Latest / Career Skills with Fexingo: Hard Skills, Soft Skills, and Future-Proofing Your Career / Why Your Job Title Is Lying About Your Value
Transcript
- Lucas: I was looking at some internal hiring data from a mid-sized tech firm last week, and it struck me how much noise there is around what we actually call our jobs. You have someone titled Senior Vice President who manages three people, and another person titled Principal Engineer who effectively runs the entire product architecture but reports to an empty chair. The title says one thing, the reality says another. Luna: It feels like corporate speak has become its own currency, inflated so badly that it no longer buys you any real clarity on what someone actually does day to day. I see it all the time in recruiting, where candidates lead with their fancy titles before I even ask about their output. Lucas: Exactly. And the problem isn't just vanity; it's that when titles get detached from responsibility, we lose the ability to benchmark skill accurately. If everyone is a Director, then nobody is leading. We need to stop looking at the label on the door and start looking at the weight of the decisions being made behind it. Luna: So how do we teach people to strip away the fluff and identify what actually moves the needle? It seems like most professionals are trapped in this cycle of chasing promotions for the sake of the line on their resume. Lucas: Let's be honest for a second though. A small group of listeners already chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that is literally what funds making these episodes possible. No ads, just us talking shop because it keeps the lights on. Luna: That support really helps keep the content independent and focused on substance over clicks. It’s great to know the show stays ad-free thanks to folks who value this kind of deep dive. Lucas: Right. So back to the core issue. When you look at your own career over the last three years, if you removed every adjective from your job titles, would the remaining nouns still convey your level of impact? Most people would struggle to answer yes. Luna: That’s a terrifying question. I think my current title sounds impressive, but if I stripped it down, I’d realize I’m mostly coordinating other people’s work rather than driving specific outcomes myself. Lucas: That coordination trap is exactly where many careers stall. You become the hub of information, which feels important, but it isn't the same as being the source of value. True career capital comes from owning the bottleneck, not just managing the flow around it. Luna: So instead of asking what title gets me promoted, I should be asking where the biggest unowned problems are in my organization and volunteering to solve them? Lucas: Precisely. Look at how companies like Salesforce or Adobe have shifted toward competency-based frameworks rather than rigid hierarchical ladders. They care less about your rank and more about whether you can demonstrate mastery in specific areas that drive revenue or efficiency. Luna: But those frameworks aren't transparent to the average employee. How do you navigate a system that doesn't clearly define what mastery looks like for your specific role? Lucas: You reverse engineer it. Look at the people who are respected but don't necessarily hold the highest titles. What problems do they solve that others avoid? Usually, it’s something messy, ambiguous, and critical. That’s where your real leverage lies. Luna: It sounds like emotional intelligence plays a huge part here too. Reading the room to find those unowned problems requires a different set of soft skills than just executing a technical task. Lucas: Undeniably. Technical skills get you hired, but situational awareness gets you trusted. In a market like October 10th 2026, where AI handles a lot of routine execution, the ability to identify strategic gaps is becoming the primary differentiator. Luna: I love that distinction. Execution is commoditized, but diagnosis is scarce. That means the people who can accurately diagnose business problems are the ones who will dictate their own compensation packages. Lucas: And that brings us to the resume lie we talked about earlier. Most resumes list duties, not diagnoses. They say responsible for managing X, instead of identified Y inefficiency and implemented Z solution. One is passive, the other is active leadership. Luna: So the fix is rewriting your experience to highlight the problems you solved rather than the box you sat in? That changes the entire narrative from service provider to strategic partner. Lucas: Yes. And it protects you against title inflation. If you focus on outcomes, a junior title becomes irrelevant because the results speak for themselves. Recruiters eventually realize that a Manager with proven P&L ownership is worth more than a VP with only administrative oversight. Luna: It also forces you to be honest with yourself. You can’t fake outcome ownership. If you haven’t actually solved anything substantial, the gap between your resume and your reality will show up quickly in interviews. Lucas: Which is a good thing. It creates pressure to actually grow. I see too many professionals coasting on legacy reputation, letting their past titles carry them into new roles where they have nothing left to prove. Luna: Coasting is dangerous. Especially now, with the pace of change in technology and markets. If you’re not actively diagnosing and solving new problems, you’re becoming obsolete regardless of your seniority. Lucas: Let’s talk about the feedback loop here. How do you get accurate signals on whether you’re actually adding value or just appearing busy? Most performance reviews are filled with generic praise that tells you nothing. Luna: I think you have to seek out external validation. Peer reviews, client testimonials, or even just watching how quickly your suggestions get adopted by leadership. Speed of adoption is a great metric for influence. Lucas: That’s a sharp metric. Influence is measurable by traction. If you propose an idea and it gathers momentum without your constant pushing, you’ve mastered the art of strategic alignment. That’s a high-level skill. Luna: It’s essentially social engineering, but for business good. You’re aligning resources and people toward a common goal without needing formal authority over them. Lucas: Correct. This is what we call informal leadership. It’s harder to fake than a title because it relies on consistent trust building. And that trust compounds over time, making your career path smoother and more resilient to market shocks. Luna: So the advice is: stop obsessing over the vertical climb of your title and start focusing on the horizontal expansion of your impact. Make yourself indispensable across multiple functions. Lucas: Exactly. Be the person who connects dots that others don’t see. That cross-functional visibility is your best insurance policy against layoffs or restructuring. You become too valuable to cut. Luna: It shifts the power dynamic entirely. Instead of begging for a raise based on tenure, you’re demonstrating that replacing you would cost the company significant operational continuity. Lucas: And that’s a negotiation position you can never lose, provided you keep delivering. Tenure is cheap. Proof of value is expensive. Make sure your career portfolio reflects the latter. Luna: I think that’s the hardest part for people to accept. They want the prestige of the title without doing the hard work of proving the value. But the market is finally catching up to that illusion. Lucas: The market always corrects. Eventually, the labels fall off and only the substance remains. Those who built substance will thrive, while those who built paper crowns will have to figure out who they are all over again. Luna: A sobering thought. It makes you wonder how many leaders out there are just waiting for the next reorganization to expose the emptiness behind their corner office. Lucas: Probably more than we’d like to admit. But for the rest of us, it’s an invitation to dig deeper. To audit our own contributions, sharpen our diagnostic skills, and let the results speak louder than any job description ever could. Luna: Here’s to building a career that stands up to scrutiny, not just one that looks good on LinkedIn. I’ll take the substance over the slogan any day. Lucas: Agreed. And if you’re curious about how to apply this audit to your current role, we might explore some specific frameworks in our next session. Stay sharp.