Things I Learned to Become a Senior Software Engineer

Things I Learned to Become a Senior Software Engineer
neilkakkar.com

I think it's up to the company whether you're Senior, Ninja, Shaman or Necromant Developer

I've also seen the title of "senior" in one organization being wildly different to a "senior" in another organization within the same company. For example, for some reason, the "API dev team" had insanely high bar whereas the "submodule X team" had seniors left and right, quality-wise nowhere near seniors from the "API dev team".

This all has led me to believe getting promoted is simply about renegotiating your salary with the company, and has very little to do with your actual skill. It has more to do with who's your direct manager, and what is your relationship with him/her.

Personal and anecdotal experience only of course.

If I give a solid junior a clear spec, wireframes, guidance on tools and mentorship then they should make progress according to the spec. If what I assign to a junior engineer is impossible to implement or useless to the product, that’s on me.

A senior should be able to succeed with much higher level / vaguely specified tasks. Like, here’s the client. Here’s the team. Go figure out for yourself how you can add the most value. A good senior should be able to figure out if there’s resources or skills the team is missing, and solve what needs solving in order to make the project successful. Sometimes this is non-technical - like raising issues with the client, organising to hire another UX person, etc. A senior should be resourceful.

You can frame the same thing in terms of responsibility scope. A junior is responsible for the assigned task (as the task is described). A senior/principal is responsible for the project being successful or the company’s software meeting the needs of the business.

Senior/staff/principal/etc to me mean beyond vague locations on that junior-to-senior+ engineer resourcefulness axis. I don’t think there’s any agreed upon definitions across the industry. (Though google, microsoft, etc all have their own internal working definitions)