3 ms·
What does being "senior" mean? I think it can entail many different things, from understanding the business, to work relationships with your stakeholders, to ar
by darkerside 8y ago
What does being "senior" mean? I think it can entail many different things, from understanding the business, to work relationships with your stakeholders, to architectural expertise, and on and on. Compared to these, knowing the latest and greatest updates to any given programming language is fairly minor, especially when it's not the one you're working with at that given moment. You can catch up JIT when you approach a given problem on a given language instead.
There's no reason to think you came be senior in multiple languages. Even if they were unrelated and separate, you could do it, it would just take multiples of time. But the fact is, they are related. Concepts apply, and actually enhance when you apply them, across different paradigms. It doesn't work in a way that easily conveyed in passing comments (otherwise being a senior might be way easier!), but as you progress, your pattern matching brain will start to see and expect certain things from the languages you work with. That's what makes you am effective programmer in a language. The sense that "there has to be a better way to do this". Not knowing immediately what that way is.
- harel 8y agoWhen I hire, I never say "senior" or "junior". I don't care for those titles. They mean nothing. I meant "senior" in the "conventional" sense to match the language to that of the original post.
- darkerside 8y agoLikewise. Is it not still worth defining the inherent characteristics, even if it's not a job title?
- harel 8y agoCharacteristics yes. As in what will one be doing during working hours, or what one delivers. However, I've seen "seniors" who really had no business being in software development. No idea how they claimed the "title". While at the same time I see what the industry labels as "Juniors" due to number of years in the job market, being so amazingly good at what they do that they put said seniors to shame. Yet the "business" needs those labels to justify a pay-grade of sorts. This is wrong in my opinion. Compensation should match the ability, not the number of years someone had the fortune of being employed at this or that capacity or how good they can blag through an interview.