Startups hand out senior titles like candy. The industry pays the price.
I have been doing interviews for about a year now, and I cannot escape this pattern. Someone denotes themselves as a “Senior Engineer,” they have some number of years of experience—perhaps three—and they cannot provide an intelligent explanation of how a basic concept works, e.g. database indexes. This is not a fluke. It’s an epidemic.
The Numbers Don't Lie
Based on data from levels.fyi, on average, it takes between four to seven years to be promoted to a senior engineering position at a FAANG company. For startups, the average is three years, and in some cases, two years.
That discrepancy is not due to rounding numbers. That's a completely different definition of the same word.
Startups resort to this approach for obvious reasons. Since they cannot offer competitive salaries, they use titles as a competitive advantage. For instance, a 25-year-old engineer who would be hired at Google as L4 gets the title of “Senior Engineer” in a 15-person startup. This is a win-win situation as it doesn’t cost anything to the startup and the employee feels like getting a promotion. The real problem surfaces once this engineer decides to leave the startup and look for a new job.
What "Senior" Actually Means
The title isn't about writing code faster. It never was.
A senior engineer mentors juniors without being asked. A senior engineer pushes back on product when the proposed timeline is fantasy. A senior engineer makes architectural decisions they'll have to live with for years and accepts that responsibility.
Here's what I see instead from many three-year "seniors":
→ They can build features but can't design systems
→ They defer to product on every technical decision
→ They've never mentored anyone because the startup had no juniors
→ They've never navigated a codebase they didn't build from scratch
It's not their fault they haven't had enough practice, but the title implies that they have.
The Hiring Problem Is Real
Hiring managers complain about this all the time. The disconnect between title and skills is one of the largest offenders of time when it comes to technical recruiting.
You advertise a senior role and receive an overwhelming response with so many applicants. A substantial portion of those applicants is using the term "Senior" with less than four years of experience. Since you cannot automatically rule out candidates based on their years of experience as some tend to progress quickly, you end up wasting a lot of time interviewing them all only to realize that they are, in fact, mid-level engineers with a senior title on their resume.
The candidates are also at a disadvantage. They attend a senior interview, are questioned about system design and leadership, and have a negative impression. They are not to blame. They were put in a losing position because the title implied they would be offered a role based on their experience. 😕
This Is Title Laundering
It's called title laundering because that's essentially what's happening. A startup creates a title with no industry-standard justification. The engineer brings that title to their next job. The new company either grants the title as is or has to verify it which costs them resources. The startup that created the title faces no repercussions.
It's equivalent to creating currency without a central bank. But, in the end, inflation renders the money useless.
The impact is evident. "Senior" means so little now that some companies have started ignoring titles entirely and testing everyone from scratch. That's arguably fairer, but it's also exhausting for candidates who genuinely earned their level. 🎯
What Would Actually Help
I don't have a silver bullet. But a few things would move the needle:
→ Startups should use titles like "Engineer II" instead of borrowing prestige from "Senior"
→ Engineers should be honest with themselves about where they actually are — title ≠ skill
→ Hiring managers should normalize asking "what did senior mean at your company?" without it feeling like an attack
The best engineers I know don't care about the word on their LinkedIn. They care about the work. The title is supposed to be a shorthand for capability, and right now that shorthand is broken.
So Here's My Question
If you got a senior title early in your career, did it help you or did it set expectations you weren't ready for? I'm genuinely curious — drop your experience below. Tell us!
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