I liked a lot of the article until I got to<p>>Our hiring “secret sauce” largely stems from the fact that it seems to take significantly less time for someone with leadership and community skills to develop technical skills than the other way around. I’m seeing a large number of people who graduated from code bootcamps 3 and even 2 years ago now handily and gracefully filling the role of senior developer.<p>This statement makes me concerned that they have greatly devalued technical skills. There are not a whole lot of areas where we would consider a three month course plus 2 years experience anywhere close to being senior. According to <a href="http://www.plumbingapprenticeshipshq.com/how-to-become-a-journeyman-plumber/" rel="nofollow">http://www.plumbingapprenticeshipshq.com/how-to-become-a-jou...</a> to become a journeyman plumber (mid-level) requires a 4-5 year apprenticeship!<p>When technical ability is devalued so much in a company, there is a real danger that this turns into a Dunning-Kruger clique, where "senior" developers that have been programming for 2.5 years automatically favor hiring experienced business people over experienced developers (remember you can turn someone who has never programmed into a senior developer in a little over 2 years)<p>Think about law, medicine, engineering, or the military. We would never call a lawyer that started training 3 years ago a senior attorney. A doctor after 4 years of medical school is called an intern and basically expected to mess stuff up. As mentioned above, even a plumber with 3 years of experience is an apprentice. Why should we as software developers devalue our craft so much?
I have bookmarked John Allspaw's thorough writeup about this topic because I figure it's worth re-reading to internalize: <a href="http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engineer/" rel="nofollow">http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engi...</a><p>He also makes reference to the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition which is worth keeping in mind:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisit...</a>
I really liked this! I will also have to think on it more.<p>However, I think you sell the initial idea short - that seniority DOES ultimately boil down to direction required / direction provided.<p>The only place this summary would fall short are in those people who can bust out anything on their own in record time, but have trouble with teams... and even they provide direction, if only by setting a technical direction/example.<p>When you expand to the venn diagram, you're elaborating on the <i>kinds</i> of direction that can required or provided, but that core remains - that ultimately, seniority happens as you go from needing direction to providing it.<p>Now, within in different industries, the points within each circle can change (compare startups, where now is better than perfect, to industrial plants, where perfect is better than now, to research, where now and perfect are sacrificed to hard and novel).<p>I'd say it's even likely that, given a different culture and/or problem domain and/or ???, you get different circles entirely - although it's hard to argue with "ability to do the job", "ability to work with others" and "ability to cause direction". What are things that <i>don't</i> fit into one of those?
"Senior developer" is a job title. Think of it as army ranks, each national army might have their own names and ways or promoting others.<p>Some people also argue what is the difference between calling yourself coder, programmer, software developer and software engineer, and even taking the debate as far as questioning if a software engineer is an actual engineer.<p>To be honest, these debates are sort of empty unless there is clear regulation and disambiguation around what seniority is. You can define seniority in many ways.
Make it three-dimensionalby adding a fourth circle with C-level skills and you've got the CTO diagram ! Seriously this is by far the smartest thing I've read associated with "senior developer", and can be of great use when hiring decisions need to be made.
My problem with these sorts of discussions is that they try to put technical know-how on the same footing as social aptitude, charisma, and other "soft skills".<p>I can throw darts on a map and find billions of people capable of "connectedness" and "leadership". Finding you capable "technical" talent on the other hand...<p>This ease is mostly due to connectedness and leadership being naturally grown out of decades of organic social interactions that people need to do in order to... you know... survive. You can accidentally reinforce these properties just by being 1.) a member of the human species and 2.) alive.<p>No one accidentally reinforces the understanding required to mentally maintain the thousands of arcane exceptions written by the result of C-Levels pivoting endlessly across outsourced teams for the cheapest price, compiling the world's worst spaghetti code responsible for an everything-on-the-line application.<p>And if this seems a bitter, then look into your own organizations and experiences: Who gets fired/quits the most? Human Resources, C-Levels, Marketing or the Technical team? Whose ass is on the line when the fires start? Who is expected to work 10+ hour days every day for all of eternity?<p>Looking for unicorns does not make you a unicorn hunter. It makes you delusional. A senior knows unicorns don't exist even if people look to him/her as one.
Its really mainly a rationalization for paying some people more than others. Or just a way of rating some developers as being more valuable.<p>If it were popular to use Programmer I, Programmer II, and Programmer III, then they would call it that.<p>By the way, going to a lot of conferences or having a lot of Twitter followers does not make you more 'senior' than me. It might make it easier for you to negotiate a 'senior' title and salary though, just by virtue of your being good at self-promotion.
I think this is a great analysis. We like to think that jobs are clearly defined, but in reality they aren't, and they differ from company to company.<p>I have spent many a year being as a mid-level exec in medium size companies. Wherever I've been, I have demonstrated ownership and leadership (I'm not bragging, that's just how I work). However, I have alway felt a 'lack' of technical expertise, probably because I fit so well into the leadership roles I never spend that long on 'deep' technical work. Recently, I have sought to remedy this. I have traded my mid-level 'get stuff done' to become a developer, to scratch an itch that has been there since I programmed BASIC on my ZX Spectrum. I'm no spring chicken and I have spent the past 5 years getting up to speed on modern web and mobile development techniques and have pushed myself as a developer to anyone who will listen. In my latest role I've already been earmarked for a lead developer role - and I think this validates what the article is saying and also what a few comments on here are saying; I have demonstrated that I am technically competent with 3-4 years solid experience (which for 90% of jobs out there is probably enough), but my approach to working; owning problems and solutions, leading and mentoring others show that I can be relied upon to deliver product.<p>Just to counter the self-congratulatory tone of the above (I'm English, it makes me uncomfortable), I'm acutely aware of my shortcomings both technically and personally; I should write more tests, I should plan more before writing code, I sometimes don't speak up because I don't want to look stupid etc. But I think everyone has shortcomings that they learn to accommodate or change, it's all part of life.
In my experience a senior developer is a lesser-title for a CTO. A senior developer is someone who knows the company's mission, knows the technology, and knows the team. From there they evaluate what the board/CEO/kid with a plan want and develop a strategy to get the not-senior developers to implement that plan.<p>Key characteristics:
<i>Not chasing every new and shiny framework/tech
</i>Singular focus on stated objectives/milestones/deliverables
<i>Understands "big picture" as well as the granular details, so that they can provide advice and leadership about implementation
</i>Acts as buffer between "techies" and management in every cycle of iteration<p>It's very likely that my bullets are worded poorly, but my overall point is that a senior developer is someone who has the experience to liaison between those with ideas and those with technical skills. In some environments the sr. dev is the person doing the tech work, in other environment they're leading a team, in any case they have the knowledge, skills and experience to produce results.
I found this a thought provoking post, but the true value was that "senior" means different things at different companies. A senior dev at Oracle will need a vastly different skillset than a senior dev at a startup.<p>(The Venn diagram is a nice starting point, though.)<p>So, when you are looking at jobs or hires, always consider the context.
If you can't define how to hire for a senior developer, it is probably because you can't define the job of a senior developer. I know this is pretty much stated in the article, but the greater implication seems to be missed. Senior developers are those that bring definition to the undefined.<p>I believe you don't hire people for jobs they've done, you hire people to do a job, and you ultimately fire people for not doing their jobs. What they did in the past might have zero bearing on what the person is capable of doing. A resume only tells you how good they are at writing resumes (especially if you don't follow up and confirm it, and who has time for that?)<p>Admit that the criteria is undefined, and stop trying to have control where there is none. Put people on the job without interviewing then [0]. Fire them if they prove they can't do their job. But I think it is much more likely that you will find yourself surprised by a person stepping up to the challenge presented to them.<p>The job doesn't care how you found the candidate to do it. You don't really have any control, anyway. So quit wasting time (and money) on the process.<p>[0] at least, not in this way. I prescreen candidates for general intelligence and social graces. We do not hire people who think it's ok to tell racist jokes at parties. Unfortunately, this is a recurring issue.
I've always thought about it this way: A Senior Developer can tackle a large project (alone or leading a team) without technical help. A Junior Developer would need some guidance with a variety of things from choosing tools and approach to scaling and interfacing with existing infrastructure.