expertise on the topic. In a healthy (non-toxic) environment, it won't matter if the expert is a "Junior Developer" or a "Principal Engineer". The team will trust him/her because they have seen him/her doing magic in this particular field.

But things change as soon as you don't know the participants of a discussion or a meeting. If two people are fighting about the "right way to do it" and one is a "Junior Developer" and the other a "Senior Developer", I'm sure that in the end, most people will go with the solution the senior brought to the table. But why? Because of his experience? What experience? Sure, the senior has (most likely) more years in the industry. Maybe even more years in the company. But how do you (and everyone else in the room) know that he has more experience in this specific topic? The truth is, you don't. And yes, I hear people yelling at this blog post "C'mon! Just don't promote the idiots! Promote the good folks. The ones who know their stuff and shut up if they don't have a clue." Great idea. But I'm sure that every one of us has worked in a company where one of the "Senior Engineers" was a complete moron. And somebody in the leadership team agreed he should have a senior title. It's reality. It happens. It's a fact we can't ignore.

Performance goes up and down, titles do not

The performance of employees varies. Some years they are great, high-performing individuals. In others, they might not be the "Senior Distinguished Engineer" they used to be (for whatever plausible reason). But titles don't change. Once you get the "Senior Staff Engineer" on your business card, it's not going away any time soon.

To tackle this (well-known) problem, I heard someone proposing the idea of reassigning titles for every new project. And to avoid people feeling degraded, the author proposed to replace "Senior" with "Gold" and "Mid-Level" with "Silver". The idea is, that one developer could be a "Gold Developer" in one project, and a "Silver Developer" in another. But to be honest, I doubt that this happens in reality. Experienced developers who were classified as "Gold" in many projects in the past, will not accept to be a "Silver Developer" in the next one. Why? Because it's the "Junior/Mid-Level/Senior" discussion all over again. Just with different labels. But it's essentially the same discussion.

Too many promotions are random

I'm almost sure, that everyone who has been in the industry long enough has witnessed a promotion that seemed completely arbitrary to everyone around them. In the chaotic landscape of corporate promotions, it often feels like a roll of the dice determines who gets ahead. Often, tenure is mistakenly equated with competence, rewarding those who stick around rather than those who excel. A shortage of skilled workers has turned the software industry into a seller's market. This desperate need to fill positions sometimes leads to promotions (and fancy titles right from the start) based more on availability than ability. And of course, there is the lack of clear requirements for advancement, leaving employees guessing what it takes to move up the ladder. Sometimes, the management sells this lack of clear requirements with a friendly "It's hard to put metrics on these things. We are looking at each employee individually and check if his/her performance justifies a promotion." It's just a nice(?) why of saying: "We do what we want. Get used to it!"

What's the solution?

So, what's the solution to this mess we call "titles and promotions"? To be completely honest: I don't know. Our leadership coach always told us that there are three options to deal with stuff you don't like.

1. Change it

2. Get rid of it

3. Accept it

Option 1: Change it

Well, "Change it" might be an option. Maybe someone (who is smarter than me) can come up with a good alternative to the way we, as an industry, handle titles. And maybe it's even simpler than that. Maybe the existing "career laddering" systems (like the ones I mentioned before) are already a good solution and I just don't see/understand it. Feel free to reach out to me and change my mind about that. I'm really serious about this.

Option 2: Get rid of it

Imagine a world without fancy titles. Why not go with the "your job is your title" version? If you are a software engineer, your business card (or more likely your email signature) should say "Software Engineer". If you have 2 weeks of experience -> "Software Engineer". If you have 2 decades of experience -> still a "Software Engineer".

It sounds intriguing to me. But is it realistic? I think it is. Do you remember the intro of this blog post where I told you about the interesting things in the org chart of our company? There is at least one more interesting thing in there. It's the titles in our engineering department. We stopped promoting people to senior titles about 10 years ago. Currently, we have 66 engineers in our department, and every one of them knows that there are no senior titles to earn. A concern one could have when imagining this scenario is, that the engineers would leave after one or two years because they are offered a better title at other companies. But in fact, that's not the case for us. We are very transparent about this policy in our recruiting process, so every applicant knows what he/she is getting into. For us, this led to good employee retention that's above the industry average. I'm fully aware that we might miss out on some exceptional tech talent who are eager to get or keep their senior titles. However, if you stay calm and take your time in the recruiting process, you, like us, will be able to find brilliant engineers who don't care about titles. They know that personal and professional development happens independently of titles and promotions.

If you read the last paragraphs carefully, you will have noticed that we only no longer award senior titles. We do have junior titles in the department. So it's not the ideal scenario I was talking about earlier. And you might be waiting for me to give you a good reason to keep junior titles while abandoning promotions to senior positions. I'm sorry to disappoint you. The truth is, I would love to remove the junior titles as well. Maybe I can make my dream come true one day. 🤷

Option 3: Accept it

Maybe that's a way to go as well. But I'm not there, yet. 😄