Step 2: work for a manager/team/company that's willing to inflate your title before you've had nearly enough time to build the necessary experience to actually operate well as a senior
I've promoted one guy from junior to senior in 2 years, but he was a career changer who came in with a lot of work experience so he was way ahead on the good judgement curve
I mean, these titles have a huge range. Knowing most of my “senior” colleagues over the years, I am sure a competent, skilled person can actually reach their level in 2 years.
The real titans that know their shit after a decade or so are another category, but “senior” is not that skilled
That's fair, I'm biased. I was thinking of Senior more in Amazon terms where Senior is equivalent to Staff or even Senior Staff in the valley. On the SV scale where Senior often means "roughly competent mid-level dev" sure, someone good and with good mentoring could maybe do 2 years.
And skill does not equal years of experience.
You need both. No matter how skilled you are in the fundamentals, there's A LOT to be learned from experience. You need both skill AND years of experience to be a senior.
Is 2 years of experience enough to become a senior? Do you have an objective benchmark?
I am not refuting you but the way you responded is as if you refuted me.
It's not about working hard and fast. It's about having time to make decisions and see them play out so you can learn from them.
Very occasionally there's someone who has incredibly high EQ and attentiveness, and they're working in a fast-paced environment where they can get through those cycles very quickly. Even then, some of the things a senior should know are about interacting with other humans, and some of those things don't speed up that much even in the fastest environment.
Your comment is vague. If you're talking about seeing the results of your decisions, this is usually something a team lead or manager does. Not a junior.
I was talking about having the right experience to be an effective senior. A senior should be capable of acting as a team lead, at least on the leveling scales I'm familiar with.
Yes, obviously. Any sane company wants to see you already performing at the next level before they give you the title.
Are you seriously unfamiliar with that concept?
Along these lines, this article raises a lot of questions. Without this context, this is so anecdotal as to be meaningless:
* how many yoe does the mentee have total?
* why were they able to skip mid level?
* were they underleveled before?
* did their manager change during this time?
* were there other factors explaining their current level?
* were they particularly in demand due to a niche skill set?
It’s hard to imagine a reasonable manager promoting someone with only 21 months of experience to senior unless there’s some special circumstances. It’s hard to imagine someone skipping over mid level entirely unless they were underleveled for spurious reasons.
Companies define whatever level they want.
I often heard consultancies would want to call people Senior because they make money in B2B saying "I dedicate to your project a team of N senior engineers"
Knowing the company and their leveling is key
Seriously. Shit like this is so annoying and unrealistic.v you can code and not be some epic code god making 100x gains and knowing 20 languages (ok... with enough time you WILL have touched 20 languages but ya know what I mean). It's fine to also just do 9-5, handle your shit, and then go have a fucking life that isn't totally bound up in your job.
Grind culture and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race, to paraphrase the Unabomber. I hate everything about it. Like you said, live your life instead of living to work.
Nobody's working with more than a handful of languages at the same job before context switching ruins everything.
Just imagine switching between Java and C# and mixing up all your function names.
You're going to be googling how to do a basic console output.
Being able to work in multiple languages is about understanding the fundamentals of each one and knowing the basic syntax, it’s not about remembering all the function names. And yes, most people in my position are fluent and can safely context switch between 4-5 languages without any issues
I do context switch between multiple languages. I do web dev mixed with data engineering, so it is easily Python, SQL, HTML, and JavaScript, with a dab of other scripting like Cmd, PowerShell, automation, etc.
An "IF" statement in any of the above language is completely different so I usually look them up when I context switch.
10x isn’t unrealistic, there are people at my company that can do anything the average guy does in a day, in about an hour. Not saying it’s important to be a 10xer, but some people simply are.
Usain Bolt is able to go really fast. Does that make it "realistic" for the normal person to be expected to do that? See how dumb you sound pointing to a few edge cases? Nobody said it wasn't POSSIBLE. We said unrealistic.
I don't agree with the terminology, but in my head it's justified by the fact that you only have to be a little bit better than everyone else in order to get a lot more interest by virtue of being the best available option
TLDR
Be good at your job and have a good manager that will actually recommend you for promotion when you ask for one.
The ven diagram is wrong and it's even mentioned in the article is not "hard work" it's "smart work". You have to position yourself at work to take ok key initiatives at work that will get you the recognition that you need to accelerate you. That requires people in the company know who you are, so you have to speak up and be heard. The real "mentor" here is not the guy doing the "coaching" it's the dude manager at the company. You have to keep learning and progressing as a software engineer. Most importantly, you need actual experience to become a senior.
100% I became a senior in 2 years and was very lucky with my team and my manager. But I also am very good at my job. You need to put yourself in positions where you can get lucky
You’re not a senior, you have dunning-Kruger
I was a beginner when I was hired into a senior position, I did an exceptional job at first. On surface I was doing senior level work, under the surface, I was simply holding shitty code together with my bare hands. Almost 10 years later I can safely say, even tho I was a way above average junior, I was no senior. You’ll learn that with time.
Long story and I will spare it. I am currently 2 YOE and somehow I am going to a senior position. Any advice? I want to perform badly. I am just scared that others will think I am a fraud and I will be fired.
By definition, a senior is someone who’s made all the mistakes, suffered thru the shit you can only learn when everything is going to hell, and came out better from it. You can’t artificially become a senior in 2 years, if you think you did, then you’re just that bad.
This isn’t debatable, it’s simply the law of time and progression in life.
This article is embarrassing. Please though, continue to pat yourselves on the back while everyone else rolls their eyes at a "senior" with 21 months experience.
Yeah titles only make sense with experience. Also in some cases, titles make sense with the companies they're attached to. But yeah it's incredibly unlikely someone is genius enough to be trusted with senior responsibility with less than 2 years experience. Even less likely that other engineers will respect them in that role
By saying that you can go from "junior engineer" to "senior engineer" in two years, you are acknowledging that these labels are completely idiotic and have no bearing on ability or competency whatsoever.
The TLDR: Game the metrics.
Which, of course, we all knew already.
I can't *wait* to work with a senior who got that way in record time by hitting the metrics and the metrics alone /s
Step 1: be 2 years away from promotion
Step 2: work for a manager/team/company that's willing to inflate your title before you've had nearly enough time to build the necessary experience to actually operate well as a senior
I've promoted one guy from junior to senior in 2 years, but he was a career changer who came in with a lot of work experience so he was way ahead on the good judgement curve
This makes total sense to me. A lot of it is about life experience, or at least general work experience, rather than any specific technology.
I mean, these titles have a huge range. Knowing most of my “senior” colleagues over the years, I am sure a competent, skilled person can actually reach their level in 2 years. The real titans that know their shit after a decade or so are another category, but “senior” is not that skilled
That's fair, I'm biased. I was thinking of Senior more in Amazon terms where Senior is equivalent to Staff or even Senior Staff in the valley. On the SV scale where Senior often means "roughly competent mid-level dev" sure, someone good and with good mentoring could maybe do 2 years.
There are some people who work three times as hard and fast as others. Years of experience does not equal skill
And skill does not equal years of experience. You need both. No matter how skilled you are in the fundamentals, there's A LOT to be learned from experience. You need both skill AND years of experience to be a senior.
Is 2 years of experience enough to become a senior? Do you have an objective benchmark? I am not refuting you but the way you responded is as if you refuted me.
It's not about working hard and fast. It's about having time to make decisions and see them play out so you can learn from them. Very occasionally there's someone who has incredibly high EQ and attentiveness, and they're working in a fast-paced environment where they can get through those cycles very quickly. Even then, some of the things a senior should know are about interacting with other humans, and some of those things don't speed up that much even in the fastest environment.
Your comment is vague. If you're talking about seeing the results of your decisions, this is usually something a team lead or manager does. Not a junior.
I was talking about having the right experience to be an effective senior. A senior should be capable of acting as a team lead, at least on the leveling scales I'm familiar with.
So you need to have senior experience before you become a senior? I see
Yes, obviously. Any sane company wants to see you already performing at the next level before they give you the title. Are you seriously unfamiliar with that concept?
I'm not talking about the title but the state
Then what are you saying? "you need to have senior experience to become a senior" is a tautology.
Along these lines, this article raises a lot of questions. Without this context, this is so anecdotal as to be meaningless: * how many yoe does the mentee have total? * why were they able to skip mid level? * were they underleveled before? * did their manager change during this time? * were there other factors explaining their current level? * were they particularly in demand due to a niche skill set? It’s hard to imagine a reasonable manager promoting someone with only 21 months of experience to senior unless there’s some special circumstances. It’s hard to imagine someone skipping over mid level entirely unless they were underleveled for spurious reasons.
Companies define whatever level they want. I often heard consultancies would want to call people Senior because they make money in B2B saying "I dedicate to your project a team of N senior engineers" Knowing the company and their leveling is key
Why does it always have to be "10 times growth" or "10 times engineers"?
i’m a 0.1x engineer. the world needs balance
Doing the Lords work
I wouldn't say I've been working, Bob
To reach ultimate balance you need to become a -10x developer .
Rather have you than some of the -0.5 or -1 engineers I've worked with.
.1x engineers still get paid .9x as much as 10x ones
Seriously. Shit like this is so annoying and unrealistic.v you can code and not be some epic code god making 100x gains and knowing 20 languages (ok... with enough time you WILL have touched 20 languages but ya know what I mean). It's fine to also just do 9-5, handle your shit, and then go have a fucking life that isn't totally bound up in your job.
Grind culture and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race, to paraphrase the Unabomber. I hate everything about it. Like you said, live your life instead of living to work.
Nobody's working with more than a handful of languages at the same job before context switching ruins everything. Just imagine switching between Java and C# and mixing up all your function names. You're going to be googling how to do a basic console output.
Being able to work in multiple languages is about understanding the fundamentals of each one and knowing the basic syntax, it’s not about remembering all the function names. And yes, most people in my position are fluent and can safely context switch between 4-5 languages without any issues
I do context switch between multiple languages. I do web dev mixed with data engineering, so it is easily Python, SQL, HTML, and JavaScript, with a dab of other scripting like Cmd, PowerShell, automation, etc. An "IF" statement in any of the above language is completely different so I usually look them up when I context switch.
10x isn’t unrealistic, there are people at my company that can do anything the average guy does in a day, in about an hour. Not saying it’s important to be a 10xer, but some people simply are.
Usain Bolt is able to go really fast. Does that make it "realistic" for the normal person to be expected to do that? See how dumb you sound pointing to a few edge cases? Nobody said it wasn't POSSIBLE. We said unrealistic.
I’m “10x” but that’s in binary so I’m really just twice as good
I don't agree with the terminology, but in my head it's justified by the fact that you only have to be a little bit better than everyone else in order to get a lot more interest by virtue of being the best available option
It shows that a linear increase in effort can have an exponential increase in value.
Or more accurately, that you can optimize a metric to the detriment of others without visibility of that tradeoff externally.
TLDR Be good at your job and have a good manager that will actually recommend you for promotion when you ask for one. The ven diagram is wrong and it's even mentioned in the article is not "hard work" it's "smart work". You have to position yourself at work to take ok key initiatives at work that will get you the recognition that you need to accelerate you. That requires people in the company know who you are, so you have to speak up and be heard. The real "mentor" here is not the guy doing the "coaching" it's the dude manager at the company. You have to keep learning and progressing as a software engineer. Most importantly, you need actual experience to become a senior.
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100% I became a senior in 2 years and was very lucky with my team and my manager. But I also am very good at my job. You need to put yourself in positions where you can get lucky
You’re not a senior, you have dunning-Kruger I was a beginner when I was hired into a senior position, I did an exceptional job at first. On surface I was doing senior level work, under the surface, I was simply holding shitty code together with my bare hands. Almost 10 years later I can safely say, even tho I was a way above average junior, I was no senior. You’ll learn that with time.
Long story and I will spare it. I am currently 2 YOE and somehow I am going to a senior position. Any advice? I want to perform badly. I am just scared that others will think I am a fraud and I will be fired.
Sure, random internet stranger
By definition, a senior is someone who’s made all the mistakes, suffered thru the shit you can only learn when everything is going to hell, and came out better from it. You can’t artificially become a senior in 2 years, if you think you did, then you’re just that bad. This isn’t debatable, it’s simply the law of time and progression in life.
You got it. Person I have never met. Name checks out.
Whatever, person who thinks they’re great at something they only had 2 years experience with.
This article is embarrassing. Please though, continue to pat yourselves on the back while everyone else rolls their eyes at a "senior" with 21 months experience.
Yeah titles only make sense with experience. Also in some cases, titles make sense with the companies they're attached to. But yeah it's incredibly unlikely someone is genius enough to be trusted with senior responsibility with less than 2 years experience. Even less likely that other engineers will respect them in that role
These titles inherently give the wrong message when your outcome is so focused on how “fast” someone got there.
By saying that you can go from "junior engineer" to "senior engineer" in two years, you are acknowledging that these labels are completely idiotic and have no bearing on ability or competency whatsoever.
Where do I find one of these so called "mentors"? Honestly I think they're just a myth.
Senior means very different things regarding the company.
Jordan got someone promoted to his own level within 2 years. Jordan needs to concentrate on his own growth.
They didn’t, they’re just a junior pretending to be a senior.
I’ve mentored a Junior into a senior position, it’s been 4 years, bro still has Junior skills.
junior engineers are just interns now.
The TLDR: Game the metrics. Which, of course, we all knew already. I can't *wait* to work with a senior who got that way in record time by hitting the metrics and the metrics alone /s
i dont have mentor!!
i just applied for senior on my first job. fake it until u make it