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.
Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
111–120 of 162 posts
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#112Earlier 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…
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…
Senior developers also learn to stop being needlessly pedantic.
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#113When 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…
>>If someone like Donald Knuth would be forced due to economic circumstances to join a trendy web start-up, he'd be a junior working under a twenty-something senior with little more than some Javascript and MongoDB knowledge
To play devils advocate, why wouldn't Donald Knuth be the junior given that scenario? In that position he may actually know less relevant knowledge than the junior. I mean many startup/crud apps don't require advance algorithmic knowledge, more front end dev and ability to deliver relevant business value. I wouldn't expect that junior to join knuths team and be put in charge, why should we expect the reverse? Given time yes, If Knuth is more intelligent he could become better at startup relevant work, then he should be more "senior" not before.
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#114Whatever 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",…
One thing people need to remember, business is all about giving people what they want. A business that fails to do so will fail.
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#115Whatever 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",…
One thing people need to remember, business is all about giving people what they want. A business that fails to do so will fail.
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Anecdotally, I feel like this is how my older peers see me. I've been working (professionally) in this industry since I was 16 years old, I got my first job as a junior after tinkering with computers since I was 8 years old. At the age of 23, I've found it very difficult to earn the respect of the people around me because of my age. I have the title of senior developer because I've had experience working on scalabili…
Curiosity: are you from US? Is software engineering seen as less valuable than computer science? I'm asking this because for me software engineering is a more complete discipline and would encompass pretty much everything computer science does.
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#117As 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…
I'll second this. Titles vary across company size, and even then are different from company to company (e.g a Principal Engineer at Intel would not make PE at Google). I was a Staff Software Engineer at Intel (level above Senior Software Engineer) but now my title is Senior Front End Developer at a startup ;)
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anecdotally, I feel like this is how my older peers see me. I've been working (professionally) in this industry since I was 16 years old, I got my first job as a junior after tinkering with computers since I was 8 years old. At the age of 23, I've found it very difficult to earn the respect of the people around me because of my age. I have the title of senior developer because I've had experience working on scalabili…
Curiosity: are you from US? Is software engineering seen as less valuable than computer science? I'm asking this because for me software engineering is a more complete discipline and would encompass pretty much everything computer science does.
I'm from the United Kingdom, where Software Engineering is seen as a lesser degree to Computer Science, in the same way that building CRUD applications is popularly seen as lesser than compiler design.
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For example working on a large OO Monoliths where a senior started to add lots of "clever" functional code. Adding a simplier design with functional code is a good thing. If there is a mid level developer that can't follow the current state of the art, than he is not a good mid level developers. Also "good" junior developers have mostly zero problems in understanding more functional code. I mean you don't need to u…
You need to realize most mid- and junior programmers simply aren't good.
And that means they aren't good, not that the person using good practices isn't good.
If it is a business requirement that good developers must be slowed down for bad ones to catch up, then do it by encapsulation and mentoring. Not by decreeing that good developers must act exactly like bad ones.
Re: Ask HN: When are you considered a “senior” programmer?
#120I 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…
I noticed a few years ago that what set me apart from my junior days was that now when I have a question, I decide what I think the best course of action is, send an email with the question and my choice, along with a statement that I'm proceeding in that direction unless someone stops me, and then start working on it.
Previously, I'd either have no idea what to do with it, or just not work on that thing at all. (Usually I'd move on to something else, since there was seldom that I didn't have multiple things that needed doing.)
It means that I'm a lot more efficient at getting things done, but I never get so far out of the proper path that it's a problem. And even going down the wrong path usually produces something of value for the correct path.