> I'm not saying experience doesn't matter at all, just saying that it's a poor marker for seniority. In many contexts seniority is literally defined as years

> I'm not saying experience doesn't matter at all, just saying that it's a poor marker for seniority. In many contexts seniority is literally defined as years of service. I take your point to mean that experience isn't everything, and that there are many people with less experience than others but with more talent or skill, but I think there is a reasonable expectation that a senior developer (in terms of years served) ought to have certain qualities that one cannot expect in someone with far fewer years of experience, regardless of how intelligent/skilled/talented they might be. Wisdom is one quality that takes years to arrive at. In a developer, wisdom is the quality that leads to questions like, "Yes, we could do that...but should we?" It's the lived experience of writing enough code that never got used to be able to call YAGNI. It's knowing when to be cautious about adopting new technology, because of all those times someone picked the wrong new thing that they still had to maintain five years later.