Putting these things together, your good employees will field requests from other teams, prioritize them on an ad hoc basis, connect dots and report opportunities amongst themselves: solving problems that influence many more customers than the direct ones they work with. If they are not being kept in the dark and are not working alone then a large part of their work is also collaborative. To the exclusionary aspect of the idea, unless your employees are being micromanaged then a large part of their work is discretionary. The people that are value divisors are still given huge remunerations precisely because of the position, not because of their impact. This is the most visible with the CEOs that fail being given absurd bonuses and then justifying that as necessary to attract top talent. This will forever strike me as a post hoc rationalization for justifying salary increases when the truth is that the salary increase is just a natural outcome of being granted institutional authority. > As you move up the chain, it eventually stops being about your direct technical contributions and about your ability to multiply the value of everybody under you in your org. It's unworkable.ДЄt some point, larger organizations will need to grant leverage to a technical individual. Imagine in the military if every officer had to prove themselves over and over again. It is very unfortunate that we are very cynical of titles, because, in well-run organizations, they are meaningful, and in fact, should be meaningful. You are a new hire brought in to do a high-impact thing or a high-impact project crosses across the entire organization where suddenly all participants are relative stranger or the team you worked in was of very low external visibility but a mentor recognized your potential and pulled you out to help recalibrate a different but malfunctioning team, etc. The flipside with this is, this process takes time.

That's the ideal scenario, that you earn the esteem and trust of your peers because the work you do speaks for itself. > and seeing your influence grow as you are trusted with more things.

but see my damned title stagnate year over year, suddenly I care about this and take it as a complete lack of recognition by the company (that literally would not happen if they simply did not tell me what my title is!). When the title вЂњmattersвЂќ at a company, it also makes me consider it a factor in annual reviews. And yet, it gets in my head sometimes, making me wonder every few years if I am at the level I should be.

I know I shouldnвЂ™t care, since titles mean different things at every company, and some especially-impressive-sounding titles can range from вЂњmehвЂќ to вЂњgod-levelвЂќ depending on where it is. It is also hard not to look at titles on places like LinkedIn. When I see titles, it just makes unhelpful thoughts enter my head, like: are all these people вЂњat my levelвЂќ really contributing as much as me? Sometimes I even thought the reverse, like: how can this seemingly-junior person still be stuck at that level, when he is clearly doing all this great stuff we depend on every day? Of course the especially soul-crushing case is when you encounter people that clearly suck at what they do, and theyвЂ™re 1-2 levels above you and worse, I have occasionally seen those people promoted further! It was nicer just knowing whoвЂ™s in charge of what thing, and seeing your influence grow as you are trusted with more things. Having been at several companies, I think I was happiest about my career when I didnвЂ™t have a fancy title and did not really know anyone elseвЂ™s either (aside from obvious managers).

Principal software developer