from Gergely Orosz | by Gergely Orosz

Yes. No company with a good engineering culture has the title “junior”. Entry-level software engineers are called Software Engineer. Entry-level PMs: Product Manager. “Junior” levels signal a hierarchical organisation where it sends the message “we don’t take you seriously”. t.co/BCQ61lWQIM

A short story: what happens when you drop “junior”. At Uber we rewrote the $50B/year payments system. Over 6 months, a core team of ~10 engineers emerged as goto people. 2 of these engineers were software engineers with 1-3 YOE. A “Junior” title would have made this impossible.

“Junior” makes people starting out self-conscious. It also makes others take them less seriously. It’s a way for status-based people to feel good about themselves (“My juniors handle this: it’s trivial”). It’s a perfect way to cripple innovation often coming from these people.

Some replies saying "but 'Junior' helps us know they need more mentorship!" You don't need to have this title prefix that keeps reminding everyone on their 'juniority'. Everyone who is not at the Sr Eng level should get more mentorship, and is the norm at better companies.