Why Job Titles Matter

Sharing the importance of job titles and levels, why they matter in the tech world and how we all benefit from it.

During the earlier days of my career, I always thought Job Title is just a label, and what truly matters is the contribution and impact one can make. Having just a universal title across team or company is mostly true for startups, but for mature organization its impossible to avoid these leveling and titles. In the recent years, I started to understand why it really matters and how it really helps both sides, especially after learning about in the book The Staff Engineer’s Path.

Lets look into some reasons why title is important, each of them revolve around communication.

💡Titles and Levels are generally meant to help others from individuals to companies but at the end we all benefit from it.

Communicating the Career Progression

You may be fine without having a title or a level, you may be progressing on your end but how would others know your progress, that is why title helps in communicating your career growth across the company.

Companies usually have career ladder representing each level, which helps in:

• Setting goals and expectations

• Clarity in roles and responsibilities

• Compensation decisions

• Hiring decisions

With title and level, you communicate your progress and growth with others while also having the opportunity to self assess better.

Communicating the Competency Level

Second communication point revolves around the signals how good you are. It is very common that people may assume and have implicit bias e.g. when person X enters the meeting room the implicit bias comes into play it could be related to color, race or gender, as Tanya Reilly mentioned in her book The Staff Engineer’s Path:

We make implicit judgements and assumptions about people all the time.

That is why title is very important as it gives you the importance that you may not get automatically by the peers and help others make good judgements. With title:

• You will be approached for the right help

• You will be invited to the right meetings

• Your voice will be heard

• You will get more respect

Now, your colleagues know your competency level, it will help them in framing their ideas and questions clearly, while helping you become more confident and happy because your opinions are valued.

Communicating to Outside World

Titles represent you to the outside world, it helps people outside of your company to understand your competency. This can be beneficial when doing:

• Networking

• Events

• Bootcamps

• Interviews

This type of communication usually happens through Resume or LinkedIn. And one of the beneficiaries of this are the future companies and their recruiters as they set the stage for themselves by knowing you based on the title.

With title, you not only help others but also set clear expectations of what you would be looking in your next job in terms of role, responsibilities and compensation, learn more about leveling and compensation at levels.fyi.

Since we are talking about title and growth, you may be interested in:

• Rapid Growth In Software Engineering by

  Akash Mukherjee

• Become a next level Senior Engineer by

  Junaid Effendi

• Turning Boredom into Career Growth Opportunities by

  Basma Taha

• Level up as a Software Engineer by

  Gourav Khanijoe