Seniority in Software Engineering

"Working in the industry for a long time doesn’t automatically bring seniority either" I can't emphasize this point enough. Most engineers, who are doing the same basic tasks every day over and over again for years, identify themselves as senior engineers. I understand that people like to stay in comfort zone when there is no need to get out, really. This is something I do too. However, this bothers me when these kind of engineers block and mock their colleagues(especially juniors) by convincing them he/she knows better, when they try to get out of their comfort zone and learn/do something new.

A senior engineer is someone 3 years into their career no longer willing to work for paltry wages. Stop glorifying something every mid 20s in the profession deserves. It only serves to keep the power in the hands of the corporate elites and the wage pressure down on an already meek, mostly economically illiterate and unconfident group of otherwise intelligent and productive individuals. If you want to write an article worshipping your ideal of a nerdy super-hero, make it about senior architects at FAANG earning 1 million+ per year instead.

I’ve been in an environment where technical’s chops weren’t a way to become senior. The software reflected this. I didn’t like it.<p>In my opinion, technical ability must be table stakes. Without it you shouldn’t even be able to begin the journey.

I&#x27;m struggling to understand who the audience of this post is.<p>At the end of the day, &quot;Senior Software Engineer&quot; is a job role, not some ideology. Pretty much every where I&#x27;ve worked, Senior means someone who knows the <i>why</i>. Most companies review the engineers already on multiple axes, not just technical merit. There is little value in baking these non-engineering skills into the definition.<p>Articles like these certainly don&#x27;t help much with the impostor syndrome.

After all, business wants to make money and solve their problems. And the more independent and effective you can do it, the higher your role will be. Businesses can be different and the roles have different requirements as well.<p>And the top skill of the engineer is not the list of known programming languages, not the ability to close tasks, not knowledge of the bazillion algorithms, not certificates of the scrum master. Namely, the ability to take a real problem and solve it yourself is the main skill of a professional. Solve it yourself does not mean alone. By yourself means to be able to find the necessary resources, people, set tasks, control the result and bear responsibility for this.

so someone that spent 12 years writing brilliant APIs and implementations, advanced the state of their field and their company&#x27;s business, but they are fairly mediocre at being team players (not going to name names and get into flamewars but I can certainly come up with a half dozen famous names off the top of my head), they&#x27;re ...junior engineers?

Anytime I see someone signal that they freight the &quot;senior&quot; in &quot;senior engineer&quot; with a ton of significance (self-import?), they fall in my estimation a bit.<p>That move says something about their frame of reference, and what it says doesn&#x27;t do them any favors.<p>Leaving aside its intimation of a possible inferiority complex being overcompensated for, here are some observations:<p>1. &quot;Senior engineer&quot; is a mid-level title at high-prestige tech companies.<p>2. Organizations with flat teams (a model that typically only functions well when everyone is relatively senior) have no reason to load the title with a ton of significance.<p>So when you pontificate about the importance of the senior engineer, you suggest that you (1) are not at a high-prestige company, (2) work in a more hierarchical team structure. Neither possibility is flattering.<p>FWIW, I would consider every point outlined in this medium post to be a desideratum for any engineer, regardless of seniority level.

There was a very good blog post about this by Silvia Botros, though she uses &quot;principal engineer&quot; as the label: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.dbsmasher.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;01&#x2F;28&#x2F;on-being-a-principal-engineer.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.dbsmasher.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;01&#x2F;28&#x2F;on-being-a-principal-e...</a>

&gt; A senior engineer should have T-shaped knowledge. It is expected from a senior engineer to have broad knowledge about various topics and deep knowledge about some topics.<p>More than that. A senior^Wgood engineer should be a generalist who can specialize as needed.

I think the article has some good points regarding the expectations of a senior engineer but also seems to conflate the duties of a team lead with senior engineer, but in my experience those are two different roles (and usually titles).

‘Senior’ doesn’t mean anything except within a single company. My very first job was as a ‘senior’. See it as just level X within some company and don’t worry about the word itself and don’t try to compare.

&quot;Senior&quot; at my company evaluates to &quot;indispensable.&quot; If you aren&#x27;t senior, then your performance is at a level that your employment can be terminated for cause. &quot;Senior&quot; means you are on the bus in the bus factor.

Quote: &quot;Overall, if I were to list traits of a senior engineer, technical skills wouldn’t be in the top 3 on that list.&quot;<p>...aaaand that&#x27;s where I stopped reading this. It&#x27;s like saying sex isn&#x27;t in top 3 marriage binders.

Good points, LinkedIn asks this question in behavioral interview “whats the difference between junior and senior engineer”..I had similar points but you have articulated it very well.

Tech Lead here, 20yrs or so experience I guess it is now, I don&#x27;t know what counts and what doesn&#x27;t.<p>That&#x27;s a good list, but I find it&#x27;s very difficult for any one person to live up to all of that. It&#x27;s asking a lot. How is my role going? They&#x27;re asking a lot of an introvert who is fun to work with but not great at motivating others or being empathic. I&#x27;m a decent leader, but not a great leader, nor will I ever be. It&#x27;s just not my gift and while I try to improve those skills, I know that I will only get so far because I&#x27;m not a corporate person at heart. I have no great respect for how US companies are managed, no great respect for managers, especially the MBA variety, whom I compare to parasites--blood sucking, unethical scoundrels. I don&#x27;t wish to be &quot;the worst of us.&quot; I get that many of them didn&#x27;t set out to be that way, but something about corporate culture germinates profound psychopathy in people.<p>Not going to lie to you, being a &quot;software engineer&quot; (an extremely loaded term these days, and I argue, one that isn&#x27;t a correct labeling of anything we do--there is no &quot;engineering&quot; whatsoever) and the role is not worth the money they pay you. &quot;Information Sharecropper&quot; has a more honest ring to it.