© Michael Lopp 2016

Michael Lopp, Managing Humans, 10.1007/978-1-4842-2158-7_20

20. Titles Are Toxic

Titles place an unfortunate absolute professional value on individuals

Michael Lopp

(1)Los Gatos, California, USA

You have a job and it has a name—a name of convenience. It exists so that when someone asks, “What do you do?” you can simply say, “I am a software engineer” rather than saying, “Well, there are these things called computers and computers run software and humans write software and I am one of those humans.”

Chances are, you also have a title. It was given to you when you first arrived at your fine company, and you probably didn’t think about it. You argued for more salary or more stock, but the title was just there—Sr. Software Engineer ...

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