I agree very much, a few years commercial experience really means not junior anymore, but mid level. Most people with only a few years experience are lacking d

I agree very much, a few years commercial experience really means not junior anymore, but mid level. Most people with only a few years experience are lacking depth and well roundedness to have tried things different ways and be able to swap their approach to the circumstances. Thus they aren't that good at selecting appropriate tradeoffs and guiding to more efficient approaches, as someone more senior can be. Instead most people with only say three year only have deep knowledge of one language without breadth, and are unaware of so much of the history and alternatives in our industry that they don't have the kind of flexibility to really make informed choices. Thus the massive prevalence of cargo culting, resume driven development, and fud in the industry. Regarding a true senior, I agree they should have a working knowledge of the aspects mentioned, as they are about providing for the 'full lifecycle' of systems. They should also understand other things related to a full lifecycle, like TDD + integration + manual testing to provide reliable systems, and live support, and engineering systems in such a way they can be effectively supported, and how to identify requirements clearly, communicate and operate effectively in teams between the various roles etc. Typically this comes in the 5-10 year hands on experience range, while mastery occurs in 10-15 years. However everyone is different, some people go (a little bit) faster than this and some slower. However financial incentives get most people to elevate their titles, while the actual skills take more time. This is based on my observations of about 25 year in the development industry as a dev, lead, architect manager and director/cto. My 'opinion' of course.