In software development, as in all disciplines, knowledge and skills are acquired over time, which adds to what we can contribute and make a company or work team win. Companies usually reflect that experience gained in different grades or "steps": trainee, junior, semi senior, Senior, etc. When they look for developers, they usually point their searches to one of those grades, so that they can also "fit them" into some categorization of salary, role, and benefits.
When I see something like this, several questions come to mind: Why do you put the 3-year requirement in the position? Does the amount of time I was in a role define my experience? If I have not worked as a Semi Senior for two years? If I am tough on React, but I didn't use JQuery, I don't qualify as Senior Java? And going a little further, I can think of the question that gives rise to this post: What makes a developer Senior?
Let's start trying to answer this question from Junior. Then the Semi-senior will have those same skills and new ones that will be incorporated, and in turn, the Senior will have those of the previous grades.
Junior Developer
• Learn: No one is born knowing. The skills and technical knowledge are acquired over time, projects, successes, and mistakes.
• Learn continuously: technology changes, new tools are coming out, and a software developer has to be up to date on new devices, in addition to the ones he is already using.
• Collaborate on the projects: what we all have to do, know how to develop functionalities, and deliver the product.
Semi Senior Developer
• It can bear the responsibility of a project. You can develop what is necessary for the project to move forward. While from time to time, you need the guidance of a more experienced developer, you already know the technology and the project enough to be able to develop without significant interference.
• Apply good development practices: try to make your code readable and maintainable, both for him and for the rest of his team, applying standards, design patterns, re-uses code, etc.
• Use libraries and standard frameworks of the business world (spring, hibernate, or the equivalents of each technology). He knows how to recognize when his problems to solve fit some of the most frequent issues in the world of development, and seeks to use the tools that already solve these problems, instead of re-inventing the wheel writing his code.
Senior Developer
And now yes, we go with what distinguishes, in my opinion, the developers who can be considered senior:
• Guide others in the development and learning of the project, tools, and methodologies: It is not enough to know how to implement, it is necessary to understand how to communicate decisions and technical foundations, as well as to be able to empower other developers who have less knowledge. In this regard, the senior developer must be a true leader.
• It promotes good development practices: it is not enough to write the right code; you have to be able to infect your team so that everyone works in the same direction.
• Codes in different languages: Although we must have a header language in which we are specialists, we must also have some knowledge of several of them, and be able to choose the most appropriate tool for each situation.
• He has inter-team and inter-role communication skills: Know how to recognize good ideas, regardless of the experience or role of the person who has proposed them, to promote productive solutions.
• Show a positive attitude towards problems: Problems represent a challenge, and instead of getting angry and complaining, make decisions and actions that take you where you want to be.
• It is proactive, introduces new features in the team.
• He shows enthusiasm for what he makes, and enjoys his profession: He is a developer inside and outside the office. Spend time reading and trying new tools and testing them in personal projects.
• Contribute to the community: Post questions and answers on forums, write open-source software, give talks, etc. This would be like a principle similar to corporate social responsibility but from the individual. Developers take many things from our community, and it is definite that at one point, we begin to give back and get involved.
And then, how many years of experience do I have to ask a Senior developer? The truth is that I do not know. There are many skills to develop, and each person is unique in their rhythm. Some people may take a few years to acquire all these skills. In contrast, others may be years in different jobs and never buy them, but let's not be fooled, an extensive curriculum or particular knowledge about specific technologies does not make us senior, but they are a whole set of skills that are polishing over time, and that is what will turn us into THOSE developers that we all want to have in our team.
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