This post self-admittedly fumbles as do many efforts at trying to tackle this question. The question is wrong: What makes a Senior Software Dev? That's a title,

This post self-admittedly fumbles as do many efforts at trying to tackle this question. The question is wrong: What makes a Senior Software Dev? That's a title, subject to the vagaries, needs, politics, and culture of a specific business or organization. We can and should be more precise. The real question is, what are the professional skill sets? And what do they look like at varying levels of competency? This post reminds me of the famous Joel Spolsky post from over a decade ago where he says the Senior Engineer is one who (1) is smart; and (2) gets things done. That's all you need is the gist. But these should be the table stakes, not the criteria. There's a whole bunch of acquired skills that are missing in these kind of answers. It's pretty easy to be smart and get things done. It takes years of practice to not make a mess of your work. To not build a money pit of a house whose plumbing is leaking behind the walls, whose structure is buckling. But the market is so short on these kind of professionals with real skills that we feel lucky if we've found one who meets this paltry criteria of smart, gets shit done, makes me not stress when I go on vacation...