
Ask HN: What's the Different Between a Senior and a Regular Developer? - acidfreaks
I am into web development (Front-End first then I&#x27;ll jump to the Back-End). I am curious what could give me a significant competitive advantage?<p>How do you categorize Senior, Junior or Regular developers? Is it production-experience, languages&#x2F;frameworks knowledge or knowing best-practices?<p>Looking forward to hear from you guys.
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PhilWright
The software industry is relatively young and there are no standardized job
titles with well defined skill/experience levels. Based on my own experience
over the last 25 years, working with many programmers, is to ignore the
official title and bucket people according to the following observations.

Junior Developer \- Needs to be managed everyday or at least most days. \- Has
a narrow view of their job, its all about the code. \- Spends most of their
time thinking about how to write code at the level of individual functions. \-
Regularly gets stuck and needs technical input.

Regular Developer \- Needs to be managed once per week. \- Writing actual code
has become automatic. \- Thinks about designing whole modules of code. \-
Considers trade-offs/code patterns/best practice. \- Occasionally gets stuck
and needs input.

Senior Developer \- Only needs managing occasionally. \- Thinks about the
business problem being solved. \- Managing expectations and requirements is
hardest part of job. \- Helps solve problems of Junior/Regular developers.

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carlosnunez
Great response. As someone trying to make the jump to the senior level, this
also works on the systems side as well.

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officialchicken
I like the medieval analogy for masons:

First, the apprentice learns how to use the tools to build something.

Then a journeyman can use the tools and a team to build anything.

Finally a master can build the tools, build the team, and build anything
including their own workshop.

~~~
obayesshelton
A well-known example to Mason's of this is the Rough and Smooth Ashlar:

"Speculative Masons use the ashlar in two forms: one rough, just as it came
from the quarry, representing Man in his ignorant, uncultivated state; and the
other, finely finished and ready for its place in the building, represents
Man, educated and refined."

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ninadmhatre
I don't think there will be perfect answer for this, but i will give it a try.

A senior dev is someone who should have good (hands-on) experience and can
give hints/inputs on the way junior/new developer should write the code. you
can even become senior by staying in 1 company for long time without learning
anything new in terms of tech, so sometimes junior/new dev knows more than
senior person. good environment should have mix of talented and average
developers that way they all will learn.

or sometimes its just a title (in some orgs. a fresher right out of college is
given sr. analyst title :) )

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jotux
18F has what I think are pretty good descriptions of junior-to-senior level
developer expectations (related to their pay scales). See the section titled,
"Selecting a grade level."

[https://pages.18f.gov/joining-18f/pay-
grades/](https://pages.18f.gov/joining-18f/pay-grades/)

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nonuby
You can have junior developers with 10 years experience, you can also have
senior developers with only 18 months experience. I wouldn't lend too much to
a title, it is particularly annoying when one hears people pigeon hole
themselves with these titles. That's not to underrate years of experience and
mistakes a long the way, but call a spade a spade 'developer with several
years of experience'

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clinton_sf
Take a look at Jocelyn Goldfein's software engineering career ladder chart:

[https://medium.com/@jocelyngoldfein/a-very-very-rough-
approx...](https://medium.com/@jocelyngoldfein/a-very-very-rough-
approximation-of-the-software-engineer-career-ladder-bcd6ef339156)

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mrfusion
2-30 years experience makes you a senior developer. It's basically a way to
avoid paying people for their experience.

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shikhar
[http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-
engi...](http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engineer/)

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bigiain
Hopefully a senior developer has learnt from some expensive mistakes made
before (preferable on a prevpous employers dime)...

:-)

