[xzyyyz]

I humbly disagree. Experience means nothing. The ranking is defined by how capable engineer is.

Do not get me wrong. Title != ranking either. There is no industry-wide agreement what senior engineer is. Frank might be a senior engineer in his company -- because because he proved in short time he can perform on the senior engineer level of that company.

Each of us has limits. For some it is Senior, for some it even could be Junior. If people are happy in their level, there is no reason why they cannot be productive for many, many years.

[xtracto]

>Experience means nothing

I disagree with this: In my 20 years of Software Engineering, I've seen plenty of super smart, knowledgeable and enthusiastic Junior and mid level engineers making wrong decisions that "in theory " look right because they just haven't seen enough production systems.

Battle scars are quite valuable, particularly when shit hits the fan and you gotta draw from your previous experience to understand what REALLY is happening in very short time.

As a specific example, in a previous startup 8 years ago, we were 3 engineers. Two of us had good field experience and the other guy had outstanding academic/algorithmic skills (he won several algorithm competitions). At some point some crap happened to production systems. When the 3 of us saw the logs, he suggested a couple of root causes that just were not really probable. The other engineer and I could "read between the log lines" and got to the real cause pretty fast.

[JohnHaugeland]

> I humbly disagree. Experience means nothing.

Disagreeing with social norms doesn't strike me as humble.

I didn't say anything about whether experience was important. What I said was "these words are used to describe years of experience, and people trying to use them to describe skillset are making an error."

Most of the resume is about skillset. Why try to make this about skillset too? You've got entire lists of your specific skills, plus your jobs where and how they were applied.

To me, this seems like saying "no, college degree means I have the skills, skills are more relevant than education, I didn't actually get the degree but I have the skills, so I can wear the title"

Except that phrase doesn't mean "skilled," it means "years of experience," just like a degree doesn't mean skilled.

The reason we in hiring want to know how many years someone has under their belt is:

1) Everyone who's been in the job two years thinks they're the smartest and most motivated and that means they're just as good as everyone above them, and

2) Very little about seniority is actually about skillset. It's mostly about being able to define work, to be dependable, and to be able to clearly communicate expectations

.

> There is no industry-wide agreement what senior engineer is.

There doesn't need to be. This is nationwide, across industries, and a matter of law for government jobs. Agreement, by industry or individual, isn't relevant.

This would be like asserting that there's no industry-wide agreement on what age of employment is. There doesn't need to be; we have society for that.

You can crack any HR college textbook and look this up. These words have meanings, regardless of whether you imagine an industry wide agreement exists.

What use does a word like "senior" have if it means something different company to company? What's it even there for, at that point? In hiring someone, what do I learn from "oh well they performed at that company's senior level?" Do you think I know what every company individually defines that word to mean? Who is gaining calibration there?

[xzyyyz]

> Disagreeing with social norms doesn't strike me as humble.

we're leaving in different social circles... so it is totally possible that the norm i see differs from yours.

I worked once for the startup where idea was, "engineer" does not need prefix. Salaries, responsibilities, you name it -- were different. The title (in R&D) was not. Nobody cares.

I did not say "skill". I do not care about skills any more than I care about years of experience. The only thing I care about is ability, willingness, and readiness to contribute. The same person might match differently in different companies. E.g., intimate knowledge of C++ in embedded systems (e.g., avionics software) might be highly irrelevant in web-oriented startup, which is pushing Python. Would 10+ years engineer qualify for "staff" position? definitely no. "senior"? -- maybe. If Boing had layoff, it might be an option for somebody to restart carrier. A good person will quickly grow through the ladder, in the same company or moving on. But immediately? please.

> a matter of law for government jobs One can think of government as a single employer. In my company there is a levelling guide. We do not care about government, government does not care about us. :-)