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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

There is 1 aspect of YOE that literally is tied to actual years and cannot be rushed. I will die on this hill.

You are not a senior, if you haven’t stuck around on a project/product for 3 years to experience the lifecycle of your own amazing decisions turning into that awful stuff you need to maintain. It takes about 3 years, longer if you’re lucky. Cannot be rushed.

The most dangerous engineers have about 5 years of experience. They have the skills and the big brains, but not yet the wisdom to keep it in check.

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You need to stick around for 10 years or more. I've been on my current project for 15 years, and only now am I realizing how some of the things I did back then were bad. Now I'm stuck with those decisions, or I'm stuck trying to figure out how to fix them.

Well, if salary compression wasn’t a thing and companies kept internal raises consistent with market rates, that might be tenable.

Big companies give a 7-10% raise to everyone every few years to get back to competitive. I agree this is a big problem with the industry, but the C suite doesn't realize that. I always check the yearly inflation rate just before raises are announced to see how my raise compares to inflation - as a senior engineer I don't expect a raise anymore, I expect my salary to match inflation though. Often I get a pay cut every year instead. It has gotten bad enough that I moved (I found a transfer in the same company which came with a raise to the next pay grade - in that in turn pushed the old management to realize they had real problems with not giving promotions and a bunch of people who didn't move finally got their deserved promotion)

Totally. 5 years of

- build and ship

- then move around

- repeat

Is sorely lacking in vital important experience towards becoming a rounded senior.

A great reason why I don't like the 1 year repeated thing

It doesn’t matter. This is just the way the industry works. You will be looked at with suspicion if you stayed at one company for too long working on project doing maintenance.

I mean if you look at the leveling guidelines of every single tech company that I’m aware of, “senior” is defined by “scope”, “impact” and “dealing with ambiguity”. They may state it different ways. But it all boils down to this.

You are not a “senior” if you spent 3 years pulling tickets off the board with well defined business goals.

Sources:

https://www.levels.fyi/blog/swe-level-framework.html

https://dropbox.github.io/dbx-career-framework/

(The only BigTech company I have worked for)

https://www.levels.fyi/blog/amazon-leveling-progress.html

I agree. I would add that it’s best if those 3 years were spent growing a product rather than bouncing around the company (or companies) doing whatever comes.

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