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Out of curiosity, what does "junior position" mean, exactly? I'm 30 with 7 years of experience. I wouldn't say I'm a top-1% programmer (probably top 5%, possib

Out of curiosity, what does "junior position" mean, exactly? I'm 30 with 7 years of experience. I wouldn't say I'm a top-1% programmer (probably top 5%, possibly 2%) yet but I'm a really good data scientist and I've seen a lot of different corporate environments. Also, being a Lisper (but also knowing well the virtue of static typing, having worked on production Ocaml systems) I have good taste. There are still some holes in my knowledge (I was a math major, not CS) but I'm filling them pretty quick. I wouldn't take a job where my day consists of being handed bugs or small features in some large project where the decisions were already made. Someone else can churn tickets, I'm past that point in my career. I'm not a prima donna. In the short term (say, two weeks) I'll do what is required no matter how unglamorous. But in the long term (3+ months) I'm not going to work in a role that's incoherent with my career objectives. I only work in roles where I get to make some of the technical decisions, because if I'm purely in an implementation role, I won't learn anything. I generate ideas and implement them; if I'm only doing the second of these, then the work is meaningless to me. If the project is big and complicated-- say, 2.1 to 2.3 in difficulty on this scale: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-trajectory-of-a-software-engineer-and-where-it-all-goes-wrong/-- http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-trajector... I'd probably be doing that under light supervision and that's fine, but if I'm not engaging in a learning process and in control of what I work on, then I'm wasting my time at this age. Is it that you want to be more of an architect and were being offered programming positions? Senior programming is different from junior programming. As with writing, there are varying forms of it and they have different flavors that might not be obvious to those who don't do it on a daily basis. A junior programmer fixes bugs and implements features that come downstream from executives, product management, and more senior programmers. There's a lot of value in that experience, if it comes with mentorship, when you're starting out. But when you get to my level, the quickest way to learn is to do things and find out directly what works and what doesn't. A senior programmer gets to set priorities, generally has a lot of autonomy over what he works on, and has input (and, often, final say) in product and architectural decisions. It's not about title, as it were. There are plenty of people with "Senior" in their title who are junior in terms of how they work, and there are others without fancy titles who are de facto senior.

DavidWoof 13y ago
Thanks for the clarification. But, you know, in context, there's a huge difference between not finding a job and not being able to easily make the next step up in your career. At 7 years, you just don't have much senior experience (that's a comment about years, not knowledge or talent). 7 years is a lot of programming experience, it's just not a lot of senior dev or team lead experience. It's a good career move to insist on this in your next position, and I'm not doubting that you're capable of it, but that puts you in a completely different category than somebody who can't find work at all or somebody who's been a senior dev for 20 years and can't find a position. One thing to be aware of is that a lot of shops, myself included, almost never hire senior/leads directly. I'll pay your salary request, but no matter who you are, you're going to spend a couple of months on somebody else's project before you lead your own, just to understand the code base, the team, the tracking and VCS systems, the culture in general. We may have an understanding that you'll lead the next big project if you don't flame out, but you're still going to have to spend some time down in the code trenches.
- seiji 13y ago
  it's just not a lot of senior dev or team lead experience. In the traditional world, yes. But what about our wacky tech world where the 22 year old is a founder/ceo/manager of the entire company? Are you less experienced and knowledgeable that that person? I agree with your part about not hiring externally for new internal projects though (unless all your other internal projects are horrible and you need new blood to get out of institutional brain damage).

DavidWoof 13y ago

Thanks for the clarification. But, you know, in context, there's a huge difference between not finding a job and not being able to easily make the next step up in your career. At 7 years, you just don't have much senior experience (that's a comment about years, not knowledge or talent). 7 years is a lot of programming experience, it's just not a lot of senior dev or team lead experience. It's a good career move to insist on this in your next position, and I'm not doubting that you're capable of it, but that puts you in a completely different category than somebody who can't find work at all or somebody who's been a senior dev for 20 years and can't find a position. One thing to be aware of is that a lot of shops, myself included, almost never hire senior/leads directly. I'll pay your salary request, but no matter who you are, you're going to spend a couple of months on somebody else's project before you lead your own, just to understand the code base, the team, the tracking and VCS systems, the culture in general. We may have an understanding that you'll lead the next big project if you don't flame out, but you're still going to have to spend some time down in the code trenches.

seiji 13y ago
it's just not a lot of senior dev or team lead experience. In the traditional world, yes. But what about our wacky tech world where the 22 year old is a founder/ceo/manager of the entire company? Are you less experienced and knowledgeable that that person? I agree with your part about not hiring externally for new internal projects though (unless all your other internal projects are horrible and you need new blood to get out of institutional brain damage).