Six Pillars to Become a Senior Level Software Developer | Hacker News Reader

Six Pillars to Become a Senior Level Software Developer

codinginfinite.com

My company has a very useful guide for the software engineer ladder, and one very interesting characteristic they look for (not mentioned here) is scope.

Seniors are expected to have a bigger scope, not only technically (e.g. leading the development of a service), but in terms of reach. Senior developers influence teams other than their own, and drive collaboration.

None of these things have anything to do with being a senior devoloper. Whoever wrote this is trying to imagine what a senior developer is through this junior len.

A senior developer doesn't teach others how to code a senior doesn't need others to teach them how to code.

A senior has to make tough calls? No they don't they make logical and sensible even boring calls. The product owner makes the tough calls.

A senior is always learning new things? All developers are always learning new things. More so junior developers.

The senior developer make tough calls according to what architecture we're going to use, senior developer listen to clients in the meeting and make tough decision.

Yes every developer always learn new things but junior developer never asks himself why this framework exists, what pros and cons we get after using the specific library, they not dig deep, etc

Most consultancies just name you senior once you have between 3-5 years of experience. Companies that attract new talent will gladly dish out a “senior” title a little early to make you sign.

I’ve had contracts that literally state >= 5 years of experience = senior hourly rate.

This is literally how you become senior.

Here in Canberra, Australia there is a lot of consulting/contract work, and 5 years seems to be the magic number.

For contracts here they mostly only hire "senior", and once i crossed 5 years experience the same recruitment firms that all but ignored me 6 months earlier wouldn't stop calling.

9 times out of 10 an article with this little substance or original insight is buried on Hacker News. How did this one manage to break out?

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