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Comment by ftufek | Hacker News Reader

Another thing is, you have to lead other engineers. Not only you shouldn't need constant supervision, you are the supervisor in many cases.

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A senior engineer does not have to lead other engineers to be senior, only have the ability to do so if called upon.

How does this work on a team composed exclusively of senior engineers?

Where is the source of direction or vision for the project? Rarely is this task evenly divided.

There can be different sources of "direction" for the project: product, engineering and project management. The roles may overlap but the leaders that are good at those 3 things are rare.

The one with the most domain knowledge and technical excellence leads? thus Lead Senior Developer.

Those that sound like they know what they are doing, seem to make good decisions, appear to the manager as someone that will make them look good, and seem to be someone the manager can understand and trust will be promoted over someone with more domain knowledge and technical ability that doesn't have those other qualifications in some cases.

Don't assume a meritocracy, even if it had seemed that way initially, because managers change, and things often don't work like that.

Your job title/level/rank (“Principal Engineer”, “IC6”, ...) is what you’ve been deemed capable of (usually by doing it). But your role on a particular project is going to depend on what’s needed. Sometimes you’ll be the lead of the whole thing. Or the lead of a piece of it. Or just another contributor.

Some performance management systems are poorly designed to handle scenarios like this, admittedly.

Yeah agreed. Amazon expects everyone to follow their Leadership Principles but no team can succeed if everyone attempts to lead.

It depends on your role. If you are an individual contributor, you may not be expected to supervise other engineers or organize their work.

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