
Ask HN: What are your best tips to become a senior dev? - Ryperhun
Hello HN,<p>I think this topic doesn&#x27;t get enough attention. What are your best tips to become seniors? I am mostly interested in becoming a senior backend dev. 
I saw a lot of programmers with 10 years of experience still stuck in the mid level, this proves that only experience is not going to make you a senior.
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oil25
In my experience, "senior" in a title means the individual is capable of
planning tasks for themselves and a small team with minimal or no supervision.
A senior developer doesn't wait to be assigned a task; they identify a
problem, check for existing solutions or efforts to fix it, then go about
implementing and iterating based on peer feedback. I really believe the
distinction isn't always technical in nature, but certainly in attitude and
willingness to get things done on one's own.

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greenyoda
As someone who has been both a senior developer and a manager of developers, I
think this is an excellent description.

I'd add just a couple of things. The first is communication skills. Someone at
the senior level is expected to be able to communicate complex technical
issues not only to other developers, but to less-technical people such as
product managers and senior management.

The second is that someone in a senior role (whether they're a developer or
something else) has to start changing their perspective so that they consider
the needs of the business and its customers. For example, a low-level
developer might want to work with a language or framework that they find
personally interesting, but a senior developer might understand that what
their customers actually need is long-term reliability that would be easier to
achieve with more stable technology.

