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The definition of “senior” is vague and subjective. When you try to say objective things such as “6-8 years to become senior”, that’s meaningless because “senio

The definition of “senior” is vague and subjective. When you try to say objective things such as “6-8 years to become senior”, that’s meaningless because “senior” is undefined.

aronpye 6y ago
Obviously becoming a senior engineer shouldn’t be based on tenure alone. In my experience, 6-8 years is roughly how long it takes to acquire enough skills, both technical, people, business, and safety in order to become responsible for a piece of work. Being a senior engineer at Facebook where your responsible for making sure Cat memes load more quickly, and a senior engineer for an industrial control systems company making weapons guidance systems are totally different levels of responsibility. But, job titles are often transferable and should be better regulated across the industry.
- geofft 6y ago
  And in my experience it takes two, if you're good at what you do. You probably get more responsibility for systems that deeply affect people's lives and the world around us as a new grad at Facebook than as a mechanical engineer, which is probably part of it. And you probably do pick up more skills about building reliable systems, threat modeling, product planning, etc., all of which would be transferrable to other types of engineering. It's unfair that people working on a global CDN can see the results of their work in seconds and people working on a military weapons contract see the results of their work in years, but it's true.
- whymauri 6y ago
  >Being a senior engineer at Facebook where your responsible for making sure Cat memes load more quickly, this strikes me as an unnecessarily rude dismissal of the difficulty of engineering at scale this might sound crazy, but some people are actually just good at their jobs and will, naturally, progress quicker than others.
  - riffraff 6y ago
    I interpreted that more as a difference in the potential problems you may cause rather than the skills required, as GP referred to "responsibility". If FB goes down, people waste less time online[0], if a guidance system fails people may die. [0] yes, of course there are people whose livelihood depends on cat memes, but I'm making a generic example.
    - willcipriano 6y ago
      > If FB goes down, people waste less time online, if a guidance system fails people may die. Goes down yes, but what about a data breach? What if, for example, the location of a woman is mistakenly exposed to a abusive partner? In my view the distinction between a senior software engineer and not is the ability to see how both human and software systems interact and find failure modes that others may miss.
      - RandoHolmes 6y ago
        You know you're in a bad spot when you start arguing that a website has as much potential for bad results as a weapons system. by definition it's not true, and any sequence of thoughts that lead you to that conclusion are wrong, period.
- giaour 6y ago
  > Being a senior engineer at Facebook where your responsible for making sure Cat memes load more quickly Hey now, don’t underestimate the technical challenges inherent in weaponizing misinformation at scale.
- ffggvv 6y ago
  yeah the fb engineer likely makes 3x as much and went to a better university and is generally smarter

The definition of “senior” is vague and subjective. When you try to say objective things such as “6-8 years to become senior”, that’s meaningless because “senior” is undefined.

aronpye 6y ago

Obviously becoming a senior engineer shouldn’t be based on tenure alone. In my experience, 6-8 years is roughly how long it takes to acquire enough skills, both technical, people, business, and safety in order to become responsible for a piece of work. Being a senior engineer at Facebook where your responsible for making sure Cat memes load more quickly, and a senior engineer for an industrial control systems company making weapons guidance systems are totally different levels of responsibility. But, job titles are often transferable and should be better regulated across the industry.

geofft 6y ago
And in my experience it takes two, if you're good at what you do. You probably get more responsibility for systems that deeply affect people's lives and the world around us as a new grad at Facebook than as a mechanical engineer, which is probably part of it. And you probably do pick up more skills about building reliable systems, threat modeling, product planning, etc., all of which would be transferrable to other types of engineering. It's unfair that people working on a global CDN can see the results of their work in seconds and people working on a military weapons contract see the results of their work in years, but it's true.
whymauri 6y ago
>Being a senior engineer at Facebook where your responsible for making sure Cat memes load more quickly, this strikes me as an unnecessarily rude dismissal of the difficulty of engineering at scale this might sound crazy, but some people are actually just good at their jobs and will, naturally, progress quicker than others.
- riffraff 6y ago
  I interpreted that more as a difference in the potential problems you may cause rather than the skills required, as GP referred to "responsibility". If FB goes down, people waste less time online[0], if a guidance system fails people may die. [0] yes, of course there are people whose livelihood depends on cat memes, but I'm making a generic example.
  - willcipriano 6y ago
    > If FB goes down, people waste less time online, if a guidance system fails people may die. Goes down yes, but what about a data breach? What if, for example, the location of a woman is mistakenly exposed to a abusive partner? In my view the distinction between a senior software engineer and not is the ability to see how both human and software systems interact and find failure modes that others may miss.
    - RandoHolmes 6y ago
      You know you're in a bad spot when you start arguing that a website has as much potential for bad results as a weapons system. by definition it's not true, and any sequence of thoughts that lead you to that conclusion are wrong, period.
giaour 6y ago
> Being a senior engineer at Facebook where your responsible for making sure Cat memes load more quickly Hey now, don’t underestimate the technical challenges inherent in weaponizing misinformation at scale.
ffggvv 6y ago
yeah the fb engineer likely makes 3x as much and went to a better university and is generally smarter