Meh, I'm trying to decide if articles like this are just irrelevant or are actively bad. The problem with this article is that it's describing the world as it

Meh, I'm trying to decide if articles like this are just irrelevant or are actively bad. The problem with this article is that it's describing the world as it should be and not as it is. What it's telling you is wrong. In my experience, becoming "senior" has nothing to do with anything other than leverage. There is no internal logic, no objectivity, no consistency. There is no SAT of programming skill. There is no way to quantify that can't be gamed. And even if there WERE an objective measure of programming skill, promotions have very little to do with skill. In my experience managers have a "goal ratio" in mind of senior/junior and try to keep the company at this ratio. They won't promote 3 people at once for example (yet no article ever says this?).