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...
Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
101–110 of 162 posts
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#102I 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". Mistakes, rewrites, late nights, firefights, and deadlines. Core dumps, memory leaks, hardware faults, and plain bad luck. Big O, data flow, always learning -- or out you go. Manager metrics, schedules hectic, methodology hegelian dialectic. Taking the heat, feature creep, o…
So true! i also have this saved up. I read it time and time again, during rough and smooth times.
You gotta do you fucking time. Best Advice Ever!
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#103When 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.
That's also my experience. "Senior" is little more than a random title in most companies I worked for. It can be someone in their early twenties who just happened to have worked for 2 years on one product, even if it's their first job. It's frustrating at first to join a new company as someone who is older and has many more years of experience, then you remind yourself it's just a random title and try not to get hung…
Gartner's Hype Cycle also applies to senior engineers. After 2 years of experience, you feel so much smarter than when you just started. You feel you've made it to senior.
But another 5 years later, you notice how little you really knew. You become really senior at 10+ years. Just like the hype cycle.
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#104None 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.
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#105I 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". Mistakes, rewrites, late nights, firefights, and deadlines. Core dumps, memory leaks, hardware faults, and plain bad luck. Big O, data flow, always learning -- or out you go. Manager metrics, schedules hectic, methodology hegelian dialectic. Taking the heat, feature creep, o…
There was a question a week ago about junior developers. mrmekon [1] gave an excellent answer: It depends on when and why I'm defining it, but my guidelines are more based on how they work than what they know: * Junior developer - Will not produce much business value if left alone, and may produce nothing at all. Requires supervision. * Intermediate developer - Will produce something if left alone, but not necessaril…
This is very much the perspective I have taken over the years. When I'm hiring a senior developer, I'm looking for someone who will step in and own the project they're given. If I had to pick a single expression, especially one recognizable to this crowd, I would say it is someone who can execute. I also tend to view senior developers almost as internal consultants (good ones) because they should be willing and able to step away from they keyboard and talk to a stakeholder to discern what the business really needs without needing someone else to act as an intermediary.
Where I do disagree just a little bit with mrmekon, is that I tend to look for people who have experience with the necessary stack. I would be hesitant to hire a senior developer for a C#/MVC position if they have (broadly) never used C# or never done web development, for example. Modern stacks have a lot of moving parts, and I would prefer senior developers to understand how to troubleshoot, tune, upgrade, test, and deploy on the needed stack. These are things that a very strong developer could remediate within a few projects, though, which is why I only slightly disagree with mrmekon.
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#106I 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". Mistakes, rewrites, late nights, firefights, and deadlines. Core dumps, memory leaks, hardware faults, and plain bad luck. Big O, data flow, always learning -- or out you go. Manager metrics, schedules hectic, methodology hegelian dialectic. Taking the heat, feature creep, o…
There was a question a week ago about junior developers. mrmekon [1] gave an excellent answer: It depends on when and why I'm defining it, but my guidelines are more based on how they work than what they know: * Junior developer - Will not produce much business value if left alone, and may produce nothing at all. Requires supervision. * Intermediate developer - Will produce something if left alone, but not necessaril…
This seems to be a good road to go down, but low hanging fruit skews this a bit. For example at my first IT job they used a system that text messaged customers to remind them of appointments. It cost $250 a month per office (12 offices), I took initiative (I was the only IT person in the company, I had very little management) and replaced it with an alternative I wrote in Python that used Twillo and brought that cost to below $5 a month per office. The savings were slightly greater than my salary (I also provided general IT services that were then basically free for them), but I wouldn't call myself a senior developer or a developer at all really as I've only held IT services jobs.
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#107I 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". Mistakes, rewrites, late nights, firefights, and deadlines. Core dumps, memory leaks, hardware faults, and plain bad luck. Big O, data flow, always learning -- or out you go. Manager metrics, schedules hectic, methodology hegelian dialectic. Taking the heat, feature creep, o…
There was a question a week ago about junior developers. mrmekon [1] gave an excellent answer: It depends on when and why I'm defining it, but my guidelines are more based on how they work than what they know: * Junior developer - Will not produce much business value if left alone, and may produce nothing at all. Requires supervision. * Intermediate developer - Will produce something if left alone, but not necessaril…
The real question is, what is 'business value' then?
The business value defined by the engineering department and the business value defined by the business department, can be sometimes very different.
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#108I 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". Mistakes, rewrites, late nights, firefights, and deadlines. Core dumps, memory leaks, hardware faults, and plain bad luck. Big O, data flow, always learning -- or out you go. Manager metrics, schedules hectic, methodology hegelian dialectic. Taking the heat, feature creep, o…
There was a question a week ago about junior developers. mrmekon [1] gave an excellent answer: It depends on when and why I'm defining it, but my guidelines are more based on how they work than what they know: * Junior developer - Will not produce much business value if left alone, and may produce nothing at all. Requires supervision. * Intermediate developer - Will produce something if left alone, but not necessaril…
The term 'business value' is hard to measure for any given developer I think. The easiest measure is to say your managers define 'business value' and you deliver what they want or deliver to their strategic objectives, but that equates 'business value' to 'management whim'... if the manager is a perfect guide to maximizing profit then I guess that's ok, but I doubt most managers have that perfect ability to detect how to create profits. Alternatively, you might suggest that some cash/profit measure determines 'business value', but that's both hard to measure and not always strategic... some businesses need the best developers to build the systems that lose money in order to make money in other areas.... it's hard to measure.
With the way you've outlined it I think you've emphasized that a 'Senior developer' is someone who can be both social and technical, that's a good thing and would be very beneficial for any person who can do those two things well... but I wouldn't discount people who are exceptionally technical but need someone else to help them prioritize and define their work and focus.
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#109Whatever 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",…
Many companies have a separate "Product Manager" role for that business, so that the brilliant engineers can brilliant SENIOR implementors. Have a dedicated professional worry about the customer impact, product requirements, etc., along with other non-programming tasks that many developers understandably prefer not to get bogged down in.
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was a question a week ago about junior developers. mrmekon [1] gave an excellent answer: It depends on when and why I'm defining it, but my guidelines are more based on how they work than what they know: * Junior developer - Will not produce much business value if left alone, and may produce nothing at all. Requires supervision. * Intermediate developer - Will produce something if left alone, but not necessaril…
The real question is, what is 'business value' then? The business value defined by the engineering department and the business value defined by the business department, can be sometimes very different.
... And you expect a "senior" to be able to understand, negotiate and resolve this, as well as understand when and how to escalate, etc.