[softwaredoug]

After 20 years in industry, I do think title inflation is a real issue. Senior is the new just "software engineer", Staff is the new Senior, and so on...

The problem isn't just an across-companies thing, within companies people generally don't really do work scoped to that role. They more-or-less continue chugging along in their role. Nobody is the "bad guy" to come and point out the mismatch.

There's also general lack of calibration across organizations at companies. Where a staff in one org is really a senior in another. And companies with poor engineering cultures don't have enough across team mobility to calibrate well.

This also happens because people want to get paid more and managers want to retain them. Seniors cap out at a certain pay level. We probably should have a route for people to be really good seniors and still get paid a lot just crushing code.

This also happens just because social pressures that you should progress in your career. When I sort of think we should reward people for their growth in different ways (their ability to learn and crush any type of code) -- not just for somehow acquiring org or company wide scope, coaching others, or taking on architecture.

I think we generally don't hold high enough expectations in our field too. Depending on the culture, people basically "get away with" more without getting blunt feedback on where they should be held to a higher standard.