I say ‘feasibly’ because often the upper end of career ladders for Independent Contributors (ICs) could be paraphrased as “we’ll know it when we see it”, which can leave those who haven’t sufficiently proven “it” in a frustrating limbo. ​ I’ve worked very hard to become an engineer and I want to stay here. ​ Developing prototypes to further explore and support ideas that come from that research.

The leadership track shows up so that communication and decisions can be sensibly organized. ​ In Toxic Title Douchebag World, titles are designed to document the value of an individual sans proof. ​ A title has no business attempting to capture the seemingly infinite ways by which individuals evolve. ​ To allow leadership to bucket individuals into convenient chunks so they can award compensation and measure seniority while also serving as labels that are somehow expected to give us an idea about expected ability. This is an impossibly tall order and at the root of title toxicity. ​ the reality is that you are a collection of skills of varying ability. ​ Titles, I believe, are an artifact of the same age that gave us business cards and resumes. They came from a time when information was scarce. When there was no other way to discover who you were other than what you shared via a resume. Where the title of Senior Software Engineer was intended to define your entire career to date.