Ask HN: What are your best tips to become a senior dev?

[Ryperhun]

Hello HN,

I think this topic doesn'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.

[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.

[greenyoda → oil25]

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.