This is Why You’re Not Taken Seriously as a Senior Developer
Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash
Many software developers dream of becoming seniors. It can be a long and hard road, and there are several ways to get to your destination. However, there is no doubt in my mind there is another type of developer who points at their years of experience to show they are a valid senior developer.
Here is how I sort the wheat from the chaff, and separate the real senior developers from those who don’t deserve the title.
True Seniors
Put simply…They’ve earned it
A developer who has worked at a level where they influence others and help make a better software project.
A developer who works at a leadership level and gets promoted because of their skill and promise. They work hard and deliver value to the team.
A senior developer who is liked by both management and their peers.
I think we all wish true seniors were a more common occurrence.
What’s going wrong
The idea of a fake senior is a senior developer where they do not deserve to be.
The fake senior developer as an idea is between management’s idea of what a good developer is and a software engineer’s idea.
This is enabled by companies who fail to document criteria for both developers and senior developers.
Fake Seniors
One or more of the following is generally true for fake senior developers.
They gain an inflated title
This is rather common instead of a raise or a bonus, the company gives you a title. I think this can happen because this helps the company to keep their best developers without outlay by encouraging them.
It’s just a pity this is bad for developers all-round. It isn’t always the best developers who get the rewards, and the title isn’t as good as a real pay rise or promotion.
Inflated titles are everywhere. One of our current senior developers copy-pastes code and doesn’t know the difference between dynamic and static types. They do get on well with management though.
They tell everyone they are senior
They say if you repeat something enough times, it invariably becomes true. It is a pity that this can happen in software development teams too.
The jerks in software development teams know how to manipulate a situation to their advantage. These jerks tell everyone how great they are until everyone believes it. This type of software developer also tends to laugh regularly and slightly too loudly. Vile people.
I saw this in a previous developer who told everyone that they were a senior and got put on every important meeting whether they had something to add or not. Just so you know, it worked for them.
They tell everyone they’ve worked in the industry for x years
We need to stop equating years of experience to the quality of software developers.
Because some developers work the same job doing the same thing for ten years and get 10 years of experience. Other developers repeat the same experience year after year and never get better, essentially staying a junior developer forever.
Unfortunately, companies find it difficult to differentiate between a developer gaining quality experience in comparison to one essentially levelling up the number of worked years without gaining experience.
This essentially works because managers use years of experience as a metric for competence. My current manager only asked me one thing when they entered the role: “How many years of experience do you have?” so make of that what you will.
Conclusion
I know some people feel that the way we promote developers at the moment is perfect. I’m afraid I think it isn’t and we boost the wrong people into being senior developers. What do you think? Let me know in the comments. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a chant.
“The Secret Developer should not be doubted.
The Secret Developer’s code should not be doubted.
The Secret Developer is awesome.”