This seems a little underwhelming to me, it took several paragraphs and generic graphs to say: Senior developers are more independent, have more authority and i

This seems a little underwhelming to me, it took several paragraphs and generic graphs to say: Senior developers are more independent, have more authority and influence, and work more on architectural problems. I agree? Those are definitely necessary areas to master, but someone can achieve that without really being senior. What I think makes someone actual senior is how they deal with failure. Anyone can show up and handle a task when they know how to do it and execute it correctly. When things go wrong is when seniority is important. Someone who has failed and watched others fail, seen servers go down, fixed critical bugs in production, made terrible estimates, over promised and underdelivered will have the thick skin you need. Failing and watching others fail is invaluable experience and cannot be taught in schools/bootcamps. Approaching failures unemotionally, moving immediately to what the next steps need to be is a big part of what makes someone senior to me.