So… I’ve been writing software professionally since 2002 and was programming for fun/some open source for about 10 years prior to that. I’m still an IC, by choi

So… I’ve been writing software professionally since 2002 and was programming for fun/some open source for about 10 years prior to that. I’m still an IC, by choice (and spend a fair bit of time mentoring/doing architecture, but also writing code and laying out circuit boards). If we’re going to do job titles in increments of 3-4 years, I’m going to have the most ridiculous titles soon because all of the usual ones will have come and gone. But all of that is just to say that I don’t think years of experience is a good metric at all for job titles. By far the best metric I’ve come across over the years is “how long can you trust this person to work on something without worrying that we’re going to have to throw away a significant chunk of their work?” Junior developers? Maybe a day or two before they might need a course correction or feedback. Mid, maybe a week, tops. Senior, maybe two weeks. Staff/principal (depending on how you even order those in seniority) can be longer although they still need to check in with the business/peers on a regular basis just to verify that we’re all going in the same useful direction.