I worked at a small company, got whatever title I wanted (short of CTO), and it didn't matter one lick when I got hired away. People know about title inflation at small companies and even if you're a "VP of engineering" at a four-person startup (like in the article) you're still gonna get evaluated as if your role were IC.
Just look at all the "vice president" positions at investment banks.
Startups sure but this article advocates for never having titles even at a large company. And that can lead to problems. Netflix only has "Senior Software Engineer", and when people leave Netflix they sometimes have a hard time getting a Principle eng role at another company because "you can't jump from senior to principle", not realizing that at Netflix you can have people with the Senior title who are doing Principle level work already.
> when people leave Netflix they sometimes have a hard time getting a Principle eng role at another company because "you can't jump from senior to principle"
I'd hope engineers would know that their incoming title is part of the offer package and thus may be negotiable...especially in the current job market.
Also, I've heard rumors you can have a satisfying career without reaching the vaunted role of principal; however, who knows if those rumors can be trusted? :)
I'm of the opinion that titles are a lousy game to play, because they are inherently zero sum. Plus, as mentioned in the article, the rules for progressing are entirely different at small vs large companies, and growth vs not-growing stages. Nothing wrong with wanting to grow and improve, but the metrics used for evaluating titles are often opaque and not always under your control, so fixating on them seems like a recipe for frustration.
> I'd hope engineers would know that their incoming title is part of the offer package and thus may be negotiable
Sure, but you don't even get considered for those higher level roles and that's the main problem. You don't show up in searches for "staff engineer" or "principle engineer" so recruiters aren't even aware of you (for Netflix this is less of a problem but for engineers from similar orgs it's an issue).
> Also, I've heard rumors you can have a satisfying career without reaching the vaunted role of principal
It's not the title that's important, it's the scope of the role and the impact. Usually the title comes along with it and is a good indicator of what the scope will be.
> I'm of the opinion that titles are a lousy game to play, because they are inherently zero sum.
I agree but like I said above, it's not the title per se that's important but the scope that it represents. At a startup it's less important because you can make your own scope, but at a large enterprise, your title pretty much determines your scope.
For a long time, they only had one VP. Some years ago, they had a reorg, and spawned a few more VPs, but each one ran a standalone business unit (basically, a corporation inside a corporation). They had billion-dollar budgets, and managed hundreds (or thousands) of people.
This meant that they got "the corner desk." This was a small desk, like you might see a teacher sitting at, in the corner of the bullpen room.
I once went on a round of gladhand visits to Silicon Valley companies. Most were small; a couple were medium-sized. The company I worked for could get in the door with pretty much anyone.
The leader of my team was a Senior Manager (not even a General Manager), but had the confidence of the GMs (which was where most of the power actually lived). I was just an Engineering Manager. I was along to vet the tech.
Just about Every. Single. Person. That. We. Met. was a "Vice President." We got a good laugh from that.
I also know a lot of folks that work for banks, in Manhattan. Banks have lots of VPs. They occupy small cubicles, and often have no direct reports at all.
In the late 80s, I visited a publisher in Iowa, a customer of my employer. The top-level guy there had on his wall a New Yorker cartoon showing a bunch of guys in suits milling around, with the caption "Who's going to get the coffee? There must be somebody here who's not a vice president."
Assuming the employee _belongs_ to the company with no consideration for their next tour of duty (as Gokul says) seems self-minded