Chase Problems, Not Job Titles

It is easy to build a career around titles.

You want to be a senior. Then a lead. Then whatever comes after that.

The titles become the map, and you steer your whole path toward them.

I want to suggest a different compass. Chase problems, not titles.

Here is the difference.

If you aim at a title, you optimize for looking the part. You collect the resume lines. You do what seems promotable.

And you can absolutely get the title that way.

But you often arrive hollow, because the title was the goal, not the growth.

If you aim at problems instead, something better happens.

You go find the hard, interesting thing nobody has cracked yet. The messy system nobody wants to touch. The question the team keeps stepping around.

You throw yourself at it because it is genuinely worth solving.

And a funny thing follows. The titles come anyway.

They come because you became the person who solves hard things, and organizations promote that, eventually, even when they are slow about it.

But now the title sits on top of real capability, not the appearance of it.

So when someone offers you a choice, do not ask which one sounds more senior.

Ask which one has the more interesting problem.

Ask where you will be stretched, where you will be a little out of your depth, where you will have to grow to keep up.

That is the direction to walk.

I have watched people turn down the flashy title for the harder problem, and I have never once seen them regret it a few years later.

I have seen plenty regret the reverse.

The title chasers plateau, because the title was the ceiling all along.

The problem chasers keep climbing, because there is always a harder problem, and each one makes them more.

Your career is not a collection of labels.

It is a collection of things you learned to do that you could not do before.

Aim at those.

Let the titles catch up on their own.

They usually do.

– Asael Shinder