Are 2 years enough to make someone “senior”? If it is... then what is a junior? And where is the middle?

Open any job board and it will feel like every company only hires seniors... but if everyone is a “senior”, then no one really is one.

Because of that, you start having positions like “staff”, “principal”, “expert”, “advanced”, “specialist”, “lead”, “rockstar”, “master”, and any combination of that... (ok, I haven't actually seen the “master” one... yet.)

And if you have to create new positions to show seniority, then a senior might as well be a junior!

The “years of experience” myth

You can have decades doing the exact same basic thing without any alteration or you can have a wild couple of years doing odd jobs that let you experiment with a breadth of problems... what even is seniority in this case?

There are a couple of books and TED talks out there about the “10_000 hours” and the “first 20 hours”. And they certainly apply to programming.

And of course...

忍者猫, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Am I saying all those 2-year seniors are on the ‘Peak of “Mount Stupid”’?

No! Or well, perhaps?

Some do manage that, after all, networking and connections, not the techy type of them mind you, do net you jobs and opportunities you wouldn’t have otherwise.
Also why some people suffer from impostor syndrome.

So... why?

Maybe ego? Maybe self-realized prophecy? Maybe laziness? Maybe short sight? Maybe all of that?

Why don’t you put in the comments “the why”?

Why is this bad?

An old adage is that a junior is someone who gives others problems, a middle level is someone who takes care of his problems and a senior is the one that fixes others’ problems.

And by that definition, a senior has to help others in order to grow.

And it should go without saying that you can’t just spawn as a senior... you should go through the steps. It maybe will take a different time for each one, but it will be there.

For the developer

Impostor syndrome aside, developers get lost on what to apply to and might either moonshot or undershoot, and in either case... someone will have a bad time.

For the companies

They spend a lot to hire, retain, and finally replace people.
But more than they lose knowledge. If everyone is senior... who are they repassing their knowledge to? What happens when they leave?
And besides... having seniors making simple CRUDs and centering divs is a kind of waste don’t you think?

What I want you to think about

There’s a reason to divide people into junior, medior, and senior.

There might be even cases to have something more than that if it actually means something.

And you can always forgo that and opt to have some kind of progression with levels...

Just like our functions and variables have meaningful names, ordering, and reason... so should the developers’ positions.

There’s a job and a place for everyone.
A senior leaving on a senior team also leaves with the knowledge.
A senior leaving a proper team with juniors and mediors will leave behind some knowledge with the others. Also... they will develop into seniors eventually.

Cover Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash