This Is a Title

The career book tech workers actually need, not the one LinkedIn influencers want to sell you. You're doing the work. You might be doing the best work on your team. And the recognition isn't coming. The title doesn't match the output. The person who ships less, knows less, and cares less got promoted instead of you. This actually happens. No, you're not imagining it. This Is a Title is a 102-chapter breakdown of why career advancement in tech doesn't work the way you were told as a kid. Written by a software engineer with nearly two decades of experience, it names the patterns nobody talks about openly: The invisible politics of calibration rooms, the gap between a company's stated values and its revealed ones, why your work doesn't speak for itself no matter how good it is, and what your manager is actually optimizing for when they tell you "just keep doing what you're doing." This is not a career advice book. There are no frameworks. No acronyms. No "5 Steps to Better Title." No playbooks. Just an honest account of how organizations actually work, their the unwritten rules, the quiet games that are played, and the system beneath the system, from someone who spent years being confused by all of it and finally wrote it down. Written by hand during an 18-month federal prison stay for piracy, by an autistic engineer who's been ground up by these systems and figured out what the rules actually were. What's inside: The System: Why titles are negotiation outcomes, not measures of capability. The hidden power structure that actually runs your company. Why nobody knows what's going on, including leadership. Visibility: Why your work doesn't speak for itself. How to make it visible without becoming insufferable. Documentation as a survival skill. Your Manager: The difference between appreciation and sponsorship. What your manager is actually optimizing for. When your manager is the ceiling. Getting Unstuck: Having the explicit conversation. Recognizing when "next cycle" means never. The exit signal. Actually leaving. How It Actually Works: What happens inside calibration rooms. Headcount and budget as invisible blockers. The difference between "ready" and "promoted." Your Head: What being stuck feels like. Resentment as poison. Impostor syndrome vs. actual gaps. Comparison. Burnout. Perspective. The book is blunt, profane, occasionally funny, and always honest. For engineers, PMs, designers, data scientists, and anyone in tech who's been told how great they're doing while watching someone else get promoted. "I wrote this because I wish someone had written it for me."