Senior job titles

[Pinkorchide]

There was an article online this morning about a woman who’s narrowly avoided jail for attacking a restaurant worker. Her job title is described as senior negotiator (for an estate agent). She is 22 years old. At work a lot if my customers’ titles (in their emails) are senior [insert job title]. A lot, if not most, of these workers are in their early twenties. It got me thinking that it really doesn’t take much to get a “senior” title. They are not professions where they will have done years of studying, just a bit of training.
AIBU to think the word senior is banded about very freely and doesn’t give young people much to strive towards? I know it’s up to the company to give them whatever title they like but a lot of them don’t have a lot of experience or knowledge both in terms of life or work. I wonder if their pay reflects their “senior” status.

Maybe they are really good and earnt it based on merit rather than age/experience?

YANBU.

At our work we change the names of the roles every 5 minutes. Words like “senior”, “team leader”, “manager” are bandied about so much that there’s no one “junior” left, the hierarchy is completely unclear, and the job names have nothing to do with the daily tasks performed by those people. It’s all terribly confusing and serves (I think) to detract from the lack of actual compensation given to them.

The term senior implies someone with several years’ experience at least. Which a 22 year o,d cannot feasibly have.

In my field, 'senior' tends to mean 'top of a band'. So the hierarchy goes something like

Account Exec
Senior Account Exec
Manager
Senior Manager
Director
Senior Director.

So at the senior bit is just relative to peers.

It depends on the line of work. In my role senior would mean you've done it for at least 7 years, but it doesn't necessarily mean you are in senior management. Director is what I would consider senior.

I have never cared about my title and, if pushed, would always go for more money rather than a fancy title. Am often amazed by colleagues who accept a fancy title instead of a pay rise.

YABU.

I work on a team where I am xxxxxxx manager. Below me there is xxxxxxx officer. Above me there is senior xxxxxxx manager.

The senior in their title reflects the additional responsibilities they take on and the additional knowledge required to do their role.

I have colleagues who have an issue with younger colleagues being more 'senior' than them which I think is pathetic. It's apparently fine to be ageist towards younger people.

I have colleagues who are a few years younger than me in their 20s, and are more senior. Good on them, they're excellent at what they do and that's all that matters when doing their job.

YANBU
I think “Senior” has been added in to appease the younger generation who expect to be promoted very quickly compared to prior generations. So they are hired for worker bee level and after a few years, they start whinging and wanting to be management. So “senior” was invented to give illusion of moving up a rung on the career ladder without any extra money and zero management responsibility. To me, it simply means not in training any more.

@EatYourVegetables

YANBU.

At our work we change the names of the roles every 5 minutes. Words like “senior”, “team leader”, “manager” are bandied about so much that there’s no one “junior” left, the hierarchy is completely unclear, and the job names have nothing to do with the daily tasks performed by those people. It’s all terribly confusing and serves (I think) to detract from the lack of actual compensation given to them.

This is absolutely spot on and exactly describes the approach of where I work.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for working your way up and if you’re good at what you do to be recognised for it but in my own experience a 22 year old will rarely have accomplished so much that they’re considered experts in their field, which is what the word “senior” implies. It’s not impossible, I know, but there just can’t be that many 22 year old experts out there.

YANBU but does it matter?

DD is 16 and works for a high street retailer at the weekend. She is still at school. She has been there for 3 months and because of high staff turnover, she was the most experienced member of staff apart from managers in the shop on Sunday. So she was the "senior assistant".

Subway call their staff "sandwich artists". Lots of people puff up their job titles to make them seem more important than they are.

It's like the kids in McDonald being manager for around 20p an hour more.
Laughable.

When I was 22 I started working in university admissions and my title was Senior Admissions Assistant, even though it was my first foray into that role and I was on £18k pa. Mental.

It also makes it look like I took a step down when people see my CV because I went from that to "just" being an admin assistant even though the next job was a promotion in terms of pay and responsibilities.

In sales roles you get the senior badge for hitting certain targets usually. So if she's selling houses and hitting targets she could be "senior" after maybe a year or so. Doesn't bother me in the slightest.

The kickstart scheme starts at 17, so you could have worked in an estate agents for five years and be a natural at your job b, so it depends on the industry.
IME being in my 50's, the senior staff, who were predominantly male, wasn't experts either. They'd always back the sexual predator as well. It always was that those who make senior aren't always the best at the job. But now more often than not it's a way of getting people to take in more responsibility without much of a pay rise.
I can't stand ageism of any type. My DD got a lot of flack when she made manager at 25, but she was better at her job than the staff who'd been working in her field for decades.

In my role you are x, Senior x, principal x, manager in order of seniority for the more junior end of jobs. If you start work at 21 you can have senior in your title after a year. But it varies. My first job it took 3+ years.

I am a “senior” in my job. It’s a professional role, but even so, we have about 25 seniors in the company and maybe 3 or 4 basic level. The “senior” basically means “has experience in this role”. Pointless, but fairly common. Also in my company there are more Heads Of than you can shake a stick at, but even that isn’t as silly as American banks calling all their managers VPs.

In my field, you became a senior once you’d passed the final proficiency test roughly two years after starting training. So you could be a senior at quite a young age, yes, but it made sense and involved a better pay package etc

In my field, anyone with a few years experience won't stay in the role / won't start at the company without a snazzy title. So we have Senior X and it just means they have some experience, while entry level grads or non-grads just get X in their title. People with lots of in-depth experience have a different role name entirely and generally are bothered about doing interesting stuff then money, they are rarely bothered about their title and may not even know it off the top of their head. I don't know why it would bother anyone who isn't working in that particular field; maybe she's really great at selling houses or maybe anyone is senior after a couple of years.

There are jobs where you progress based on the number of exams you pass, and qualifying can take anywhere up to 10 years.

The "Senior" in the job title indicates that these people may not yet be qualified, but they have just as good knowledge and skills as someone who has.

It also distinguishes from someone who is still relatively new and inexperienced.

In my profession it goes:
Associate (fresh graduate)
Snr Associate (2 or 3 yrs experience)
Consultant
Snr Consultant
Manager
Snr Manager
Associate Director
Director
Snr Director
Executive Director
VP
Senior VP
President
CEO

So you can get to Senior something within 2 years but to get to the top branches of the entire tree still takes 20+ years. I ignore job titles generally!

Yes in my field senior denotes experience in that role at that level (e.g. a Senior Account Manager has been an Account Manager for a couple of years and should know their stuff, whereas an Account Manager with no 'Senior' could have only just moved into that role). So we have the word senior attached to what are in effect quite junior positions (e.g. Account Executive) but the word senior denotes that they are are experienced in that role. It has no bearing on how senior they are in the company overall. Similarly some other companies in my field have 'Associate' to mean 'not quite yet a [job title that follows]' e.g. Associate Account Director is not quite yet an Account Director but is above the level of an Account Manager. I dread to think what would happen if the same company had both 'senior' and 'associate' job titles, there would be about 30 layers of hierarchy!

Also it's probably fair to say that sometimes, rightly or wrongly, these things are used for recruitment and retention and have no real meaning at all!

@Peace43

In my profession it goes: Associate (fresh graduate) Snr Associate (2 or 3 yrs experience) Consultant Snr Consultant Manager Snr Manager Associate Director Director Snr Director Executive Director VP Senior VP President CEO

So you can get to Senior something within 2 years but to get to the top branches of the entire tree still takes 20+ years. I ignore job titles generally!

I used to go to a hairdresser where the stylists were all given very similar titles. It was essentially a way of charging more.

Sometimes it is just relative. If there 5 negotiators in a team, the most experienced is designated ‘senior’. But I agree that I would expect that of a 22 year old, but perhaps the rest of the team is newer/younger.