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   Ben Ramsey (ramsey@phpc.social)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jul-2026 00:28:02 JST Ben Ramsey

   • Chris Wiegman

   @chris In the early 00s, it was pretty easy to get to senior fairly quickly. A lot of us with little-to-no formal computer science training ended up as the senior-most people building web things, which isn’t a bad thing; CS degrees didn’t yet teach what we knew, and there were no “software engineering” degrees. At the time, the only way to “advance” was to switch to management. I’m glad the industry finally solved this by introducing the IC track, as well as slowing down promotions.

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     Ben Ramsey (ramsey@phpc.social)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jul-2026 00:37:09 JST Ben Ramsey

     • Chris Wiegman

     @chris Oops! Sorry for lumping you in with the old-timers. 😅

     I didn’t realize this was still an issue in 2012.

     The first time I saw a well-defined IC track, it was at an agency I joined in 2007. The titles went: Assoc. Software Eng. → Software Eng. → Sr. Software Eng. → Software Architect → Sr. Software Arch. → Dir. of Software Eng. (IC) → VP of Software Eng. (IC).

     It blew my mind.

     Nowadays, those upper levels are Staff, Principal, and Distinguished, rather than Architect, Director, and VP.

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     Alda Vigdís (alda@topspicy.social)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jul-2026 00:38:23 JST Alda Vigdís

     • Chris Wiegman

     @chris I've had a very hard time with this, having worked in several different countries where titles seem to be earned in very different ways and it also clashes with management concepts in our industry, which in turn clash with the office culture in any given place.

     Not to mention that if you're not used to military-style top-down management, then it gets very alien very quickly.

     I honestly don't think developmen titles can even translate from workplace to workplace.

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     Alda Vigdís (alda@topspicy.social)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Jul-2026 01:34:04 JST Alda Vigdís

     • Chris Wiegman

     @chris Honestly, I think titles in the software industry would be more grounded if everyone has had at least one or two jobs with a union-negotiated compensation matrix with your seniority (in years) on the x axis and your title on the y axis. :)