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Comment by cccybernetic | Hacker News Reader

There's something to this.

I’m a senior dev in NYC with ~7 years experience working across the stack (NextJS/ReactJS, Node, Python, Postgres, SQL Server, etc). I’m also not half bad at design.

I haven’t been able to get a response much less an interview.

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In no other professional field is someone with 7 years of experience considered “senior” anything.

Edit to clarify my meaning: I’m not trying to come at you, just pointing out that this seems to be symptomatic of the problem as a whole.

it's definitely a more modern thing, even in Software Development. Probably part on the employee's demands jumping between roles with much shorter tenure, and partly on the employer to justify the higher salaries over the past few years.

The term 'senior' is completely meaningless. I've seen people get a senior role ~1.5 years after graduating bootcamp.

Many "seniors" I've seen are just handed the role. They are rarely any good...which makes me treasure the seniors who actually know their stuff so much more, and also feel a fair amount of contempt for the folk handing out paper titles.

I'll disagree. The last 20 years I've been a DBA/DA/dev at a slew of medium/large/ultragiant mining/construction/engineering companies. In almost every single one, there's a young gun quietly operating somewhere there, the equivalent of a 10x developer, a "Senior Engineer" in their mid-20's.

Sure, they're the exception, but with enough numbers you'll always find exceptions.

I appreciate you sharing this! But to be fair, those exceptions are presumably granted with some honor for proven work.

Titles were never normalized in the software industry because we've resisted licensure -- so organizations freely make up their own, rotate them, inflate them and workers don't complain so long as it sounds no less cool/marketable than their last one.

Apparently, according to my search results -

- Accountants become Senior Associates at around the 3rd year.

- Lawyers becomes Senior Associates at around the 6th year.

- It seems that doctors can complete their fellowship around the 7th year mark as well.

- Reddit commenters claim they got a senior civil engineer title at the 5th year.

So, I don't know what you're talking about...

I’ve got about ten years with acquisitions and IPO as an early engineer at startups plus some big company experience.

I’ve barely been getting any interviews for the NYC market. When I do, they have weird processes too. I haven’t done a single leetcode interview yet and it’s mind boggling because that’s what I’ve been prepping for this entire time.

That said, I’ve run out of places to interview. The market is insanely dry for nyc and I’m worried I’ll have to move back to SF to get hired.

What is your salary expectation?

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