Titles for ICs matter for two reasons: comp, and perf reviews. At bigger companies the amount of RSUs for Staff versus Senior can be substantial. At a startup where equity is worth nothing and salaries are in a tight band anyways it doesn't make a difference.

For perf reviews your title dictates the rubric you get evaluated against, but in fact your manager is probably trying to fit a curve and then work backwards to the rubric. So they'll decide you're a 3/4 and then pick some boxes for your weakest areas to mark you down in. The realpolitik of it is that you can do the same work or more at a lower level but get paid less, depending on what you negotiate coming in, your experience, previous roles, etc.

Once you get into VP, Director, and C level they are comparable between orgs on their own kind of ladder. There's levels of responsibility for outcomes associated with being higher in the food chain. Not to say there also isn't a political aspect, but they are broadly comparable between bigger orgs.

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cj 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> At a startup where equity is worth nothing and salaries are in a tight band anyways it doesn't make a difference.

It doesn't make a big difference to the company, but a lot of employees want these titles for ego / resume / status / recognition. And titles are free for startups to give away, so many do.

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jghn 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They matter within a company for the reasons you cite. They mostly don't matter between companies however.

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adamwk 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You don’t think companies look at your past titles when you apply for a job?

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jghn 6 hours ago | parent [-]

They may, but the amount of information they're getting is low.

As a hiring manager I'll look at progression of titles *within a company*. This shows a track record of upward mobility. But if they go from "senior" in one company to "principal" in another, I find it meaningless.

	▲	rvz an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> As a hiring manager I'll look at progression of titles within a company. This shows a track record of upward mobility. That's quite shallow for those who are 'Member of Technical Staff' which does not have this which is why titles are meaningless for experienced candidates. Someone can give themselves that title, all because they know the founders; thus it can be exploited. So instead, I get the candidate to exactly explain to me what did they actually build / do and how much money did they make / save the organization and it must be in the millions to qualify or did they build side-projects that contributed to this or not. In this era, "titles" aren't enough and you need verifiable proof of work with monetary returns in the millions and I favour those who just build things that make money without asking permission from a manager.

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jjfoooo4 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why do you think that? Senior, staff, principle levels are pretty standard across the industry, even if some companies call them different things

	▲	raw_anon_1111 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This is definitely not true. It’s all dependent on the company size. I work in cloud consulting (specialize in app dev). I worked at AWS ProServe (full blue badge RSU earning employee) before working for a much smaller company. I’ve seen the leveling guidelines for both. An L5 (mid level) at AWS had to be a subject matter expert in at least one area (development, DevOps, security, etc) and be able to lead a “workstream” of a larger project including dealing with a customer or a smaller project by themselves. That maps to a “Senior Architect” at my current company. A senior (L6) at AWS should be able to handle larger projects with multiple workstreams and deal with more ambiguity. That maps to a staff at my current company (current position) An L7 is usually over a practice and/or handling multiple large implementations and more involved with strategy. Imagine someone (who hypothetically - they don’t need outside consultants) was working with Netflix. That maps to a “Senior Staff” at our company. You might ask what about lower levels in consulting? I never work with them. The bilingual cloud architects/senior cloud architects work with them. We don’t hire anything lower than that in the US.
	▲	crystal_revenge 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I'm guessing you've only worked at very large companies, specifically tech companies then? I've worked at pretty much every size company imaginable.As the top post pointed out, these titles are meaningless across smaller companies. I've been at startups where nobody had titles at all, I've small companies where anyone remotely senior as a principal. I've also worked at large non-tech companies with only 3 levels for IC, after that you were expected to transition to management. Large, tech companies have some degree they can be compared but what these titles mean from company to company is pretty meaningless.
	▲	jghn 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		They're somewhat standardized in Big Tech in that people have worked out how to map titles across these companies. But that accounts for a very small fraction of the total industry.