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Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?

218 points by lollipop25 10y ago

I have been doing web development for as long as I remember. I get by with tools that are needed for the job. I don't fancy the new and shiny. I just get things done fast and done properly. But I feel like I'm always a step behind the rest. There's this guy in the team knows how to operate Amazon, or this guy who that knows how to use Spring, or this guy that knows how to scaffold a Java app in minutes. Sure, I can write in the Java language but I don't know Spring by heart. I can build and run containers, but I don't know how to launch them in the cloud. When is one considered to be a "senior" developer? Is there a means to measure where I am? How do I get there?

scotty79 10y ago
I became a "senior" when my financial expectation were higher than the maximum salary of non-senior developer at a company that tried to hire me. They were forced to offer me position of senior developer and no other company after that dared to offer me lower position.
deleted 10y ago
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source99 10y ago
Check out this recent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12557149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12557149
peterkelly 10y ago
It's a pretty arbitrary term, but based on what you've said, especially "I don't fancy the new and shiny. I just get things done fast and done properly", would be enough for me to label you a senior programmer. Our industry is way too obsessed with fashion... sooner or later you realise that most of the "new" stuff is largely existing ideas re-hashed in a slightly different form. Senior programmers realise this and can pattern match to understand the role of various new technologies, and learn the details if and when necessary. How do you get there? You already are, you just don't realise it yet.
- DSteinmann 10y ago
  > but based on what you've said, especially "I don't fancy the new and shiny. I just get things done fast and done properly", would be enough for me to label you a senior programmer. I think that's wild speculation. That phrase could mean a number of things. It could mean they engage in the industry, explore new technologies and make educated decisions which balance the risks associated with adopting new technologies and, in some cases, choose to use technologies that are fit for purpose but are not necessarily bleeding edge. On the other hand it could mean they have failed to keep up with technological advancements and are using the wrong tools for the job, tools that can't deliver a modern web experience. He might be churning out shocking legacy code that someone else will have to clean up one day. Perhaps his employers are none the wiser and don't realize a different developer could deliver a better quality product in a much shorter time using the tools available today. Given OP's examples of not knowing "Amazon" or Java Spring, both of which are ancient technology in web years, I would speculate the OP might fall into the latter category. Another strong indicator of this: OP has been doing web development "as long as [they] can remember". You'd think his coworkers or employers would have told him he was a senior developer if he hadn't figured it out himself. Overall, insufficient information in the OP to make an assessment, but I would be very wary of pandering to someone's ego as it can do more harm than good.
  - vacri 10y ago
    "done properly" means not taking the shortest, technical-debt-laden path to success (amongst other things). It's a hallmark of a senior, in my opinion. Also, why would you know Amazon operations stuff if your job duties don't expose it to you? The OP was saying 'operate Amazon', not 'use Amazon APIs'.
  - jacques_chester 10y ago
    Both AWS and Spring have changed and grown a lot over the years. Spring Boot is pretty much a reinvention of the Spring developer experience and Spring 5 will be pushing reactive programming into the limelight. Disclosure: I work for Pivotal. So do many members of the core Spring team.
- 10y ago
supercoder 10y ago
When someone gives you the title.
BurningFrog 10y ago
It's mostly just a title on a business card and/or org chart. Some times it's given to people instead of money. Don't worry about the title. Worry about getting good at what you do, and an asset to your team and organization.
z3t4 10y ago
I would consider you a “senior” programmer? Mainly because you know that you do not know much. While a junior or intermediate programmer think they know everything. There are of course more to it, like when you are stuck on something; you ask the senior programmer, that will probably have solved it ten times in the past. Or if you want to know what the best method is to do this, you ask the senior programmer, that have done it hundreds of times and thus found out the optimal way, with all edge cases included. So I would say it's mostly about experience, and then expertise. Also, a senior programmer should have gone though at least two paradigm shifts.
- zumu 10y ago
  I'm interested in this 'two-paradigm shifts' rubric. Could you elaborate?
  - z3t4 10y ago
    Programming languages and best practices evolve. For example object oriented programming, functional programming, goto instructions, global variables, include files, module systems, classes, template languages, PHP, MVC, XML, JSON, unit tests, test driven development, Git, JavaScript frameworks, SQL, noSQL, sequential, asynchronous, multi-threaded, etc.
astdb 10y ago
One aspect that would separate a 'senior' engineer from the rest would be initiative, leadership and mentoring ability. These are the engineers who go the extra mile to ensure that the team gets stuff done, and assistance and guidance is provided where required. A senior developer isn't just someone who knows a lot of stuff, but has a time-honed wisdom as well, which they can parlay into their leadership and mentoring duties.
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  I like your definition because it is timeless and rings true. The same definition will apply in 10 or 20 years time when there are new fads in development processes, programming languages etc. I would add that the senior engineer has a mature approach to selecting/recommending tools and frameworks, based on what is most valuable for the business and the team, rather than was is cool, good for their career or whatever.
  - CaRDiaK 10y ago
    "selecting/recommending tools and frameworks, based on what is most valuable for the business and the team" This is so true, I would say it extends to style amongst other things also. Having worked seniors on teams who had to seemingly make problems "worthy" of their skill and time served. For example working on a large OO Monoliths where a senior started to add lots of "clever" functional code. When I started the question the reasoning behind it I got a lot of instant defensive flack off them because "it's a better way" and "I'm arguing against correctness" they didn't seem to want to understand that we had 50 mid level to junior devs who also had to support this who would require a lot of help to read or follow it, thus slowing the entire team. They didn't seem to care for the reasoning of it being better "for the team" to just carry on with the agreed OO standard. It's not that I thought they were wrong in what they had to say, just there is an appropriate time and a place and being able to make that call is just as if not more important than the style of functionality being added. I find such seniors can be toxic at times. In essence there is more to being a senior than just being a great coder.
    - 10y ago
navyad 10y ago
sometimes these title can be dangerous.
- Grangar 10y ago
  Why?
  - tinix 10y ago
    I don't know what parent was thinking of... but titles, to me, are dangerous because titles are not used the same between one organization and another, and expectations and assumptions as to the proficiency of individuals may not be met solely based on title alone. Titles can also be dangerous because people who are undeserving of them think they know everything... when in reality they don't know shit. Especially when someone is given a higher title in lieu of higher compensation, when the title may not even be deserved. I've seen "senior software engineers" that can't even write consistently styled code, full of off-by-one bugs, and other noob shit. And I've seen "junior developers" run circles around them. It's all subjective... Titles are bullshit, basically...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- collyw 10y ago
  My first (programming) job I was a senior programmer. It was an academic institute, and it was basically so i could be put into a decent junior level pay bracket. I didn't find it in any way harmful.
jkot 10y ago
In my experience: - you are technically competent - can handle design aspects of full stack (backend, persistence, frontend) - have enough credibility and confidence to say NO to business people - you can lead a small team of developers (2 to 5 people)
- klibertp 10y ago
  > - have enough credibility and confidence to say NO to business people This is the most important part. Other points you mention are about your skills and you can learn them. This one, however, is in major part about your reputation, which you need to earn. Going a step further, I'd say you're a "Senior" as soon as people around you start to treat you as one. You can be very knowledgeable but that won't be enough if you can't prove to others that your knowledge is relevant and solid.
jakecarpenter 10y ago
To me, it is about what they are able to create independently, and the value of the end product. Senior people have made the right mistakes, wasted weeks of time, and know what to avoid, what to embrace, and what to ignore. A senior dev can understand the requirements and figure out what is important and deliver something without a lot of external input.
- zamalek 10y ago
  > Senior people have made the right mistakes This really sums it up, almost every other answer could be seen as a consequence of this.
  - qznc 10y ago
    Do you have to make the right mistakes yourself?
    - rbanffy 10y ago
      It helps with getting the muscular memory in place. You can learn from other people's mistakes, but the pain you feel yourself will make you never forget it.
- mikekchar 10y ago
  I'm picky. For me that's an intermediate developer. What I want to see in a senior developer is that they make everybody else on the team more effective. As I've gotten older, I've started to appreciate how much farther a good developer can go rather than just these things. I think the kinds of things you talk about are things that most people can accomplish in 5-10 years. But how do you differentiate between that and someone with 20-30 years of experience? Because the industry has been expanding so fast, we have perpetually been in the situation where most programmers are younger. But I don't think it will be too long before you will see half your team having 20 years of experience. If you ask yourself, "How am I going to improve after I've worked 5-10 years" and "How much better can you get" I think it is instructive. My experience has been that you can get a lot better, but that it's very hard to see the difference from the perspective of being a junior or intermediate developer.
dvcrn 10y ago
I'm also agreeing with leadership and mentoring. Be able to make unbiased technical decisions, troubleshoot systems / apps and get up to speed on new projets independently fairly fast. Have confidence in what you do and don't ask about everything. A solid general code understanding is also needed in my opinion. This includes things like using documentation over googling everything. If I pair with a senior and he types "golang how to do x" on every problem, I probably wouldn't consider him senior. (Not saying googling is bad. Just don't be a copy-paste-from-stackoverflow engineer) With that, I also hate the term "senior engineer". I got friends with 3 years of work experience that are now "senior" because a company hired them under a senior position (basically more salary) and the companies after that just did the same because "well he already is a senior, right"? This also generates a strong in-balance inside the team with a hierarchy that shouldn't be there. I am usually advocating for getting rid of job titles and calling everyone just "Software Engineer" I am now 6-7 years into my career and don't consider myself senior. When people in interviews ask me what my career goal is, I usually mention I want to be able to consider myself senior as the next step.
- croon 10y ago
  > Have confidence in what you do... Heed your own advice. You might not like the current system of hierarchy, that's fine. And change it when/if you get the chance. But in the meantime, don't abstain from senior positions (and salaries) that others get just because you don't like a concept. Play inside the system until you can change it.
  - dvcrn 10y ago
    > But in the meantime, don't abstain from senior positions (and salaries) that others get just because you don't like a concept. Play inside the system until you can change it. Oh yeah, I don't. I am also applying on "senior" positions, but this is just my personal opinion on when I would consider someone / myself truly senior. Paycheck and job description aside.
meeper16 10y ago
When you begin to have "senior" moments when cutting code.
partycoder 10y ago
Engineer seniority has a lot of variance. Some do it based on years of experience, ranging from 5 to 10 years and that would differ from company to company. In my understanding, a senior engineer is an engineer that can contribute without the need for technical supervision. Now, not requiring supervision is different to leadership. A senior engineer is often an individual contributor, not necessarily a team technical leader.
ilaksh 10y ago
When they have to pay you more than the junior devs. Note that isn't necessarily because of skills or knowledge.
sakopov 10y ago
In my experience a senior developer is someone with 10+ years of experience in architecture and development and a pretty vast amount of accumulated knowledge. There are exceptions of course, but this seems to be fairly standard in my market in the Midwest.
TurboHaskal 10y ago
When you are valuable and ask for a raise but they cannot give the amount expected because it's already Q4 so they give you the senior title instead. It can happen even with two years of experience.
- _pmf_ 10y ago
  > When you are valuable and ask for a raise but they cannot give the amount expected because it's already Q4 so they give you the senior title instead. A misapplied case of carrot and stick; using the carrot to beat you down is not how it works!
- EGreg 10y ago
  Wait a sec, whats the significance of Q4? How do you think the timing works?
  - ghuntley 10y ago
    The budget has been consumed; business focused on making financial statements look good before being released to the public market for dissemination. At large corp scale, you'll experience shenanigans such as cancelling all flights/travel (unless it has C-level approval) even if it means a loss of potential future sales revenue / blocking entire teams who end up getting paid to sit there and do nothing until the quarter ends.
    - douche 10y ago
      The other side of this is that departments with leftover budget will cast around wildly for anything plausible to spend it on, lest they have their budget slashed next year, "use it or lose it" style. The company I work for has made more than a couple big sales in December from this phenomenon. Sometimes they never even deploy the software.
      - ErrantX 10y ago
        Trouble with salary raises are; you do effectively lose it because you can't take that raise back next year ;)
Steeeve 10y ago
My personal definitions: Junior: Can do it with guidance and/or clear and non-transitional specs Developer: Takes the ball and runs with it. Can walk a customer through requirements gathering and make recommendations. Will help guide junior developers. Senior Developer: Can architect a system well. Can communicate equally well between executives, salespeople, management, and end users. Can and will mentor lower level developers. Can explain concepts on the fly to lower level developers and walk them through the development process in terms they understand. Takes initiative at learning new technologies.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  > Can walk a customer through requirements gathering and make recommendations Well yeah, I can do that, but isn't that normally the business analyst's job?
  - duaneb 10y ago
    It really depends on the size of the company and how sales are done. Also, maybe it's more about understanding the product? Just a thought.
  - tukelully 10y ago
    It depends on the organization.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    Change it to "can walk the business analyst through requirements generation etc" (Yes, I am currently frustrated with our product management)
  - Steeeve 10y ago
    Not that they have to do it as part of their day-to-day, but that they can communicate well enough to do so if needed. It's a given that the development skills are there in my mind, but to go beyond "junior", I believe someone has to have a strong enough understanding of things that they can both communicate well and be able to recommend solutions rather than just implement them. Just my personal opinion. Based on environment, this may or may not be a good gauge.
noonespecial 10y ago
Skill is knowing how to operate Amazon, "senior" is knowing when you probably shouldn't.
huntTheSnark 10y ago
When you get just as snarky with your co-workers face-to-face as you would with people on the internet. If you've been getting away with it, you're probably reaching a level of seniority that deserves a promotion.
gambiting 10y ago
I work at a major games company. For us, a "senior" is someone who can, on their own, design, implement, document and maintain a feature. An "intermediate" is someone who can do the above but with mentor help from a senior. Above that, it depends what you want to do. If you fancy managing people, you can be a team/tech lead, or if you don't, then there is the title of "expert"(only a handful of programmers who worked here 10+ years have those).
- sjclemmy 10y ago
  I quite like that definition. It's based on the ability to independently deliver value.
vassilevsky 10y ago
When you learn Erlang.
- bshimmin 10y ago
  Do you become a lead developer when you've mastered K?
mmirza984 10y ago
Well usually companies have their own view on seniority, and it could include how many years you have been there, but for what its worth for me a senior developer is a person who has experience with all stages of application development, which should imply that she/he can: - design and understand client/server architecture, - write code using best practices that is clean and maintainable, - knows database design and programming - understands design patterns and knows how to not abuse them, - knows how to deploy application and has experience with CI. - knows how to write proper unit test. To sum it up I will use .NET as an example, in my eyes when someone says I am a senior .NET developer I assume that she/he has: - used UMLs, - knows how to write proper OOP and understands SOLID, - can use MS SQL and some kind of ORM, - uses some of the testing frameworks (e.g. NUnit), - knows how to deploy application whether on IIS, or install it with ClickOnce for example. - know how to handle source versioning (TFS or whatever is your poison) I probably missed a few things, but that's about it for me. If a senor doesn't have these skills I assume first that she/he has great knowledge of company business which would make her/him a valuable asset, or that she/he got lucky, or it's a crappy company :)
- rjbwork 10y ago
  >- used UMLs Like unified modeling language?
  - mmirza984 10y ago
    Yes, UML diagrams. One should be able to read and understand them.
    - FLUX-YOU 10y ago
      How hard is that to learn though? That seems like a fraction of the cost it takes you to learn OOP/SOLID/etc.
      - mmirza984 10y ago
        UML is pretty straight forward, and I rarely saw it being used in companies because of many reasons (spaghetti monster being the one :D), but I mentioned it because I'd expect that one showed now how to read them, since you will find them in literature (if you read any book on design patterns they are there).
amcrouch 10y ago
To me the senior title should be applied depending on the way you approach your role and not how you code. As others have mentioned as a senior you can be left to implement changes without guidance, you will clean up issues as you come across them instead of leaving it to others, you suggest improvements, you make time to mentor and guide more junior members of the team, you know how to relate to muggles and you act like a team captain. Knowing lots of different hosting environments and languages comes with experience. The approach you take to your role show's your all rounded skill set.
_Codemonkeyism 10y ago
As a CTO or team lead senior programmers to me were those who understood the business and the businesss side of things and could make trade offs (beside the technical experience). Another aspect that seperates seniors is their ability to talk and present to senior or top management.
sigi45 10y ago
You have seen a few projects and different teams. A few years of practical experience is necessary.
ghuntley 10y ago
Leadership and mentoring. When they can write great documentation (without prompting) and http://softwareleadweekly.com/ http://softwareleadweekly.com/ becomes their favourite weekly read. When they come to you with improvements outside of the technical domain on how to improve shop and even better when it's just a side chat about what they have already improved and what went well, what didn't and what they learned (self-awareness). When they stop treating promotions like mechanical checkboxes.
mping 10y ago
Depends if its senior with a specific technology (ex: senior rails programmer) or generally senior programmer. I consider senior someone who: - knows how to mentor juniors - knows his way around tech, even if he never used a particular product - most important, can communicate effectively with stakeholders and devs. The best "senior" is the one who nags everyone to get stuff moving forward. Doesnt mind getting his hands dirty and going by people's desks to make sure the team delivers. You may need to brush up your marketing skills in order to promote yourself as senior. Don't get impressed by people that know stuff.
SpendBig 10y ago
Being a senior developer is not just having a great skillset. You need to be able to manage your work in a way the business values it. You need to interact with all sorts of people in the company you work for and help other teammembers rwaching the same level as you. Our senior developer is always thinking about the business value when estimates are made vs quality. He even does not do alot of softwae development, but is always asked to help out other developers, system engineers and even management to give advice. To be able to do that in a professional way, your vision plus skillset makes you a senior imo. Not just the years of experience and amount of skills you have.
philbo 10y ago
This is kind of tangential, but a couple of jobs ago I decided to actively purge all job titles from my CV/resumé. Officially, I'm currently a senior and have been in the past, but there have also been jobs in between where there was no "Senior" prefix in the title. My main problem with thinking about developer roles in this way is that there's obviously no standard for what constitutes seniority. It varies between and sometimes within organisations. Advertising it, glorifying it, striving to achieve it, all take the focus away from far more interesting things that you can say about yourself and aim for. Are you working on interesting projects? Are you learning new stuff? Are you being challenged technically? Are the other people on your team good developers? Do you enjoy what you do? Seniority as an end in itself seems like a hollow objective to me. And making a big deal about it in a recruitment context takes the focus away from more meaningful topics.
k__ 10y ago
In Germany this isn't a thing, but when applying for a few jobs in the UK most employers considered me senior after that interview. Still didn't get the jobs, because I failed their programming tests. Since I started programming my work-behaviour changed from asking people all the time when I don't know what's happening to reading their code. I think developers are considered senior if they can work on their own. Like, if you get all the engineering practices of designing, implementing and maintenance done without much help.
captn3m0 10y ago
>The final stage of programmer evolution is the Finder. These folks are considered experts in their chosen domain (and are prudent about others). Writing Finder job descriptions is an exercise in futility. As my boss put it: “I can’t tell you the specifics of what you’ll be doing here because your first task will be to figure that out.” A Finder will be able to anticipate problems before they happen, usually because they’ve been in that situation before. From https://rkoutnik.com/2016/04/21/implementers-solvers-and-finders.html https://rkoutnik.com/2016/04/21/implementers-solvers-and-fin..., which is a really great read.
- Terr_ 10y ago
  Reminds me of Cringely's metaphor of "Commandos, Infantry, and Police" [0]. Not quite the same, though: The military analogy assumes that there are a fundamental tradeoffs between strengths and weaknesses (esp. getting-it-done vs. doing-it-right.) In contrast, it looks like "Finders" aren't described as having any particular weaknesses relative to Implementors. [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and-police/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and-police/
misframer 10y ago
I really liked this comment by @stray [0] from a similar Ask HN from a few months ago. That thread was titled "Ask HN: What makes a Senior Dev". Mistakes, rewrites, late nights, firefights, and deadlines. Core dumps, memory leaks, hardware faults, and plain bad luck. Big O, data flow, always learning -- or out you go. Manager metrics, schedules hectic, methodology hegelian dialectic. Taking the heat, feature creep, open office, uncomfortable seat. Holy wars, revolving doors, carpal tunnel, all you can take? There's always more. Fucking suits, random reboots, and the ever present "thousand language stare". Oh yeah, pressure -- lots of pressure. And time, time, time. Metric shitloads of time. Time, man. You gotta do your fucking time. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11341567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11341567
- jakobloekke 10y ago
  That's just beautiful!
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  There was a question a week ago about junior developers. mrmekon [1] gave an excellent answer: It depends on when and why I'm defining it, but my guidelines are more based on how they work than what they know: * Junior developer - Will not produce much business value if left alone, and may produce nothing at all. Requires supervision. * Intermediate developer - Will produce something if left alone, but not necessarily what the business most needs. Needs minimal supervision, but defined goals. * Senior developer - Will produce immediate business value if completely ignored. The domain and language don't matter for these, really. A Senior Go developer is going to produce immediate business value if you suddenly throw him/her into a Lisp team, too. Just slower. Between the two answers I think they have it covered. Now some businesses will call people senior after they've been there 5 years, but they might still be a junior in capability. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12557542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12557542
  - oldprogrammer2 10y ago
    This is very much the perspective I have taken over the years. When I'm hiring a senior developer, I'm looking for someone who will step in and own the project they're given. If I had to pick a single expression, especially one recognizable to this crowd, I would say it is someone who can execute. I also tend to view senior developers almost as internal consultants (good ones) because they should be willing and able to step away from they keyboard and talk to a stakeholder to discern what the business really needs without needing someone else to act as an intermediary. Where I do disagree just a little bit with mrmekon, is that I tend to look for people who have experience with the necessary stack. I would be hesitant to hire a senior developer for a C#/MVC position if they have (broadly) never used C# or never done web development, for example. Modern stacks have a lot of moving parts, and I would prefer senior developers to understand how to troubleshoot, tune, upgrade, test, and deploy on the needed stack. These are things that a very strong developer could remediate within a few projects, though, which is why I only slightly disagree with mrmekon.
Nursie 10y ago
When you have to talk to a customer. Seriously, I worked for a place where thay was the rule. Titles are somewhat meaningless. Apparently I'm a consultant these days...
chx 10y ago
Sr can tell to jr: I have already made the mistake you are about to make.
fowlerpower 10y ago
I think a senior engineer has to know a few things. They have to have the basics we all need as engineers simply to pass the interview process. The data structures and algorithms, Big O and be able to walk through systems they have worked on in the past and the trade offs they made and why. Then on top of the basics I look for a few more things. Usually the understanding of multi threading, multi process, asynchronous programming is very different between junior and senior folks. I dive into distributed systems and see if they have any exposure. I dive into multi paradigms and how deep their knowledge is in their respective toolset they have listed on their resume. I don't necessarily think you need to know multi threading in and out, or distributed systems in and out, or your tool set in and out. You certainly need to know one or two of those though. You need to have some body of work you can speak very well to, this is a huge indicator of seniority. Mentorship and all the other things that go with that help differentiate as well between junior and senior. I don't think there is a hard rule anywhere. Different folks will look for different things and at least where I work those things I listed are very important differentiators.
jobvandervoort 10y ago
At GitLab we have a formal definition for senior engineers [0] (where we accept merge requests, of course). 1. Technical Skills a. Great programmers: are able to write modular, well-tested, and maintainable code b. Know a domain really well and radiate that knowledge 2. Leadership a. Begins to show architectural perspective b. Leads the design for medium to large projects with feedback from other engineers 3. Code quality a. Leaves code in substantially beter shape than before b. Fixes bugs/regressions quickly c. Monitors overall code quality/build failures d. Creates test plans 4. Communication a. Provides thorough and timely code feedback for peers b. Able to communicate clearly on technical topics c. Keeps issues up-to-date with progress d. Helps guide other merge requests to completion e. Helps with recruiting [0]: https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/developer/#senior-developers https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/developer/#senior-developers
- MikeTV 10y ago
  FYI: beter -> better
- kewpiedoll99 10y ago
  I like this a lot. It's organized and measurable. Follow-on question, how do you get there? As an aside, I often feel that being senior involves confidence.
aburry 10y ago
I would say it is about sphere of influence. Are you inward looking and focused on developing your own competencies? Junior. Are you mentoring people on your team? Intermediate. Are you providing direction for the company or the industry at large? Senior.
lmilcin 10y ago
I think that people emphasize knowledge too much. I think knowledge is a by-product of making senior developer. Senior developer is about wisdom as opposed to knowledge. Juniors may learn things quickly, but what distinguishes senior is that you can trust them to do the right thing which is not always technical problem. I like to compare this to asking children a question that they don't know the answer to. Some children will feel they have to come up with some answer and some will say that they don't know. Junior developers too frequently feel pressured to produce a result and they don't see how saying that they don't know something is making them closer to producing anything. Senior developers know from their experience that this is just as important to know when you don't know something as it is important to know things. They will not feel too bad about not knowing something because they know the alternative is even worse.
edw519 10y ago
Whatever it takes to best satisfy your customer. That's it. No, I'm not being snarky, so hear me out... I've met and worked with many developers over the years and lots of them have become very good with technology and user domains, but still have struggled to "crack the digital ceiling". These are brilliant people who have achieved serious things, but are still not recognized by the big decision makers as "senior", whatever that means. Then there are a select few who always get the big gigs, big money, and big reputations. Why? Because they best satisfy their customers. There are lots of non-technical skills that help them, but I think the biggest is their ability to separate the signal from the noise and zero in of the most important things to work on and to get them done. It's almost like they have "satisfiability radar". And this rarely requires any special technical or people skills. All they really have to learn is a good grasp of the technology, a deep understanding of the customer's domain and business, and the ability to get things done through others. And how did they develop them? By good old fashioned grunt work, whether digging into the bowels of the system or getting up off their butts and relentlessly going around finding out whatever they needed to know. Once you've figured out the best thing(s) to work on to best satisfy your customers, got them onto the decision makers' radar, and found a way to get them done one way or the other, you are no longer a dev or even a senior dev. You're now a digital rainmaker, the most senior dev of all.
- noxToken 10y ago
  I'll drink to this comment. Ever met that person who earned their senior title through brute force rather than commendation who can talk circles about technology and architecture surrounding the project(s), but when there's a meeting with the business folk, they sit there listlessly with no input? They're a god among humans to the dev team. They're just a voiceless workhorse to the client. Although the name doesn't explicitly state it, I think a senior dev needs to skillfully interact with the client. Kicking ass at the keys and architecture is a given necessity. Catering to the client, delivering what is needed, truthfully and tactfully explaining why something is or isn't feasible, and all those other soft skills that many developers aren't known for is an undersold boon.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  Many companies have a separate "Product Manager" role for that business, so that the brilliant engineers can brilliant SENIOR implementors. Have a dedicated professional worry about the customer impact, product requirements, etc., along with other non-programming tasks that many developers understandably prefer not to get bogged down in.
intellectronica 10y ago
A "senior" is a someone who provides about 10X in value and earns about 2X in salary :) More seriously, except for very big and very hierarchical orgs where tenure is overly important, people will tend to give you the senior title when your work is indispensable. To be indispensable you don't need to know by heart this technology or the other - you need to identify what are the things that bring the most value and work hard at delivering them.
known 10y ago
Depends on % of code you reuse.
jkingsbery 10y ago
As others have said, if you're asking about the title specifically, it depends on the company. I was one of those "Senior" developers when I was in my mid twenties at a start-up, whereas for my current company it's actually pretty hard to get the title "Senior Software Development Engineer." My experience is generally the people I recognize as having deserved the title don't _simply_ just code. Not only do they write code that works and delivers the feature in a timely manner, they make it so the next 3 features to come out in that area can be done quickly by junior developers. Not only do they code, but they make everyone around them better coders. Not only do they code, but they also think strategically about what the team needs to keep going two years from now. Not only do they deliver the project, they get everyone excited about delivering the project. I once read someone say "there's a difference between having ten years of experience, and having the same year of experience ten times." Time is a factor, but it's also whether you've exposed yourself broadly and deeply to new technologies, approaches and experiences so that when you are in a new situation (technical or otherwise), you have patterns for how to deal (or the self awareness to know that you don't know how to deal). So, part of it is time, but part of it is spending that time wisely.
- imaffett 10y ago
  I'll second this. Titles vary across company size, and even then are different from company to company (e.g a Principal Engineer at Intel would not make PE at Google). I was a Staff Software Engineer at Intel (level above Senior Software Engineer) but now my title is Senior Front End Developer at a startup ;)
- aryamaan 10y ago
  So, how come one gets so many years of experience?
robotnoises 10y ago
Fun story, I just found out yesterday during my annual performance review than I am a Senior Software Engineer. No, not a promotion, but rather I have always been one. It was simply an HR mistake that my title did not reflect it and no one realized that I didn't know. So to answer the original question: it is impossible to know.
- citizens 10y ago
  Not quite the same, but I found out a few months back that when I was promoted last year HR wrote it down as a demotion.
- jajern 10y ago
  Or, rather than have to give you a promotion HR said, "hey, let's just make them think they were always a Senior Engineer this whole time!"
balabaster 10y ago
You will never have enough time to learn everything and be all things to everyone. Get this idea out of your head right now or you will never find happiness. Senior is the difference between keeping your eye on the big picture and helping to move your team forward to the objective in a timely manner to achieve the business objectives that drive the company forward. It's the ability to step up and lead your team when called for. It's the ability to make decisions balanced between what's technically right in the short and longer term without losing sight of the end goal. Never forget that you're not paid to deliver software just to deliver amazing software. The software you deliver is a tool, a means to an end. That may be to cut costs, it may be to increase profits, it may be the lifeblood that your company's stock price hangs on. A junior developer may be amazing with the tools provided and may have some good architectural sense. They may need some, or a lot of hand holding. A junior developer generally has their head in the code most of the time and may but probably shouldn't be expected to understand or care about the objectives of the business as a whole. You give them a feature to develop and can largely expect that they will need all of the dependencies to hand. They may have a good handle on debugging and unit, integration and functional testing or this may be something they need to learn. This is OK. An intermediate developer can be given objectives regarding code and architecture and left to their own devices and trusted to deliver on their objectives in a timely manner. By this time, you should expect to at least understand the business objectives and be able to think critically about the code they're providing in order to meet those objectives. I would expect an intermediate developer to have enough of a clue about architecture that handed a feature requirement and some architectural direction for how to integrate it, they could architect it competently and integrate it and know where to go to ensure any dependencies are satisfied. They will have a good handle on debugging and at least unit and integration testing. They may have a good handle on functional testing and debugging production code. A senior developer is someone in my mind who who can be trusted with the business objectives, can chase down architectural advice, from an architect or UX input or whatever else they need to get the job done; they can communicate effectively with stakeholders and the business; they can be expected to dig in and fill any gaps that would prevent delivery or cause problems in production. They can delegate pieces appropriately and deliver what is expected in the allotted time frame. They may be someone that can step up as team lead/team manager, or lead from the back and be the glue that gives the team cohesion. They can be expected to have the discipline to take care of things properly when nobody is watching. They can be expected to help debug production issues and be among the first to muck in when the shit hits the fan to help resolve production issues. So you see, the difference between junior, intermediate and senior doesn't have an awful lot to do with code or tools. You will expected to either be or become a master of your tools whether junior, intermediate or senior. You will be expected to do this on the fly, on the job, regardless of everything else that is going on around you. This is part of being in this industry. You will be expected to keep up with the codebase and dig in and understand it at whatever level you're at. These are all prerequisites for your job as a developer, they are not a prerequisite for your title. There's a big difference. If you want to make the jump from junior to senior quickly, here's my advice: Find the most gnarly difficult problems your company is having and dig in and help solve them consistently. When you've put yourself through the wringer; when you've suffered the late nights, the stress, the anguish about whether or not you've got what it takes to do this job. Do this until you get to a point where you think you've seen every last problem that could possibly occur, and despite that, something else hits you out of left field and knocks you clean off your feet. Do this until when this happens, you just get back up and keep going. When you get knocked down and get back up when everyone else would say fuck it, when you can be trusted to make shit happen when everyone else would say fuck it - this is when you can call yourself a senior developer. "Out of the 39 000 men and women that make up the United States Coast Guard there are only 280 rescue swimmers. This is because we are the Coast Guard's elite. We are the best of the best. When storms shut down entire ports, we go out. When hurricanes ground the United States Navy, we go out. And when the holy Lord himself reaches down from heaven and destroys his good work with winds that rip houses off the ground, We. Go. Out." - Ben Randall, The Guardian Live by example.
gibb0n 10y ago
1) When you drop everything you are doing to mentor other developers 2) When you get asked by the business to do something you question what they are asking and the motivation, and then determine the best course of action based on their motivation rather than delivering the specific task they asked. That's it really, it's nothing to do with your coding ability but more to do with your mentoring ability and problem solving skills. This is what is valuable to your colleagues and the business. Any answer related to coding ability is missing the point, it's important, but after a few years most people are the same programming level - it's just some people can help at the team or business level which is what makes you senior.
ta998877 10y ago
This is by far the best article I've ever read on the subject. http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engineer/ http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engi...
kasey_junk 10y ago
None of those things sound like things I correlate with being a senior developer. Knowing any particular set of skills isn't what I look for anyway. To me the things that make a senior developer are: 1) you give them a project, even an ambiguous or large ones, and expect it will work out fine. 2) they have been around enough different situations that they likely aren't going to be thrown for a loop by new challenges. 3) they mentor their fellow less senior developers. To get there you need 2 things: 1) bare time, you just have to put in the time 2) variety of projects - if all you have is a bunch of time on the same problem you are unlikely to have developed the breadth of knowledge you need.
jwaldrip 10y ago
A senior developer doesn't say things like "I don't know how", they simply figure it out and do it. A true senior developer is fearless, but also pragmatic.
jjn2009 10y ago
I read some where the definition to be as a software engineer who's primary role is to reduce risk. This sounds like a solid benchmark to me since this usually entails that although you may not have a lot of knowledge about the latest JavaScript framework but instead have deep cs fundamentals knowledge which would allow you to mitigate software risks in most environments.
chrisseaton 10y ago
My very first developer job after graduating was a 'senior member of technical staff' so who really knows.
anonymoose321 10y ago
After 60?
ohgh1ieD 10y ago
I guess ... Once you realise that you don't want to be a senior or a developer at all.
squozzer 10y ago
Senior = most senior dev in the building. AKA Designated Survivor.
mizchief2 10y ago
When your teammates ask you questions more than you ask them questions.
stevesun21 10y ago
I think a lot of programmers stucked into programming language/framework trap – keep learn new lanaguages and new frameworks to make yourself believe you have more exp, but this just make your skill more like learn drive different brand cars. Even myself in this trap for really long time. The true power to make you senior is how you train your brain to think and abstract. This will boost your capability of design rather than just coding
Prad 10y ago
Senior developer is just very difficult to define. You could define it based on the amount of time worked at a certain job, your skills, your ability to mentor. The definition could be different for various businesses and their employees.
aisofteng 10y ago
Based on my experience at about five different successful companies, a senior engineer is not someone who has a title declaring them as such but is a person you go to when considering something completely new that needs to be created from scratch because you know he could do it if asked to, do it in a way that will leave something another team can pick up if necessary, and do it well.
wmu 10y ago
I like this joke: A junior programmer thinks he knows everything. An intermediate programmer thinks he knows nothing. A senior programmer hates computers. > But I feel like I'm always a step behind the rest. Don't look at things in this way, low self-esteem is the worst you can get. There are always people better than us, but their skills and knowledge weren't conjured up. Even extremely talented people need time to learn. And if you don't feel like learning new things may make you better, why to feel guilty? If you're not a Java programmer, why to feel bad because you don't know Spring or other details perfectly? You wrote you do things fast and correctly. So you're better than, say, 90% developers who work slow and produce crap. :)
christouphair 10y ago
Assess the new and shiny technologies and learn the ones that seem promising. 1 year later new and shiny will become the standard, there will be thousand of beginners and you'll be one of the few "senior" developers on that technology. Of course you'll already be learning the new and shiny that will become the standard 1 year later.
DracheZahn 10y ago
When you salary demand exceeds the threshold of a standard programmer.
pastorelli 10y ago
When you can build and operate a multiple-cloud system using only assembly and gwbasic...
pastorelli 10y ago
When you can build and operate a multiple-cloud system using only assembly and gwbasic...

wvh 10y ago

That's also my experience. "Senior" is little more than a random title in most companies I worked for. It can be someone in their early twenties who just happened to have worked for 2 years on one product, even if it's their first job. It's frustrating at first to join a new company as someone who is older and has many more years of experience, then you remind yourself it's just a random title and try not to get hung up over it. Like many symbols of status, it's a pretty empty shell. If someone like Donald Knuth would be forced due to economic circumstances to join a trendy web start-up, he'd be a junior working under a twenty-something senior with little more than some Javascript and MongoDB knowledge. The whole thing's silly, really.

Shanea93 10y ago
Anecdotally, I feel like this is how my older peers see me. I've been working (professionally) in this industry since I was 16 years old, I got my first job as a junior after tinkering with computers since I was 8 years old. At the age of 23, I've found it very difficult to earn the respect of the people around me because of my age. I have the title of senior developer because I've had experience working on scalability issues and complex service based infrastructures, but many of my peers who are my age and recently graduated university and are still in their first junior roles often act like I haven't earned it - despite me graduating with a part-time degree in software engineering (okay, it's not computer science, but I'm still glad I did it.) My point is that while age is generally a good indicator of knowledge and ability, it's not the be-all-and-end-all.
- kaendfinger 10y ago
  I've been afraid of this. I've been working at a company for over 2 years. I'm 17, started here right after I turned 15. I've worked on many high profile projects. I've experienced a lot of respect, even with my age, but I don't want that to fade away in years to come.
  - Shanea93 10y ago
    You're probably going to encounter a lot of imposter syndrome imposed on you by the people around you - ignore it, you're just following a different track to the rest of your peer.
- deepwave 10y ago
  Don't worry about what others say or feel. You have an audience of two: yourself first and the man who writes your check. If you are adding value, you're doing it right. You are either a cost center or a profit center. Be the profit center and you will never want for a job. I'm almost 50 and still in the game. If I'm honest, I still worry from time to time about being irrelevant, but if I'm still adding value, and I am, then what the other IT people around me think doesn't matter. Add value, learn as you go, gain in wisdom and understanding and you will always be cash-flow positive. Don't make the mistake that so many do that you have to be working on something cutting edge or popular. Those jobs are nice, but I've learned--at least for myself--that I prefer the maintenance jobs. I enjoy taking something and making it better, even if it's just a quick fix, like two lines of code. Own everything you do. Be proud of your work. You're still young with plenty of time to get where you will be going. Don't be in a rush to "prove yourself" to anyone but yourself and the man writing your check. Don't listen to naysayers, don't get trapped in the mindset that only the new, darling languages are worth investing in. Good programming skills are not language specific. Learn what you can. Use the correct tool for the job. Don't be a method man. Be the profit center.
- rafaquintanilha 10y ago
  Curiosity: are you from US? Is software engineering seen as less valuable than computer science? I'm asking this because for me software engineering is a more complete discipline and would encompass pretty much everything computer science does.
  - Shanea93 10y ago
    I'm from the United Kingdom, where Software Engineering is seen as a lesser degree to Computer Science, in the same way that building CRUD applications is popularly seen as lesser than compiler design.
  - justinlardinois 10y ago
    In the US, degree programs actually called "software engineering" are few and far between; most software engineers who are college educated have a computer science degree. It's also worth noting that the term "software engineer" isn't regulated here, while other engineering titles are.
    - pitaj 10y ago
      > term "software engineer" isn't regulated here, while other engineering titles are No they aren't. Unlike in Canada, you can give yourself any title without actually having a license in that profession, as long as you aren't being fraudulent in your claim.
      - justinlardinois 10y ago
        According to Wikipedia, some US states regulated some engineering titles. It's not really specific but here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_engineering#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_en...
- marktangotango 10y ago
  Sorry, sounds a bit like you're copping an attitude here. There's a lot more to software developement than any one or two things (scaling issues? complex infrastructures?). Don't be complacent and think because you've done X, you know all about Y and Z. I once worked with a guy who started with a company at age 16, did a lot of stuff, wrote a lot of code (went to work for amazon after that actually). Turned out a lot of the things he did, although valuable in the moment to make the sale, were terrible for the long term viability of the product. This kids unguided decisions literally set the company back years when growth took off, and the app couldn't scale, and security holes were gaping. Just be wary of thinking you know it all, this applies to everyone, regardless of age or experience.
alain94040 10y ago
Gartner's Hype Cycle also applies to senior engineers. After 2 years of experience, you feel so much smarter than when you just started. You feel you've made it to senior. But another 5 years later, you notice how little you really knew. You become really senior at 10+ years. Just like the hype cycle.
RyanHamilton 10y ago
>>If someone like Donald Knuth would be forced due to economic circumstances to join a trendy web start-up, he'd be a junior working under a twenty-something senior with little more than some Javascript and MongoDB knowledge To play devils advocate, why wouldn't Donald Knuth be the junior given that scenario? In that position he may actually know less relevant knowledge than the junior. I mean many startup/crud apps don't require advance algorithmic knowledge, more front end dev and ability to deliver relevant business value. I wouldn't expect that junior to join knuths team and be put in charge, why should we expect the reverse? Given time yes, If Knuth is more intelligent he could become better at startup relevant work, then he should be more "senior" not before.
- danblick 10y ago
  There's also "firm-specific human capital". Some knowledge is hard to bring with you. https://www.britannica.com/topic/firm-specific-human-capital https://www.britannica.com/topic/firm-specific-human-capital