The main difference is the reason that a senior engineer or VP gets hired. It is not to write code by themselves. It is to help other people do it. For this,

The main difference is the reason that a senior engineer or VP gets hired. It is not to write code by themselves. It is to help other people do it. For this, being a walking encyclopedia certainly helps. Of course, there's probably a correlation with being able to solve the programming puzzles in such a situation, too.