As others have said, if you're asking about the title specifically, it depends on the company. I was one of those "Senior" developers when I was in my mid twenties at a start-up, whereas for my current company it's actually pretty hard to get the title "Senior Software Development Engineer."
My experience is generally the people I recognize as having deserved the title don't _simply_ just code. Not only do they write code that works and delivers the feature in a timely manner, they make it so the next 3 features to come out in that area can be done quickly by junior developers. Not only do they code, but they make everyone around them better coders. Not only do they code, but they also think strategically about what the team needs to keep going two years from now. Not only do they deliver the project, they get everyone excited about delivering the project.
I once read someone say "there's a difference between having ten years of experience, and having the same year of experience ten times." Time is a factor, but it's also whether you've exposed yourself broadly and deeply to new technologies, approaches and experiences so that when you are in a new situation (technical or otherwise), you have patterns for how to deal (or the self awareness to know that you don't know how to deal). So, part of it is time, but part of it is spending that time wisely.
I think that people emphasize knowledge too much. I think knowledge is a by-product of making senior developer.
Senior developer is about wisdom as opposed to knowledge. Juniors may learn things quickly, but what distinguishes senior is that you can trust them to do the right thing which is not always technical problem.
I like to compare this to asking children a question that they don't know the answer to. Some children will feel they have to come up with some answer and some will say that they don't know.
Junior developers too frequently feel pressured to produce a result and they don't see how saying that they don't know something is making them closer to producing anything. Senior developers know from their experience that this is just as important to know when you don't know something as it is important to know things. They will not feel too bad about not knowing something because they know the alternative is even worse.
One aspect that would separate a 'senior' engineer from the rest would be initiative, leadership and mentoring ability. These are the engineers who go the extra mile to ensure that the team gets stuff done, and assistance and guidance is provided where required. A senior developer isn't just someone who knows a lot of stuff, but has a time-honed wisdom as well, which they can parlay into their leadership and mentoring duties.
When you are valuable and ask for a raise but they cannot give the amount expected because it's already Q4 so they give you the senior title instead.
It can happen even with two years of experience.
>The final stage of programmer evolution is the Finder. These folks are considered experts in their chosen domain (and are prudent about others). Writing Finder job descriptions is an exercise in futility. As my boss put it: “I can’t tell you the specifics of what you’ll be doing here because your first task will be to figure that out.” A Finder will be able to anticipate problems before they happen, usually because they’ve been in that situation before.
From https://rkoutnik.com/2016/04/21/implementers-solvers-and-fin..., which is a really great read.
It's a pretty arbitrary term, but based on what you've said, especially "I don't fancy the new and shiny. I just get things done fast and done properly", would be enough for me to label you a senior programmer.
Our industry is way too obsessed with fashion... sooner or later you realise that most of the "new" stuff is largely existing ideas re-hashed in a slightly different form. Senior programmers realise this and can pattern match to understand the role of various new technologies, and learn the details if and when necessary.
How do you get there? You already are, you just don't realise it yet.
At GitLab we have a formal definition for senior engineers [0] (where we accept merge requests, of course).
1. Technical Skills a. Great programmers: are able to write modular, well-tested, and maintainable code b. Know a domain really well and radiate that knowledge
2. Leadership a. Begins to show architectural perspective b. Leads the design for medium to large projects with feedback from other engineers
3. Code quality a. Leaves code in substantially beter shape than before b. Fixes bugs/regressions quickly c. Monitors overall code quality/build failures d. Creates test plans
4. Communication a. Provides thorough and timely code feedback for peers b. Able to communicate clearly on technical topics c. Keeps issues up-to-date with progress d. Helps guide other merge requests to completion e. Helps with recruiting
[0]: https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/developer/#senior-developers
Whatever it takes to best satisfy your customer. That's it.
No, I'm not being snarky, so hear me out...
I've met and worked with many developers over the years and lots of them have become very good with technology and user domains, but still have struggled to "crack the digital ceiling". These are brilliant people who have achieved serious things, but are still not recognized by the big decision makers as "senior", whatever that means.
Then there are a select few who always get the big gigs, big money, and big reputations. Why? Because they best satisfy their customers. There are lots of non-technical skills that help them, but I think the biggest is their ability to separate the signal from the noise and zero in of the most important things to work on and to get them done. It's almost like they have "satisfiability radar". And this rarely requires any special technical or people skills. All they really have to learn is a good grasp of the technology, a deep understanding of the customer's domain and business, and the ability to get things done through others. And how did they develop them? By good old fashioned grunt work, whether digging into the bowels of the system or getting up off their butts and relentlessly going around finding out whatever they needed to know.
Once you've figured out the best thing(s) to work on to best satisfy your customers, got them onto the decision makers' radar, and found a way to get them done one way or the other, you are no longer a dev or even a senior dev. You're now a digital rainmaker, the most senior dev of all.
I became a "senior" when my financial expectation were higher than the maximum salary of non-senior developer at a company that tried to hire me.
They were forced to offer me position of senior developer and no other company after that dared to offer me lower position.
My personal definitions:
Junior: Can do it with guidance and/or clear and non-transitional specs
Developer: Takes the ball and runs with it. Can walk a customer through requirements gathering and make recommendations. Will help guide junior developers.
Senior Developer: Can architect a system well. Can communicate equally well between executives, salespeople, management, and end users. Can and will mentor lower level developers. Can explain concepts on the fly to lower level developers and walk them through the development process in terms they understand. Takes initiative at learning new technologies.
1) When you drop everything you are doing to mentor other developers
2) When you get asked by the business to do something you question what they are asking and the motivation, and then determine the best course of action based on their motivation rather than delivering the specific task they asked.
That's it really, it's nothing to do with your coding ability but more to do with your mentoring ability and problem solving skills. This is what is valuable to your colleagues and the business. Any answer related to coding ability is missing the point, it's important, but after a few years most people are the same programming level - it's just some people can help at the team or business level which is what makes you senior.
A "senior" is a someone who provides about 10X in value and earns about 2X in salary :)
More seriously, except for very big and very hierarchical orgs where tenure is overly important, people will tend to give you the senior title when your work is indispensable. To be indispensable you don't need to know by heart this technology or the other - you need to identify what are the things that bring the most value and work hard at delivering them.
To me, it is about what they are able to create independently, and the value of the end product.
Senior people have made the right mistakes, wasted weeks of time, and know what to avoid, what to embrace, and what to ignore. A senior dev can understand the requirements and figure out what is important and deliver something without a lot of external input.
Fun story, I just found out yesterday during my annual performance review than I am a Senior Software Engineer. No, not a promotion, but rather I have always been one. It was simply an HR mistake that my title did not reflect it and no one realized that I didn't know.
So to answer the original question: it is impossible to know.
None of those things sound like things I correlate with being a senior developer. Knowing any particular set of skills isn't what I look for anyway.
To me the things that make a senior developer are: 1) you give them a project, even an ambiguous or large ones, and expect it will work out fine. 2) they have been around enough different situations that they likely aren't going to be thrown for a loop by new challenges. 3) they mentor their fellow less senior developers.
To get there you need 2 things: 1) bare time, you just have to put in the time 2) variety of projects - if all you have is a bunch of time on the same problem you are unlikely to have developed the breadth of knowledge you need.
To me the senior title should be applied depending on the way you approach your role and not how you code.
As others have mentioned as a senior you can be left to implement changes without guidance, you will clean up issues as you come across them instead of leaving it to others, you suggest improvements, you make time to mentor and guide more junior members of the team, you know how to relate to muggles and you act like a team captain.
Knowing lots of different hosting environments and languages comes with experience. The approach you take to your role show's your all rounded skill set.
Well usually companies have their own view on seniority, and it could include how many years you have been there, but for what its worth for me a senior developer is a person who has experience with all stages of application development, which should imply that she/he can: - design and understand client/server architecture, - write code using best practices that is clean and maintainable, - knows database design and programming - understands design patterns and knows how to not abuse them, - knows how to deploy application and has experience with CI. - knows how to write proper unit test.
To sum it up I will use .NET as an example, in my eyes when someone says I am a senior .NET developer I assume that she/he has: - used UMLs, - knows how to write proper OOP and understands SOLID, - can use MS SQL and some kind of ORM, - uses some of the testing frameworks (e.g. NUnit), - knows how to deploy application whether on IIS, or install it with ClickOnce for example. - know how to handle source versioning (TFS or whatever is your poison)
I probably missed a few things, but that's about it for me. If a senor doesn't have these skills I assume first that she/he has great knowledge of company business which would make her/him a valuable asset, or that she/he got lucky, or it's a crappy company :)
This is kind of tangential, but a couple of jobs ago I decided to actively purge all job titles from my CV/resumé. Officially, I'm currently a senior and have been in the past, but there have also been jobs in between where there was no "Senior" prefix in the title.
My main problem with thinking about developer roles in this way is that there's obviously no standard for what constitutes seniority. It varies between and sometimes within organisations. Advertising it, glorifying it, striving to achieve it, all take the focus away from far more interesting things that you can say about yourself and aim for.
Are you working on interesting projects? Are you learning new stuff? Are you being challenged technically? Are the other people on your team good developers? Do you enjoy what you do?
Seniority as an end in itself seems like a hollow objective to me. And making a big deal about it in a recruitment context takes the focus away from more meaningful topics.
In my experience:
- you are technically competent
- can handle design aspects of full stack (backend, persistence, frontend)
- have enough credibility and confidence to say NO to business people
- you can lead a small team of developers (2 to 5 people)
Check out this recent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12557149
I like this joke: A junior programmer thinks he knows everything. An intermediate programmer thinks he knows nothing. A senior programmer hates computers.
> But I feel like I'm always a step behind the rest.
Don't look at things in this way, low self-esteem is the worst you can get. There are always people better than us, but their skills and knowledge weren't conjured up. Even extremely talented people need time to learn. And if you don't feel like learning new things may make you better, why to feel guilty? If you're not a Java programmer, why to feel bad because you don't know Spring or other details perfectly? You wrote you do things fast and correctly. So you're better than, say, 90% developers who work slow and produce crap. :)
I would say it is about sphere of influence. Are you inward looking and focused on developing your own competencies? Junior. Are you mentoring people on your team? Intermediate. Are you providing direction for the company or the industry at large? Senior.
I would consider you a “senior” programmer? Mainly because you know that you do not know much. While a junior or intermediate programmer think they know everything. There are of course more to it, like when you are stuck on something; you ask the senior programmer, that will probably have solved it ten times in the past. Or if you want to know what the best method is to do this, you ask the senior programmer, that have done it hundreds of times and thus found out the optimal way, with all edge cases included. So I would say it's mostly about experience, and then expertise. Also, a senior programmer should have gone though at least two paradigm shifts.
Being a senior developer is not just having a great skillset. You need to be able to manage your work in a way the business values it. You need to interact with all sorts of people in the company you work for and help other teammembers rwaching the same level as you.
Our senior developer is always thinking about the business value when estimates are made vs quality. He even does not do alot of softwae development, but is always asked to help out other developers, system engineers and even management to give advice.
To be able to do that in a professional way, your vision plus skillset makes you a senior imo. Not just the years of experience and amount of skills you have.
It's mostly just a title on a business card and/or org chart.
Some times it's given to people instead of money.
Don't worry about the title. Worry about getting good at what you do, and an asset to your team and organization.
I'm also agreeing with leadership and mentoring. Be able to make unbiased technical decisions, troubleshoot systems / apps and get up to speed on new projets independently fairly fast. Have confidence in what you do and don't ask about everything.
A solid general code understanding is also needed in my opinion. This includes things like using documentation over googling everything. If I pair with a senior and he types "golang how to do x" on every problem, I probably wouldn't consider him senior. (Not saying googling is bad. Just don't be a copy-paste-from-stackoverflow engineer)
With that, I also hate the term "senior engineer". I got friends with 3 years of work experience that are now "senior" because a company hired them under a senior position (basically more salary) and the companies after that just did the same because "well he already is a senior, right"? This also generates a strong in-balance inside the team with a hierarchy that shouldn't be there. I am usually advocating for getting rid of job titles and calling everyone just "Software Engineer"
I am now 6-7 years into my career and don't consider myself senior. When people in interviews ask me what my career goal is, I usually mention I want to be able to consider myself senior as the next step.
I work at a major games company. For us, a "senior" is someone who can, on their own, design, implement, document and maintain a feature. An "intermediate" is someone who can do the above but with mentor help from a senior.
Above that, it depends what you want to do. If you fancy managing people, you can be a team/tech lead, or if you don't, then there is the title of "expert"(only a handful of programmers who worked here 10+ years have those).
I think a senior engineer has to know a few things.
They have to have the basics we all need as engineers simply to pass the interview process. The data structures and algorithms, Big O and be able to walk through systems they have worked on in the past and the trade offs they made and why.
Then on top of the basics I look for a few more things. Usually the understanding of multi threading, multi process, asynchronous programming is very different between junior and senior folks. I dive into distributed systems and see if they have any exposure. I dive into multi paradigms and how deep their knowledge is in their respective toolset they have listed on their resume.
I don't necessarily think you need to know multi threading in and out, or distributed systems in and out, or your tool set in and out. You certainly need to know one or two of those though. You need to have some body of work you can speak very well to, this is a huge indicator of seniority. Mentorship and all the other things that go with that help differentiate as well between junior and senior.
I don't think there is a hard rule anywhere. Different folks will look for different things and at least where I work those things I listed are very important differentiators.
When they have to pay you more than the junior devs. Note that isn't necessarily because of skills or knowledge.
This is by far the best article I've ever read on the subject. http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engi...
Depends if its senior with a specific technology (ex: senior rails programmer) or generally senior programmer.
I consider senior someone who: - knows how to mentor juniors - knows his way around tech, even if he never used a particular product - most important, can communicate effectively with stakeholders and devs.
The best "senior" is the one who nags everyone to get stuff moving forward. Doesnt mind getting his hands dirty and going by people's desks to make sure the team delivers.
You may need to brush up your marketing skills in order to promote yourself as senior. Don't get impressed by people that know stuff.
Leadership and mentoring. When they can write great documentation (without prompting) and http://softwareleadweekly.com/ becomes their favourite weekly read. When they come to you with improvements outside of the technical domain on how to improve shop and even better when it's just a side chat about what they have already improved and what went well, what didn't and what they learned (self-awareness). When they stop treating promotions like mechanical checkboxes.
Sr can tell to jr: I have already made the mistake you are about to make.
In Germany this isn't a thing, but when applying for a few jobs in the UK most employers considered me senior after that interview. Still didn't get the jobs, because I failed their programming tests.
Since I started programming my work-behaviour changed from asking people all the time when I don't know what's happening to reading their code.
I think developers are considered senior if they can work on their own.
Like, if you get all the engineering practices of designing, implementing and maintenance done without much help.
A senior developer doesn't say things like "I don't know how", they simply figure it out and do it. A true senior developer is fearless, but also pragmatic.
When you learn Erlang.
I think a lot of programmers stucked into programming language/framework trap – keep learn new lanaguages and new frameworks to make yourself believe you have more exp, but this just make your skill more like learn drive different brand cars. Even myself in this trap for really long time.
The true power to make you senior is how you train your brain to think and abstract. This will boost your capability of design rather than just coding
Engineer seniority has a lot of variance. Some do it based on years of experience, ranging from 5 to 10 years and that would differ from company to company.
In my understanding, a senior engineer is an engineer that can contribute without the need for technical supervision.
Now, not requiring supervision is different to leadership. A senior engineer is often an individual contributor, not necessarily a team technical leader.
Based on my experience at about five different successful companies, a senior engineer is not someone who has a title declaring them as such but is a person you go to when considering something completely new that needs to be created from scratch because you know he could do it if asked to, do it in a way that will leave something another team can pick up if necessary, and do it well.
I read some where the definition to be as a software engineer who's primary role is to reduce risk. This sounds like a solid benchmark to me since this usually entails that although you may not have a lot of knowledge about the latest JavaScript framework but instead have deep cs fundamentals knowledge which would allow you to mitigate software risks in most environments.
Assess the new and shiny technologies and learn the ones that seem promising.
1 year later new and shiny will become the standard, there will be thousand of beginners and you'll be one of the few "senior" developers on that technology.
Of course you'll already be learning the new and shiny that will become the standard 1 year later.
Skill is knowing how to operate Amazon, "senior" is knowing when you probably shouldn't.
As a CTO or team lead senior programmers to me were those who understood the business and the businesss side of things and could make trade offs (beside the technical experience).
Another aspect that seperates seniors is their ability to talk and present to senior or top management.
In my experience a senior developer is someone with 10+ years of experience in architecture and development and a pretty vast amount of accumulated knowledge. There are exceptions of course, but this seems to be fairly standard in my market in the Midwest.
Senior developer is just very difficult to define. You could define it based on the amount of time worked at a certain job, your skills, your ability to mentor. The definition could be different for various businesses and their employees.
When you have to talk to a customer.
Seriously, I worked for a place where thay was the rule.
Titles are somewhat meaningless. Apparently I'm a consultant these days...
My very first developer job after graduating was a 'senior member of technical staff' so who really knows.
You have seen a few projects and different teams. A few years of practical experience is necessary.
I guess ... Once you realise that you don't want to be a senior or a developer at all.
When you salary demand exceeds the threshold of a standard programmer.
Senior = most senior dev in the building. AKA Designated Survivor.
Depends on % of code you reuse.
You will never have enough time to learn everything and be all things to everyone. Get this idea out of your head right now or you will never find happiness.
Senior is the difference between keeping your eye on the big picture and helping to move your team forward to the objective in a timely manner to achieve the business objectives that drive the company forward. It's the ability to step up and lead your team when called for. It's the ability to make decisions balanced between what's technically right in the short and longer term without losing sight of the end goal.
Never forget that you're not paid to deliver software just to deliver amazing software. The software you deliver is a tool, a means to an end. That may be to cut costs, it may be to increase profits, it may be the lifeblood that your company's stock price hangs on.
A junior developer may be amazing with the tools provided and may have some good architectural sense. They may need some, or a lot of hand holding. A junior developer generally has their head in the code most of the time and may but probably shouldn't be expected to understand or care about the objectives of the business as a whole. You give them a feature to develop and can largely expect that they will need all of the dependencies to hand. They may have a good handle on debugging and unit, integration and functional testing or this may be something they need to learn. This is OK.
An intermediate developer can be given objectives regarding code and architecture and left to their own devices and trusted to deliver on their objectives in a timely manner. By this time, you should expect to at least understand the business objectives and be able to think critically about the code they're providing in order to meet those objectives. I would expect an intermediate developer to have enough of a clue about architecture that handed a feature requirement and some architectural direction for how to integrate it, they could architect it competently and integrate it and know where to go to ensure any dependencies are satisfied. They will have a good handle on debugging and at least unit and integration testing. They may have a good handle on functional testing and debugging production code.
A senior developer is someone in my mind who who can be trusted with the business objectives, can chase down architectural advice, from an architect or UX input or whatever else they need to get the job done; they can communicate effectively with stakeholders and the business; they can be expected to dig in and fill any gaps that would prevent delivery or cause problems in production. They can delegate pieces appropriately and deliver what is expected in the allotted time frame. They may be someone that can step up as team lead/team manager, or lead from the back and be the glue that gives the team cohesion. They can be expected to have the discipline to take care of things properly when nobody is watching. They can be expected to help debug production issues and be among the first to muck in when the shit hits the fan to help resolve production issues.
So you see, the difference between junior, intermediate and senior doesn't have an awful lot to do with code or tools. You will expected to either be or become a master of your tools whether junior, intermediate or senior. You will be expected to do this on the fly, on the job, regardless of everything else that is going on around you. This is part of being in this industry. You will be expected to keep up with the codebase and dig in and understand it at whatever level you're at. These are all prerequisites for your job as a developer, they are not a prerequisite for your title. There's a big difference.
If you want to make the jump from junior to senior quickly, here's my advice: Find the most gnarly difficult problems your company is having and dig in and help solve them consistently. When you've put yourself through the wringer; when you've suffered the late nights, the stress, the anguish about whether or not you've got what it takes to do this job. Do this until you get to a point where you think you've seen every last problem that could possibly occur, and despite that, something else hits you out of left field and knocks you clean off your feet. Do this until when this happens, you just get back up and keep going. When you get knocked down and get back up when everyone else would say fuck it, when you can be trusted to make shit happen when everyone else would say fuck it - this is when you can call yourself a senior developer.
"Out of the 39 000 men and women that make up the United States Coast Guard there are only 280 rescue swimmers. This is because we are the Coast Guard's elite. We are the best of the best. When storms shut down entire ports, we go out. When hurricanes ground the United States Navy, we go out. And when the holy Lord himself reaches down from heaven and destroys his good work with winds that rip houses off the ground, We. Go. Out." - Ben Randall, The Guardian
Live by example.
When you can build and operate a multiple-cloud system using only assembly and gwbasic...
sometimes these title can be dangerous.
After 60?
When someone gives you the title.
When you begin to have "senior" moments when cutting code.
When your teammates ask you questions more than you ask them questions.
When you can build and operate a multiple-cloud system using only assembly and gwbasic...
When you get just as snarky with your co-workers face-to-face as you would with people on the internet.
If you've been getting away with it, you're probably reaching a level of seniority that deserves a promotion.
I really liked this comment by @stray [0] from a similar Ask HN from a few months ago. That thread was titled "Ask HN: What makes a Senior Dev".
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11341567