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"Senior developer " is the worst role you can have. You are the architect, manager of your devs, heat shield, meetings attender, and you still full time coding

"Senior developer " is the worst role you can have. You are the architect, manager of your devs, heat shield, meetings attender, and you still full time coding job. You get 2% annual raises for your trouble because you are salary capped. I jumped ship to a tech lead job. Now I do what I always wanted which is to direct a team (dotted line) by scaffolding out the project using diagrams and shallow coding. Very few soul sucking status meetings. .Dream job and a nice 25% salary boost.

DawsonBruce 4y ago
I was promoted to senior engineer this year at my organization… And what you’ve said is 100% true.
andi999 4y ago
Wait, senior developer is paid the same as developer?
- mmargerum 4y ago
  I don't remember saying that but I do remember saying I had capped as a senior developer.
Cloudef 4y ago
True, especially in small company / startup ...
ilovefood 4y ago
OP here, I can completely relate. I am changing jobs too for a similar role, hopefully :)
- mmargerum 4y ago
  Best of luck. In the right company tech lead is a blast!
jghn 4y ago
> "Senior developer " is the worst role .... I jumped ship to a tech lead job At a lot of companies the description you gave for "senior developer" would be described as a tech lead. In many other companies neither example you gave would line up to their terminology. And every possibility in between. There's not much uniformity in titles and descriptions of roles.
- mmargerum 4y ago
  Tech lead, to me, is a guy who orchestrates projects at a very technical level that includes some shallowing coding for proof of concept and helping developers when they get stuck. A lot of companies mistake tech lead for "senior dev" or "dev manager" or some chimera of both.
- superfrank 4y ago
  Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. I've been a tech lead at 3 different places and they've all been close to what he described. Being a just a senior developer was always far more relaxed.
throwawaysleep 4y ago
This really limits my desire to advance as a dev + keeps me leaving companies (as I never want to be the keeper of the expertise). I do not want to deal with meetings.
altdataseller 4y ago
Grass is always greener. If you’re a team lead, you’re constantly in meetings and never using your creativity skills. If you’re just a coder, you have no say in the architecture. Optimal situation is just be a 1-person lifestyle startup
- t43562 4y ago
  The team lead does have a little authority to go with the responsibility whereas the Senior Developer tends to be given things to be responsible for without any authority to do them. But I agree about endless meetings and very little joy of coding.
- gwbas1c 4y ago
  When I was a team lead, I rarely was in meetings. About 60% of my time was coding, the rest was reviewing others' work, giving direct technical guidance to team members, and answering questions from upper management. Typically upper management communicated asynchronously and didn't pull me into meetings on a daily basis. An organization that has a team lead constantly in meetings is horribly mismanaged; and is looking for a talking head to boost someones' ego.
  - mmargerum 4y ago
    You have to be in a very functional organization to enjoy life as a tech lead . Otherwise you just end up a manager who knows how to code.
eikenberry 4y ago
You're describing the role of the tech lead or lead dev, not senior developer... at least not anywhere I've worked or known people who worked. Senior developers is the sweet spot where you get to do a nice bit of architecting and still mainly write code. It's as high as you can usually go in the tech tree without having to deal with the 'manager' stuff you mention. Really sounds like that last job was just garbage and you moved on to someplace better. Had nothing to do with the position other than it wasn't the lead position you wanted.
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
I'm a senior developer who doesn't want to be a tech lead. Kind of unsure about where any kind of progression lies.
- Wohlf 4y ago
  Specialization and experience is pretty much it.
  - 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
    It's quite depressing to watch others progress beyond the menial tasks whilst i seem to be in stasis.
    - mmargerum 4y ago
      i read for about an hour every morning. reddit, hacker news, newsletters. Gives you great exposure to everything that's out there and what's changing. I highly recommend just picking simple function you need to write and work on that in the mornings. work on building isolated, modular code. I tend to write more functional / interface bases code than OO these days. Easier to reason about and maintain.
- mmargerum 4y ago
  It's ok to be happy staying there as long as you are OK with being salary capped. The salary wasn't even my biggest issue. My biggest issue was my title and compensation didn't match what I was actually doing day in and day out which was everything. If I decide to slow things down as I get older I may go back to just straight coding. I love it.
  - gtirloni 4y ago
    Senior dev is not what you were doing, judging by your description of it.
mind-blight 4y ago
Yeah, what you just described as a senior engineer has been my experience as a tech lead. It's really organization dependent
- mmargerum 4y ago
  That's also true. Most organizations don't have a real "tech lead" type of position just management and senior devs and the lines blur.
angarg12 4y ago
Senior developer is such a loaded term that I find it futile to draw any conclusions based on the job title alone. Depending on the shop it can mean anything from "literally not a novice" to "coordinates the architecture between several teams". In fact I'd encourage to do the opposite, describe the job activities and then map them to whatever mental model you have about dev career ladder.

DawsonBruce 4y ago

I was promoted to senior engineer this year at my organization… And what you’ve said is 100% true.

andi999 4y ago

Wait, senior developer is paid the same as developer?

mmargerum 4y ago
I don't remember saying that but I do remember saying I had capped as a senior developer.

Cloudef 4y ago

True, especially in small company / startup ...

ilovefood 4y ago

OP here, I can completely relate. I am changing jobs too for a similar role, hopefully :)

mmargerum 4y ago
Best of luck. In the right company tech lead is a blast!

jghn 4y ago

> "Senior developer " is the worst role .... I jumped ship to a tech lead job At a lot of companies the description you gave for "senior developer" would be described as a tech lead. In many other companies neither example you gave would line up to their terminology. And every possibility in between. There's not much uniformity in titles and descriptions of roles.

mmargerum 4y ago
Tech lead, to me, is a guy who orchestrates projects at a very technical level that includes some shallowing coding for proof of concept and helping developers when they get stuck. A lot of companies mistake tech lead for "senior dev" or "dev manager" or some chimera of both.
superfrank 4y ago
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. I've been a tech lead at 3 different places and they've all been close to what he described. Being a just a senior developer was always far more relaxed.

throwawaysleep 4y ago

This really limits my desire to advance as a dev + keeps me leaving companies (as I never want to be the keeper of the expertise). I do not want to deal with meetings.

altdataseller 4y ago

Grass is always greener. If you’re a team lead, you’re constantly in meetings and never using your creativity skills. If you’re just a coder, you have no say in the architecture. Optimal situation is just be a 1-person lifestyle startup

t43562 4y ago
The team lead does have a little authority to go with the responsibility whereas the Senior Developer tends to be given things to be responsible for without any authority to do them. But I agree about endless meetings and very little joy of coding.
gwbas1c 4y ago
When I was a team lead, I rarely was in meetings. About 60% of my time was coding, the rest was reviewing others' work, giving direct technical guidance to team members, and answering questions from upper management. Typically upper management communicated asynchronously and didn't pull me into meetings on a daily basis. An organization that has a team lead constantly in meetings is horribly mismanaged; and is looking for a talking head to boost someones' ego.
- mmargerum 4y ago
  You have to be in a very functional organization to enjoy life as a tech lead . Otherwise you just end up a manager who knows how to code.

eikenberry 4y ago

You're describing the role of the tech lead or lead dev, not senior developer... at least not anywhere I've worked or known people who worked. Senior developers is the sweet spot where you get to do a nice bit of architecting and still mainly write code. It's as high as you can usually go in the tech tree without having to deal with the 'manager' stuff you mention. Really sounds like that last job was just garbage and you moved on to someplace better. Had nothing to do with the position other than it wasn't the lead position you wanted.

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

I'm a senior developer who doesn't want to be a tech lead. Kind of unsure about where any kind of progression lies.

Wohlf 4y ago
Specialization and experience is pretty much it.
- 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
  It's quite depressing to watch others progress beyond the menial tasks whilst i seem to be in stasis.
  - mmargerum 4y ago
    i read for about an hour every morning. reddit, hacker news, newsletters. Gives you great exposure to everything that's out there and what's changing. I highly recommend just picking simple function you need to write and work on that in the mornings. work on building isolated, modular code. I tend to write more functional / interface bases code than OO these days. Easier to reason about and maintain.
mmargerum 4y ago
It's ok to be happy staying there as long as you are OK with being salary capped. The salary wasn't even my biggest issue. My biggest issue was my title and compensation didn't match what I was actually doing day in and day out which was everything. If I decide to slow things down as I get older I may go back to just straight coding. I love it.
- gtirloni 4y ago
  Senior dev is not what you were doing, judging by your description of it.

mind-blight 4y ago

Yeah, what you just described as a senior engineer has been my experience as a tech lead. It's really organization dependent

mmargerum 4y ago
That's also true. Most organizations don't have a real "tech lead" type of position just management and senior devs and the lines blur.

angarg12 4y ago

Senior developer is such a loaded term that I find it futile to draw any conclusions based on the job title alone. Depending on the shop it can mean anything from "literally not a novice" to "coordinates the architecture between several teams". In fact I'd encourage to do the opposite, describe the job activities and then map them to whatever mental model you have about dev career ladder.