Alan Steele, whom we are proud to welcome to Jobster, has a good post on designing a title/level system for a sw org that doesn’t suck.

I think the Microsoft leveling scheme worked out pretty well. (I was a developer at Microsoft from 1994-2000.)

Most developers came in at D10 or D11, it meant something to become a D12, and if you were a D13 you were pretty hot stuff. Other positions like test and program management had a roughly comparable numbering scheme.

The point was, you could remain an individual contributor and visibly rise in experience ranking. There was reasonably good consensus on what each experience level meant.

The day Microsoft really jumped the shark was the day they renumbered their experience levels. The new system started around 62 for some reason and went up from there; there were many more levels so they could give less meaningful promotions more often. I never grew to love or understand the new system, but to this day I can pretty clearly look at someone and say “she’s a D12″ or “he’s a D11″.