
Ask HN: How long to become a senior in a different stack/language? - alex-berlin
Right now I&#x27;m looking for different roles and there&#x27;s a lot more Java&#x2F;JVM based positions around me than Node.js, in which  I&#x27;d consider myself a senior.<p>At what point is it dishonest to apply as a senior for roles that use technologies you don&#x27;t experience in?<p>Would expand this question to include:<p>- Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure, Heroku, etc<p>- Languages (different paradigm, differently typed, etc)<p>- other relavant points
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davismwfl
Being a senior engineer is less about the language and more about your total
experience and architecture knowledge. I haven't actively used Java in 10
years, but I'd have no problem applying for a senior position but I'd be very
direct and honest about my current Java experience.

When I am hiring people for senior roles, I care less about the language they
know and more about their actual experience. If you understand patterns you'll
recognize them in any language. If you recognize good practices, they are the
same across languages, for the most part. Architectures are less language
dependent and more about experience.

Now, that said, there are parts of specific languages which are unique and you
need to know the language well. So I am not discounting specific language
knowledge, but I'd much rather have a senior engineer that knows their stuff
from an engineering/architecture point and has worked in multiple languages
than someone who just knows one language. So typically I only view people as
senior if they know (have worked in) more than one programming language, but
there are exceptions of course. Most likely a person who has 7 years of Java
but has never worked in any other language is senior, but more so a senior
Java person, than a senior engineer. So, they would not rank as high to me as
the person who has worked in multiple languages in the same time period and
solved various problems. Mainly because when you only know one language it is
a hammer and you'll use it even if you need a screwdriver which is worse then
they person who maybe has used 3-4 languages and is flexible about using what
fits. Also, this typically goes to the fact when you get stuck in a single
language on similar problems you typically have a narrow scope of knowledge.
Of course, there are many exceptions, for example, the person who has worked
only in Java but has worked at 3-4 companies on different problems will be a
lot better then the guy coming out of a Fortune 500 firm where he worked on
one product in Java his whole time there.

Hopefully that makes sense.

