
The Title Trap — Function, Ego, and the Money That Decoupled Them
In traditional engineering—civil, mechanical, structural—a “Senior Engineer” is someone the insurance company will let sign off on blueprints. If those blueprints fail and a bridge collapses, there is liability. There are lawsuits. There are corpses. The title is not social; it is a legal and physical fact. It is directly tied to how much you can be trusted, which directly tied to what you can earn. A Senior Engineer can be trusted because the product is permanent and failure is irreversible. …