4 ms·

Can someone describe what is a 'senior'? This might be controversial but I see senior title promotions being thrown around just for retention reasons, could it

by lalos 7y ago

Can someone describe what is a 'senior'? This might be controversial but I see senior title promotions being thrown around just for retention reasons, could it be possible that once you start looking for another 'senior' role at another company they have different expectations of that title? Not to mention you can obtain a 'senior' title by mastering your team's code base and who knows if that knowledge is transferable to X team and Y company.

umvi 7y ago
Most people self-label themselves "senior developers" after 5 years of experience. However, it also refers to developers at risk of ageism (i.e. over the age of 40 or 50)
- JudgeWapner 7y ago
  I know this sounds conspiratorial, but I think the leetcode tests are there to keep older people out. Because the whole "leetcode culture" stereotype of the junior/senior bachelor's CS student "grinding leetcode to land his Big-N job" means that younger grads are going to have seen these problems before and know how to rattle back the solutions without even thinking. Whereas an older dev is more likely to have a family or be secure in his/her years of experience to not waste time calculating the Big-O bullshit of reversing linked lists while merge sorting. They are more likely to have not seen the problem before and have to run the gauntlet with no practice. The motivation to discriminate is purely financial: a fresh grad is half the cost of a 20 year veteran.
  - cr0sh 7y ago
    > They are more likely to have not seen the problem before and have to run the gauntlet with no practice. The other possibility is that they have seen the problem before, fixed it, but didn't know it was called "calculating the Big-O bullshit of reversing linked lists while merge sorting"... I have 25+ years of experience; in a month I will turn 46. I don't have a CS degree, nor even a BS. I'm one of those devs who started basically fresh out of high school, and made a career out of it. I'm not even sure that is possible to do any longer. What I don't have is all of that CS knowledge and terminology. That isn't to say that I could solve all of those problems, or that I have encountered them, or come up with the correct or practical solutions. To be fair, I am always learning something new (and I like it that way). Also, to the "example" you give, I'd have to look up how to reverse a linked list and what a merge sort exactly was. Hopefully, there's some kind of standard library for both in the language I was using, but if I had to do it from scratch, right now off the top of my head, I couldn't do it. But I would know how to figure out and ask the right questions on how to do it, and go from there. And that's really one of the best skills as a developer to have, imho. There have been times where I have had a problem, tried to google for it - thinking it was a common issue - found that it was a common issue, with people asking the questions - but either no solutions, or worse: https://xkcd.com/979/ https://xkcd.com/979/ ...and so, by breaking the problem down, figuring out the answer to those questions (with either more googling, or implementing a custom solution), then pulling all those parts back into one coherent answer for the initial problem - that greater issue can be solved. Then I find a forum or something and post the solution there, so that future coders can at least have one good reference point, for as long as the forum exists. Nowadays, I'd probably put it on my github repo or something. Ultimately - there are a lot of "senior devs" (both in age and ability) who are currently in my place; people who didn't go the tradition educational route; people who were coding in their bedrooms on 8-bit home computers in assembler and BASIC because that's all we had at the time. We may or may not have run across those CS-level problems. If we did, we didn't know their names (much like not knowing the names for certain "patterns" - yet another similar thing) - but we still may have implemented solutions for them anyhow.
    - JudgeWapner 7y ago
      yeah I just grunt and snarl when I google and find a forum post from 2007. I wish there were an easy way to filter by date. I have faith in your problem solving abilities. I'm 35 and have a CS degree. The only time I've needed to know Big-O or how sorting algos worked was in college and during interviews. I've literally never been in a situation where the code functionally worked, but ran too slowly because of an inefficient algorithm (and this is with 13 years as a C++ developer). As for your situation, I suspect many shops would turn you down because you didn't rattle back the answer from memory. But the concern isn't that you aren't smart enough, it's that you're "old" and cost too much. The kid who memorized leetcode can be bought cheaply and discarded easily if it comes to light that he/she can't figure out how to solve a tech bug. If you "follow the money", these interviews could be seen as purely "cheap-but-comptetent people-filters". Because if an old programmer tried to sue them for age discrimination, they could point to leetcode as evidence that all the tests were administered "fairly".
chrisseaton 7y ago
My very first entry-level job was as a 'senior'. I don't think it means anything.
bluGill 7y ago
There are many levels. When you first get out of college you can write a 500 line program, and you get dropped you into a million line program. You get assigned a senior engineer to help you over the hump this takes a few years while you learn things that "everybody knows" but are not taught in school. Hopefully you get the first part of this over as an intern, but there is still more to learn. Once you get over that hump you can do okay on your own. You can be assigned to write code and you rarely need help (you will always need help, but this point not often). You are still learning, but overall you get things done. Senior engineer is you have been around for a enough years for a few of the following. Different companies value different things, and I've surely forgot something. I know engineers who never made the senior level because they refused to do something on this list even though if forced they were proven to do well. You start to teach the other junior engineers how to be better engineers. You start to see the larger picture of the whole system and how it should be changed for the better. You start to see how the work individual developers do fits together and get involved with planning on how it is done (breakdown and ordering) so that the project finishes on time. You become a specialist in something that is important to your company. This can be company specific, or a generic skill that applies elsewhere. (note that if the company doesn't realize how important the area is you won't be rewarded - preventing a problem the company never knew they had won't help)
mywittyname 7y ago
I've never really cared about it. I've oscillated between regular and senior positions so many times through my career that I think it's meaningless. Also, recruiters seem inclined to lie about titles, I've applied for high level roles but when the offer letter comes, the job title is regular engineer. I recent left a level 5 of 7 job for a title level 2 of 6 and still managed a 30% pay raise. On paper, it looks like a huge step back (Consulting Data Scientist to Software Engineer), but in practice, it's actually more of a technical leadership role.
Dirlewanger 7y ago
It's seriously as arbitrary as calling oneself a "software engineer" when all one is doing is maintaining WordPress instances. I've seen resumes of those only 2 years out of a defunct coding bootcamp label themselves senior.
robbrit 7y ago
Depends on where you go. In the Big Tech cos, you usually have this hierarchy: 1) Junior Engineer - can write basic code, but usually needs help for bigger projects or navigating a code base. 2) Engineer - Is pretty independent and can whip together what they need based on a design. 3) Senior Engineer - Can take a problem and build a design for it, can lead a team of lower-level engineers to properly implement the design. There are higher levels like staff and principal engineer, these ones typically are the same as senior engineers but are at larger scopes. At levels 3 and higher, you tend to write more English than code. You're there to decide what code gets written, rather than the specifics on how it gets written. That's what levels 1 and 2 do, they'll take your designs and implement them.
danwakefield 7y ago
https://twitter.com/gankro/status/1046438955439271936 https://twitter.com/gankro/status/1046438955439271936 Mozilla engineer leveling chart is a good example. There are probably other companies that expose the criteria they use as well.

by lalos 7y ago

umvi 7y ago

Most people self-label themselves "senior developers" after 5 years of experience. However, it also refers to developers at risk of ageism (i.e. over the age of 40 or 50)

JudgeWapner 7y ago
I know this sounds conspiratorial, but I think the leetcode tests are there to keep older people out. Because the whole "leetcode culture" stereotype of the junior/senior bachelor's CS student "grinding leetcode to land his Big-N job" means that younger grads are going to have seen these problems before and know how to rattle back the solutions without even thinking. Whereas an older dev is more likely to have a family or be secure in his/her years of experience to not waste time calculating the Big-O bullshit of reversing linked lists while merge sorting. They are more likely to have not seen the problem before and have to run the gauntlet with no practice. The motivation to discriminate is purely financial: a fresh grad is half the cost of a 20 year veteran.
- cr0sh 7y ago
  > They are more likely to have not seen the problem before and have to run the gauntlet with no practice. The other possibility is that they have seen the problem before, fixed it, but didn't know it was called "calculating the Big-O bullshit of reversing linked lists while merge sorting"... I have 25+ years of experience; in a month I will turn 46. I don't have a CS degree, nor even a BS. I'm one of those devs who started basically fresh out of high school, and made a career out of it. I'm not even sure that is possible to do any longer. What I don't have is all of that CS knowledge and terminology. That isn't to say that I could solve all of those problems, or that I have encountered them, or come up with the correct or practical solutions. To be fair, I am always learning something new (and I like it that way). Also, to the "example" you give, I'd have to look up how to reverse a linked list and what a merge sort exactly was. Hopefully, there's some kind of standard library for both in the language I was using, but if I had to do it from scratch, right now off the top of my head, I couldn't do it. But I would know how to figure out and ask the right questions on how to do it, and go from there. And that's really one of the best skills as a developer to have, imho. There have been times where I have had a problem, tried to google for it - thinking it was a common issue - found that it was a common issue, with people asking the questions - but either no solutions, or worse: https://xkcd.com/979/ https://xkcd.com/979/ ...and so, by breaking the problem down, figuring out the answer to those questions (with either more googling, or implementing a custom solution), then pulling all those parts back into one coherent answer for the initial problem - that greater issue can be solved. Then I find a forum or something and post the solution there, so that future coders can at least have one good reference point, for as long as the forum exists. Nowadays, I'd probably put it on my github repo or something. Ultimately - there are a lot of "senior devs" (both in age and ability) who are currently in my place; people who didn't go the tradition educational route; people who were coding in their bedrooms on 8-bit home computers in assembler and BASIC because that's all we had at the time. We may or may not have run across those CS-level problems. If we did, we didn't know their names (much like not knowing the names for certain "patterns" - yet another similar thing) - but we still may have implemented solutions for them anyhow.
  - JudgeWapner 7y ago
    yeah I just grunt and snarl when I google and find a forum post from 2007. I wish there were an easy way to filter by date. I have faith in your problem solving abilities. I'm 35 and have a CS degree. The only time I've needed to know Big-O or how sorting algos worked was in college and during interviews. I've literally never been in a situation where the code functionally worked, but ran too slowly because of an inefficient algorithm (and this is with 13 years as a C++ developer). As for your situation, I suspect many shops would turn you down because you didn't rattle back the answer from memory. But the concern isn't that you aren't smart enough, it's that you're "old" and cost too much. The kid who memorized leetcode can be bought cheaply and discarded easily if it comes to light that he/she can't figure out how to solve a tech bug. If you "follow the money", these interviews could be seen as purely "cheap-but-comptetent people-filters". Because if an old programmer tried to sue them for age discrimination, they could point to leetcode as evidence that all the tests were administered "fairly".

chrisseaton 7y ago

My very first entry-level job was as a 'senior'. I don't think it means anything.

bluGill 7y ago

There are many levels. When you first get out of college you can write a 500 line program, and you get dropped you into a million line program. You get assigned a senior engineer to help you over the hump this takes a few years while you learn things that "everybody knows" but are not taught in school. Hopefully you get the first part of this over as an intern, but there is still more to learn. Once you get over that hump you can do okay on your own. You can be assigned to write code and you rarely need help (you will always need help, but this point not often). You are still learning, but overall you get things done. Senior engineer is you have been around for a enough years for a few of the following. Different companies value different things, and I've surely forgot something. I know engineers who never made the senior level because they refused to do something on this list even though if forced they were proven to do well. You start to teach the other junior engineers how to be better engineers. You start to see the larger picture of the whole system and how it should be changed for the better. You start to see how the work individual developers do fits together and get involved with planning on how it is done (breakdown and ordering) so that the project finishes on time. You become a specialist in something that is important to your company. This can be company specific, or a generic skill that applies elsewhere. (note that if the company doesn't realize how important the area is you won't be rewarded - preventing a problem the company never knew they had won't help)

mywittyname 7y ago

I've never really cared about it. I've oscillated between regular and senior positions so many times through my career that I think it's meaningless. Also, recruiters seem inclined to lie about titles, I've applied for high level roles but when the offer letter comes, the job title is regular engineer. I recent left a level 5 of 7 job for a title level 2 of 6 and still managed a 30% pay raise. On paper, it looks like a huge step back (Consulting Data Scientist to Software Engineer), but in practice, it's actually more of a technical leadership role.

Dirlewanger 7y ago

It's seriously as arbitrary as calling oneself a "software engineer" when all one is doing is maintaining WordPress instances. I've seen resumes of those only 2 years out of a defunct coding bootcamp label themselves senior.

robbrit 7y ago

Depends on where you go. In the Big Tech cos, you usually have this hierarchy: 1) Junior Engineer - can write basic code, but usually needs help for bigger projects or navigating a code base. 2) Engineer - Is pretty independent and can whip together what they need based on a design. 3) Senior Engineer - Can take a problem and build a design for it, can lead a team of lower-level engineers to properly implement the design. There are higher levels like staff and principal engineer, these ones typically are the same as senior engineers but are at larger scopes. At levels 3 and higher, you tend to write more English than code. You're there to decide what code gets written, rather than the specifics on how it gets written. That's what levels 1 and 2 do, they'll take your designs and implement them.

danwakefield 7y ago

https://twitter.com/gankro/status/1046438955439271936 https://twitter.com/gankro/status/1046438955439271936 Mozilla engineer leveling chart is a good example. There are probably other companies that expose the criteria they use as well.