[titanomachy]

I work at a very large company with decades of complex systems. I find titles useful because they let me quickly identify experts on other teams who are good at communicating.

If I have a problem integrating with their service, I will get more useful answers from that team's "senior" or "principal" engineers than from an "engineer I" who just joined the company a year ago.

Higher titles are not given out lightly here, so they still have some usefulness. I have yet to meet a senior who is anything less than highly competent.

[zachr]

>I have yet to meet a senior who is anything less than highly competent.

Where is this mythical land? Are you hiring?

[jdsully]

Sounds like Microsoft’s naming scheme. I also found seniors there to be highly competent - but it does vary by org.

[testpostpls]

Confirmation bias? Other companies may solve you use case better with context-specific titles, e.g. “directly responsible individual on X.”

[titanomachy]

Yeah, some projects have explicit technical leads, they are usually the best resource but are sometimes pretty busy.

What exactly do you mean by confirmation bias here? As in, the other people on the team are just as competent but I don't find out because I only ask the seniors? It's possible. I have had some relatively unhelpful interactions with junior engineers in the past.