3 ms·

Why not? What do you think is wrong with this list?

• onion2k 8y ago
  The problem is that it defines the qualities of a senior without defining what a senior is except for 'someone with these qualities'. There's nothing wrong on the list if you think the list is the right definition of a senior developer. For example, if I say I'm a senior but I don't mentor juniors that presumably means I'm not really a senior, or maybe I'm a bad senior. Likewise if I choose not to do company politics. Or even if I choose not to prioritize code quality. The author would presumably accuse me of not being a real senior. It's kind of like the "no true Scotsman" fallacy but for developers.
  • dsego 8y ago
    Looks like good diagnostic criteria to me. If you are only y out of x, maybe you aren't a senior after all, or like you said, a bad senior, someone who's spent 10 years not growing and acquiring necessary skills to support your team and company. What would be the other definition then? Would you consider someone who doesn't have any of the listed abilities a senior?
    • onion2k 8y ago
      Would you consider someone who doesn't have any of the listed abilities a senior? Take someone like Linus Torvalds - he's famous for not being particularly nice to 'junior' developers who are new to the Linux ecosystem and don't follow the rules, he's not really a "specialized generalist" because he's always deep in the kernel and that's pretty much it, and he doesn't do politics to the point where he announced he was taking stock of the way he's treated people and trying to do better. Is he a senior developer? Of course he is. You don't get much more senior. It's easy to think of senior developers we've all worked with who don't meet some or even any of these criteria. Consequently, in my opinion, the criteria are not right in a lot of people's circumstances. They may be right in yours, but that's not very useful.