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This. I hate hearing people whine about "still a junior engineer at 25" or boasting that they "reached senior engineer at 24 after 3 years" or whatever nonsense

This. I hate hearing people whine about "still a junior engineer at 25" or boasting that they "reached senior engineer at 24 after 3 years" or whatever nonsense. It's apples and oranges between companies.

dgfitz 4y ago
To take it a step further, I’ve been in the industry for closer to 15 years than 10, and while I am considered “senior” I don’t consider myself as such. 15 should be the minimum cutoff. Spending 3 years doing __literally anything__ doesn’t make someone an expert. You could argue 10 years but I’d argue back.
- epolanski 4y ago
  I would argue time is a poor metric. It's about the value you are able to bring, not howmany days you worked.
  - deathanatos 4y ago
    It's not direct time, but experience, which is incredibly hard to measure. I've met several engineers that have been working for years and years … and yet seem to have little to no experience. Things like, "why are you writing a parser, in a language you claim to be an expert in, for a language for which the language you're writing in has a parser in its standard library?" And then of course, the people who, if they have the need to use something, will have the docs open next to it as they work with it, diligently Google for answers, seek out tutorials or reference materials … and 3 months later are basically experts in that topic. Age is irrelevant, time is only tangentially related; it's that they put the effort into learning something. I'm less clear on if it's value. There's "direct value", like, I literally helped make $X, or so. And then there's "what my employer wants done", which might very well be worthless. For the latter, I could argue that I am valuable to them, from their perspective, as I am doing what they desire … even if ultimately it is not worth something. That is, I've plugged away at many valueless projects, things that the company wanted done, but ultimately won't bring value. Nonetheless, I can bring my experience to bear on the problem and move a mountain or two. The times I have brought value have usually been quick and unexpectedly. Like, just by being aware of what's running & catching a $20k/month mistake. Or understanding how something is done, to unstick / enable someone else. But it is often not part of my goals, what I am doing day-to-day, or something I get to claim/matters in performance reviews. And sometimes, you don't get to know what your value is. I remember at one company we had this really onerous customer: completely custom thing was built for them, it was always lots of back and forth, weird corner cases, just lots and lots of custom stuff. We thought we were mostly bending over backwards for someone for little gain. Turned out they paid quite well, but for the longest time, we had no idea: finance didn't share that information with us. And this is true of most companies I've worked for: the financial details are completely opaque, unshared, and I couldn't tell you if I'm bringing value or not, ultimately.
  - gregmac 4y ago
    Absolutely! There's a lot of people with the same 1 year of experience repeated several times, who then call themselves 'Senior' based only on number of years.
coffee_beqn 4y ago
It’s also dumb since I’ve had that title for almost 10 years now but I’m easily 3-5x better at my job than when I initially got it. I do get paid more which is nice and work at a better company. I still mainly like to code and system design so I’m not planning on becoming a professional meeting-goer.

dgfitz 4y ago

To take it a step further, I’ve been in the industry for closer to 15 years than 10, and while I am considered “senior” I don’t consider myself as such. 15 should be the minimum cutoff. Spending 3 years doing __literally anything__ doesn’t make someone an expert. You could argue 10 years but I’d argue back.

epolanski 4y ago
I would argue time is a poor metric. It's about the value you are able to bring, not howmany days you worked.
- deathanatos 4y ago
  It's not direct time, but experience, which is incredibly hard to measure. I've met several engineers that have been working for years and years … and yet seem to have little to no experience. Things like, "why are you writing a parser, in a language you claim to be an expert in, for a language for which the language you're writing in has a parser in its standard library?" And then of course, the people who, if they have the need to use something, will have the docs open next to it as they work with it, diligently Google for answers, seek out tutorials or reference materials … and 3 months later are basically experts in that topic. Age is irrelevant, time is only tangentially related; it's that they put the effort into learning something. I'm less clear on if it's value. There's "direct value", like, I literally helped make $X, or so. And then there's "what my employer wants done", which might very well be worthless. For the latter, I could argue that I am valuable to them, from their perspective, as I am doing what they desire … even if ultimately it is not worth something. That is, I've plugged away at many valueless projects, things that the company wanted done, but ultimately won't bring value. Nonetheless, I can bring my experience to bear on the problem and move a mountain or two. The times I have brought value have usually been quick and unexpectedly. Like, just by being aware of what's running & catching a $20k/month mistake. Or understanding how something is done, to unstick / enable someone else. But it is often not part of my goals, what I am doing day-to-day, or something I get to claim/matters in performance reviews. And sometimes, you don't get to know what your value is. I remember at one company we had this really onerous customer: completely custom thing was built for them, it was always lots of back and forth, weird corner cases, just lots and lots of custom stuff. We thought we were mostly bending over backwards for someone for little gain. Turned out they paid quite well, but for the longest time, we had no idea: finance didn't share that information with us. And this is true of most companies I've worked for: the financial details are completely opaque, unshared, and I couldn't tell you if I'm bringing value or not, ultimately.
- gregmac 4y ago
  Absolutely! There's a lot of people with the same 1 year of experience repeated several times, who then call themselves 'Senior' based only on number of years.

coffee_beqn 4y ago

It’s also dumb since I’ve had that title for almost 10 years now but I’m easily 3-5x better at my job than when I initially got it. I do get paid more which is nice and work at a better company. I still mainly like to code and system design so I’m not planning on becoming a professional meeting-goer.