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If nobody can be "senior" at less than 5 years, your skill threshold for senior precludes 99% of engineers from ever being senior.

Alupis 2y ago
I don't follow. Are you suggesting people retire and/or change industries as they hit the 5 year mark? If you're going to spend a 30-40 year career doing something, it should take a long while before you can be considered "Senior". At 5 years, you're probably still making rookie mistakes and having actually experienced engineers clean up after and/or guide you.
- fallingknife 2y ago
  What I'm saying is that the very best engineers are at a higher level with 5 YOE than 99% of engineers are ever capable of reaching. e.g. Linus Torvalds was 21 when the first version of Linux was released. I couldn't come close to that now with 10 YOE.
  - Alupis 2y ago
    I fundamentally disagree. I regularly interface with people that have more than 5 years and are entirely unequipped to code their way out of a paper bag, let alone work unsupervised, lead a team, understand the overall system that's being designed, and more. They have little knowledge outside whatever pet language they've sunk all of their time into, and even then, little knowledge outside of a narrow set of tools/practices. That's not "Senior". That's someone getting their feet wet in an ever-changing industry that requires a certain level of thirst for knowledge and continued learning. There's always exceptions - and some people are stellar in every way. But on average, 5 years of experience is still training wheels for a great deal of people. > Linus Torvalds was 21 when the first version of Linux was released. This is like pointing to Bill Gates or Michael Jordan and saying everyone can do that... Linus is the fabled 10X Rockstar of programming.
    - fallingknife 2y ago
      You have moved the goalposts from > I'd argue without compromise someone with less than 5 years of experience cannot possibly be Senior-anything To: > There's always exceptions - and some people are stellar in every way. But on average, 5 years of experience is still training wheels for a great deal of people So we are in agreement.
  - ofrzeta 2y ago
    Being senior arguably involves more than technical skill on a one-dimensional scale. I'd say Linus Torvalds was no senior at that time although the technical feat was certainly impressive.
  - cratermoon 2y ago
    Am I understanding you correctly? You're saying because 1% of engineers are as good at 5 years as most engineers will ever be, that 5 years is a reasonable gauge for "senior"?
acdha 2y ago
If nobody is lasting longer than 5 years, you need to work somewhere else. 5 years might seem like a while if you’re just starting your career but it’s not long enough to have experience with the outcome of architectural decisions, natural staff or business partner turnover, or adjustment to greater market trends (e.g. if your startup only existed in a boom market, you’ve only done cost engineering and customer acquisition in easy mode).
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  > but it’s not long enough to have experience with the outcome of architectural decisions, natural staff or business partner turnover, or adjustment to greater market trends (e.g. if your startup only existed in a boom market, you’ve only done cost engineering and customer acquisition in easy mode). Surely that assumes that you can only learn from seeing your actions play out over time. Within the first 3 years of my career, I saw good business decisions, bad business decisions, the fallout of bad business decisions that predated my involvement, good tech stacks, bad tech stacks, and tech stacks that had survived 99% staffing cuts. Now, I still wouldn't have called myself senior at that point, but I absolutely had the experience of seeing what the long-term impact of certain choices was, even if they weren't my decisions or even if I hadn't been there and had to work from second-hand accounts (and sometimes, code/docs).
  - Alupis 2y ago
    Making good technical decisions isn't something you can learn by observation. You have to make them, fail, learn why you failed, and get better over time. There's an intuition you develop. There's so much tech out there, and it changes so fast. If you're not the type that can stay "with it", you'll perpetually make bad decisions, or worse... decide on what is familiar not what's best. My point is, there's no way (with a few exceptions of course) someone with 5 years of observational experience has enough real experience to make good decisions that impact the organization over the long term. The ones who can do/learn this within 5 years are exceptional, and tend to be the ones deeply motivated by technology, ie. it's not just a job to them. They go home and work on tech for funsies... staying up late and getting up early to build, read, learn. That's not your average engineer.

Alupis 2y ago

I don't follow. Are you suggesting people retire and/or change industries as they hit the 5 year mark? If you're going to spend a 30-40 year career doing something, it should take a long while before you can be considered "Senior". At 5 years, you're probably still making rookie mistakes and having actually experienced engineers clean up after and/or guide you.

fallingknife 2y ago
What I'm saying is that the very best engineers are at a higher level with 5 YOE than 99% of engineers are ever capable of reaching. e.g. Linus Torvalds was 21 when the first version of Linux was released. I couldn't come close to that now with 10 YOE.
- Alupis 2y ago
  I fundamentally disagree. I regularly interface with people that have more than 5 years and are entirely unequipped to code their way out of a paper bag, let alone work unsupervised, lead a team, understand the overall system that's being designed, and more. They have little knowledge outside whatever pet language they've sunk all of their time into, and even then, little knowledge outside of a narrow set of tools/practices. That's not "Senior". That's someone getting their feet wet in an ever-changing industry that requires a certain level of thirst for knowledge and continued learning. There's always exceptions - and some people are stellar in every way. But on average, 5 years of experience is still training wheels for a great deal of people. > Linus Torvalds was 21 when the first version of Linux was released. This is like pointing to Bill Gates or Michael Jordan and saying everyone can do that... Linus is the fabled 10X Rockstar of programming.
  - fallingknife 2y ago
    You have moved the goalposts from > I'd argue without compromise someone with less than 5 years of experience cannot possibly be Senior-anything To: > There's always exceptions - and some people are stellar in every way. But on average, 5 years of experience is still training wheels for a great deal of people So we are in agreement.
- ofrzeta 2y ago
  Being senior arguably involves more than technical skill on a one-dimensional scale. I'd say Linus Torvalds was no senior at that time although the technical feat was certainly impressive.
- cratermoon 2y ago
  Am I understanding you correctly? You're saying because 1% of engineers are as good at 5 years as most engineers will ever be, that 5 years is a reasonable gauge for "senior"?

acdha 2y ago

If nobody is lasting longer than 5 years, you need to work somewhere else. 5 years might seem like a while if you’re just starting your career but it’s not long enough to have experience with the outcome of architectural decisions, natural staff or business partner turnover, or adjustment to greater market trends (e.g. if your startup only existed in a boom market, you’ve only done cost engineering and customer acquisition in easy mode).

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
> but it’s not long enough to have experience with the outcome of architectural decisions, natural staff or business partner turnover, or adjustment to greater market trends (e.g. if your startup only existed in a boom market, you’ve only done cost engineering and customer acquisition in easy mode). Surely that assumes that you can only learn from seeing your actions play out over time. Within the first 3 years of my career, I saw good business decisions, bad business decisions, the fallout of bad business decisions that predated my involvement, good tech stacks, bad tech stacks, and tech stacks that had survived 99% staffing cuts. Now, I still wouldn't have called myself senior at that point, but I absolutely had the experience of seeing what the long-term impact of certain choices was, even if they weren't my decisions or even if I hadn't been there and had to work from second-hand accounts (and sometimes, code/docs).
- Alupis 2y ago
  Making good technical decisions isn't something you can learn by observation. You have to make them, fail, learn why you failed, and get better over time. There's an intuition you develop. There's so much tech out there, and it changes so fast. If you're not the type that can stay "with it", you'll perpetually make bad decisions, or worse... decide on what is familiar not what's best. My point is, there's no way (with a few exceptions of course) someone with 5 years of observational experience has enough real experience to make good decisions that impact the organization over the long term. The ones who can do/learn this within 5 years are exceptional, and tend to be the ones deeply motivated by technology, ie. it's not just a job to them. They go home and work on tech for funsies... staying up late and getting up early to build, read, learn. That's not your average engineer.