As a fellow sneakerhead and a startup engineer, I’m a fan of your work and writing. One day, I’ll probably come ask you for money. But today, two points here bother me:
- This claim is a brash overgeneralization:
“Unlike a junior person, they won’t be open to feedback, guidance, or coaching required for improvement.”
Devil’s advocate — there are also junior people comfortable staying junior… not everyone becomes senior and/or a manager. With the proliferation of dev bootcamps, we have more junior devs than ever, still not every one has the ability to do high-level things. It’s not easy to analyze algorithmic complexity, design architecture, and create distributed systems. The last two become increasingly important as microservices and API gateway type patterns become the new norm.
2. Not all senior engineers are full of unqualified arrogance:
“There are lots of people with the title but not the skills. They are hard to spot because they’re definitely not junior but they’re not really senior either. They’re mid-level engineers who have been convinced they’re senior by the ecosystem.”
Startup title inflation is often there from day one, not bolted on later. Our titles are not really our fault; they’re also not something we can really change, and it’s well understood that a “senior” startup role probably doesn’t equate to the same level at a much bigger tech co. Counterpoint: Look at how pervasive impostor syndrome is in this industry.
