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Falsehood: The distinction between "junior" and "senior" developer makes sense and isn't just the figment of the imagination of some corporate ladder climbers w

by lapcat 3y ago

Falsehood: The distinction between "junior" and "senior" developer makes sense and isn't just the figment of the imagination of some corporate ladder climbers who drank too much of the kool-aid. Let's say I drop out of college, found my own software company, and within a few years my company is valued at 9 figures. Am I a "junior" or "senior" developer? Does anyone give a crap? Keep in mind that in high school and college, one advances from "junior" to "senior" simply by aging one year and not failing.

dexwiz 3y ago
At that point you are an entrepreneur. The division only exists in large companies with highly segmented job roles. The more hats you have to wear, the less that line shows.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > The division only exists in large companies with highly segmented job roles. In some companies, yes, but it's all relative to the company. Each company has its own job titles and levels. It would make sense to write a blog post about "How to get promoted to [title] in [company]". (And the honest answer might be self-promotion or brownnosing, for example.) The problem is that too many developers try to actualize and abstract these arbitrary job titles into some fundamental category of programming reality that exists independently of arbitrary corporate job titles. That's what I mean about drinking the corporate kool-aid. There are continual debates in blog posts and on social media about what "senior developer" means, with no reference to a particular company or job within a company, and I consider the debate to be all nonsense. It's worse than spaces vs. tabs, because at least spaces and tabs are real, well-defined characters.
  - dexwiz 3y ago
    This kind of discussion is in part due to pressures from HR, again something more common in big companies. To standardize hiring practices HR people do something called banding or leveling where they do try to define job levels and responsibilities across the industry. Primarily so they know what to pay people. Also so people can plan career tracks. Yeah it’s all Kool Aid but a lot of people are drinking it. Also there is a demonstrable difference between someone who just codes and someone who leads projects. Generally the senior path can be seen as a technical leader path, and that is transferable between companies. But the word senior itself has lost meaning. Senior at my company is squarely in the middle. Principals are the true seniors.
layer8 3y ago
> Let's say I drop out of college, found my own software company, and within a few years my company is valued at 9 figures. Am I a "junior" or "senior" developer? You’re a rare unicorn then, not the 99.9% case.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > You’re a rare unicorn then, not the 99.9% case. That's avoiding the question. But it was just one hypothetical example. The point was that the whole false dichotomy of senior/junior depends on a very specific context of given corporate structures and doesn't make much sense outside that context.
hnfong 3y ago
Of course nobody gives a crap about college degrees. But if you actually led a team of software developers for a few years, created a product and the whole thing didn't fall apart, well, you're way more than a senior developer.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > Of course nobody gives a crap about college degrees. That's missing the point of the example. 1) I was trying to allude to people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. 2) I was trying to choose an example that would indisputably be considered a "junior" developer if that person were hired into a low-level role within an existing corporate hierarchy but also an example where the person indisputably took the responsibilities of a "senior" developer from the very beginning, led a team of engineers, and created great value for the company. Somehow these people are considered as "way more than a senior developer" despite having the exact same (negligible) experience level as a newly hired corporate junior developer. It feels like the only difference is whether the person is high or low in the company org chart.

by lapcat 3y ago

dexwiz 3y ago

At that point you are an entrepreneur. The division only exists in large companies with highly segmented job roles. The more hats you have to wear, the less that line shows.

lapcat 3y ago
> The division only exists in large companies with highly segmented job roles. In some companies, yes, but it's all relative to the company. Each company has its own job titles and levels. It would make sense to write a blog post about "How to get promoted to [title] in [company]". (And the honest answer might be self-promotion or brownnosing, for example.) The problem is that too many developers try to actualize and abstract these arbitrary job titles into some fundamental category of programming reality that exists independently of arbitrary corporate job titles. That's what I mean about drinking the corporate kool-aid. There are continual debates in blog posts and on social media about what "senior developer" means, with no reference to a particular company or job within a company, and I consider the debate to be all nonsense. It's worse than spaces vs. tabs, because at least spaces and tabs are real, well-defined characters.
- dexwiz 3y ago
  This kind of discussion is in part due to pressures from HR, again something more common in big companies. To standardize hiring practices HR people do something called banding or leveling where they do try to define job levels and responsibilities across the industry. Primarily so they know what to pay people. Also so people can plan career tracks. Yeah it’s all Kool Aid but a lot of people are drinking it. Also there is a demonstrable difference between someone who just codes and someone who leads projects. Generally the senior path can be seen as a technical leader path, and that is transferable between companies. But the word senior itself has lost meaning. Senior at my company is squarely in the middle. Principals are the true seniors.

layer8 3y ago

> Let's say I drop out of college, found my own software company, and within a few years my company is valued at 9 figures. Am I a "junior" or "senior" developer? You’re a rare unicorn then, not the 99.9% case.

lapcat 3y ago
> You’re a rare unicorn then, not the 99.9% case. That's avoiding the question. But it was just one hypothetical example. The point was that the whole false dichotomy of senior/junior depends on a very specific context of given corporate structures and doesn't make much sense outside that context.

hnfong 3y ago

Of course nobody gives a crap about college degrees. But if you actually led a team of software developers for a few years, created a product and the whole thing didn't fall apart, well, you're way more than a senior developer.

lapcat 3y ago
> Of course nobody gives a crap about college degrees. That's missing the point of the example. 1) I was trying to allude to people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. 2) I was trying to choose an example that would indisputably be considered a "junior" developer if that person were hired into a low-level role within an existing corporate hierarchy but also an example where the person indisputably took the responsibilities of a "senior" developer from the very beginning, led a team of engineers, and created great value for the company. Somehow these people are considered as "way more than a senior developer" despite having the exact same (negligible) experience level as a newly hired corporate junior developer. It feels like the only difference is whether the person is high or low in the company org chart.