
Ask HN: What does Senior Developer mean exactly? - ansek
Recently, I read a couple of articles about a role of Senior Developer but honestly can&#x27;t fully understand what&#x27;s this all about.<p>Some articles suggested that it&#x27;s a set of skills when one can choose best-fit technology stack and get a project done. Some suggested that it&#x27;s all about leading a team (but why do we have Team Lead then?).<p>Personally, I&#x27;ve been working as a web developer for 9 years professionally using front-end tech and back-end techs such as Go and Node.js.
I can finish a website, a web service, SAAS project, choose tech stack, organize CD and CI, scale it up (not like AirBnB or Google but at a decent level), make the right decisions about testing and make the whole process work because I&#x27;ve done it before. Does it make me a Senior Developer?<p>What&#x27;s your real world experience with a Senior Developer role?
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codr4life
I would expect someone throwing that title around to have rewritten most parts
of the stack themselves, in several languages; to figure things out or to
custom build something that needs a tight fit. That kind of general purpose
capability; to jump in wherever and solve whatever problems; means tens of
years of focused thinking and coding for most people. To me it's very much
about being a potential leader/mentor, official or not; and duct taping what's
hot today into working solutions is not the kind of experience needed to guide
and teach; not enough perspective. I feel so old writing this, we lost
something priceless along the way to awesome profits.

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ansek
So, basically, Senior Developer === Getting Things Done?

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codr4life
Rather Senior Developer === Enough perspective and experience to solve tricky
problems and guide others. Exactly what I wrote in other words. Sorry if that
stepped on sore frameworking victim toes.

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brudgers
Titles like 'senior developer' are anaphora. Their final meaning depends on
context. In some contexts 'senior developer' can resolve to a self taught
JavaScript programmer with two years of experience based on their ability to
solve ordinary problems without much supervision. In other contexts it means
someone with fifteen years of embedded systems C experience based on their
ability to solve hard problems with no supervision.

People move jobs for the same work with a different title. Titles don't bestow
technical ability upon a person...though in certain contexts they do increase
their billable rate.

Good luck.

