What "senior" actually means (and why your title inflation is a problem)
When everyone's a senior, nobody is. How startups broke job titles and why it's making it harder to hire the people you actually need.
Everyone's a "senior" now
We review thousands of CVs a year. The title inflation over the past 5 years has been absurd. People with 2 years of experience calling themselves "Senior Developer." Marketing managers with one direct report who are "VP of Marketing." "Heads of" departments that don't exist yet.
Startups caused this. When you're a 10-person company and you need to attract talent, it's tempting to hand out big titles instead of big salaries. "We can't pay you 80,000 but we can make you Head of Growth." It works in the short term. But it's creating real problems.
Why this hurts everyone
Candidates have mismatched expectations
When someone who's been a "Senior Developer" for 3 years at a startup applies to your company, you expect senior-level skills. What you often get is a mid-level developer with a senior title. The interview is awkward for everyone. They feel insulted when you assess them as mid-level. You feel misled by their CV.
This wastes enormous amounts of time in the hiring process. We spend hours per candidate trying to figure out what someone's title actually means at their current company. Is their "VP of Sales" a real VP or someone with 2 years of experience at a company with no sales team?
Your existing team gets resentful
You hire a "Senior Engineer" who turns out to be mid-level. Your actual senior engineers now work alongside someone with the same title who can't do the same quality of work. They either resent the new hire, resent you for the title confusion, or start asking for their own title upgrade.
Title inflation is contagious. Once you give one person an inflated title, everyone else wants the same. Soon your entire team has titles that don't match reality, and the titles become meaningless as signals of capability.
You can't hire actual seniors
When a genuinely senior person with 10+ years of experience sees your job listing for "Senior Developer," they look at who else has that title at your company and see people with 3 years of experience. They think: "This company doesn't know what senior means" and move on.
You've made it harder to attract the exact people you need by devaluing the title they've earned.
What "senior" should actually mean
They've made the mistakes already
A real senior has built things that failed and learned why. They've shipped the wrong feature, picked the wrong architecture, run the campaign that bombed. They bring pattern recognition that only comes from experience. When they say "that won't work," they're not guessing - they've tried it.
They make everyone around them better
Senior doesn't mean "does their own work really well." It means they elevate the team. They mentor junior people. They review work and make it better. They set standards. A senior who only contributes their own output isn't senior - they're just an experienced individual contributor.
They handle ambiguity
Give a mid-level person a vague problem and they'll ask you to define it better. Give a senior person a vague problem and they'll define it themselves, propose an approach, identify the risks, and start executing. Senior means you can hand someone a goal and trust them to figure out the path.
They push back
A mid-level person implements what they're told. A senior person tells you when you're wrong. They have enough experience and confidence to say "that's a bad idea, here's why, here's what we should do instead." If someone never disagrees with leadership, they're not operating at a senior level.
A framework that works
Here's a simple way to think about levels that cuts through title inflation:
Junior (0-2 years): Needs clear direction and regular feedback. Can execute defined tasks well. Learning the fundamentals of their field.
Mid-level (2-5 years): Can work independently on well-defined problems. Starting to develop their own approach. Occasionally mentors juniors. Delivers consistently.
Senior (5-8+ years): Defines problems, not just solutions. Mentors others. Makes decisions with incomplete information. Has deep expertise in their domain and broad understanding of adjacent domains.
Lead/Principal (8+ years): Sets strategy for their function. Influences company direction. Builds and leads teams. Recognized expert in their field.
These are rough guides - a fast learner might reach senior in 4 years, and some people with 10 years of experience are still mid-level. But years of experience plus demonstrated capability gives you a much better calibration than titles.
How to fix this at your company
Define your levels clearly
Write down what each level means at your company. What are the expectations for a senior vs. mid-level? What skills, behaviors, and outputs define each level? Make it specific enough that two different managers would evaluate the same person the same way.
Be honest in job postings
If the role is really mid-level, call it mid-level. Yes, you'll get fewer applications. But you'll get the right applications. A job titled "Marketing Manager" attracts better-matched candidates than "VP of Marketing" for the same role.
Calibrate during interviews
Ignore the candidate's current title. Evaluate their actual capabilities against your level definitions. Ask them to describe situations that demonstrate senior-level thinking: defining problems, mentoring others, making judgment calls, pushing back on bad ideas.
If someone can't give you concrete examples of senior-level work beyond their own task execution, they're mid-level regardless of what their business card says.
Offer growth instead of titles
When a candidate wants a title bump, offer something better: real scope, real ownership, and a clear path to earning that title based on demonstrated performance. "Join as a mid-level engineer, and here's what senior looks like - most people reach it in 12-18 months" is more honest and more motivating than handing out empty titles on day one.
The bottom line
Titles should mean something. When they don't, hiring gets harder, team dynamics get messier, and the people who've actually earned their seniority go somewhere that recognizes the difference.
Be the company where "Senior" means something. You'll attract better people because of it.