| Along similar lines to what you are saying, I think one of the more general problems that I see with titles is that people do tend to gravitate around specific industries/sizes of companies, even within IT, and then tend to associate their own experience as "normal" when it comes to seniority. I've moved a bit between different sizes and government vs startup vs mid-sized etc, and the titles vary wildly. Some government jobs had people with 4 years experience be "senior" or even "tech leads" because they weren't paying enough so they simply promoted any bright spark that was going to last to senior roles so they could at least get a few more years out of them before they left, as HR wouldn't pay more money without them getting the a specific title. Other place I've worked, your title was essentially a lottery system, others you were hard pressed to be a Senior without anything less than 10 years experience. But each of those places, I encountered people with very specific ideas of exactly what a senior was, and they were convinced their own standards were the "accepted" ones. There are definitely general guidelines for senior, associate etc, but they aren't normalised, just like you are saying. So point is, in support of your post, you can't dismiss someone just based on the title they give themselves, as it might have been perfectly normal thing to call themselves in previous positions. |