<story><title>How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers</title><url>https://blog.kuperate.com/how-fresh-grads-who-have-never-coded-anything-of-significance-get-sold-as-senior-engineers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>a4isms</author><text>There is no standard whatsoever for the adjective &amp;quot;Senior&amp;quot; when applied to engineers:&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it means, &amp;quot;Able to work without someone looking over their shoulder at all times.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it means, &amp;quot;Able to lead and mentor others.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;And sometimes it means, &amp;quot;Has organizational skills above and beyond engineering skills, able to lead cross-team initiatives and deal with all the human&amp;#x2F;organization issues around the engineering.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The latter definition is the most interesting to me, it describes what &amp;quot;Staff&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Principal&amp;quot; engineers do in most orgs. But if I had to pick a line to draw, I&amp;#x27;d say that while a Staff or Principal spends most or all of their time working on projects that involve the human&amp;#x2F;organization issues around the engineering, a senior engineer is one who does this at least part of the time.&lt;p&gt;There are other, perfectly valid perspectives on what makes an engineer &amp;quot;senior,&amp;quot; but what I like about this one that&amp;#x27;s relevant to TFA is that this kind of &amp;quot;seniority&amp;quot; is hard to fake.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>robbyking</author><text>On a related note, I dated a woman who was promoted to vice president of a small start up when she was in her 20&amp;#x27;s. She had to hide her title on her resume when she left because no established firm wanted to hire someone whom they assumed they&amp;#x27;d need to pay a quarter million dollars to be competitive.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes grandiose titles can work against you.</text></comment>
<story><title>How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers</title><url>https://blog.kuperate.com/how-fresh-grads-who-have-never-coded-anything-of-significance-get-sold-as-senior-engineers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>a4isms</author><text>There is no standard whatsoever for the adjective &amp;quot;Senior&amp;quot; when applied to engineers:&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it means, &amp;quot;Able to work without someone looking over their shoulder at all times.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it means, &amp;quot;Able to lead and mentor others.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;And sometimes it means, &amp;quot;Has organizational skills above and beyond engineering skills, able to lead cross-team initiatives and deal with all the human&amp;#x2F;organization issues around the engineering.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The latter definition is the most interesting to me, it describes what &amp;quot;Staff&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Principal&amp;quot; engineers do in most orgs. But if I had to pick a line to draw, I&amp;#x27;d say that while a Staff or Principal spends most or all of their time working on projects that involve the human&amp;#x2F;organization issues around the engineering, a senior engineer is one who does this at least part of the time.&lt;p&gt;There are other, perfectly valid perspectives on what makes an engineer &amp;quot;senior,&amp;quot; but what I like about this one that&amp;#x27;s relevant to TFA is that this kind of &amp;quot;seniority&amp;quot; is hard to fake.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>flatiron</author><text>Sometimes it means “someone who can bill $300 an hour” with no relation to actual ability. I was a “senior” three years out of college and I had no clue what in the world I was doing.&lt;p&gt;Come to think of it after 20 years I kinda still feel that way.</text></comment>