[serious] what constitutes a "Senior" Developer?

[techgnome]

I was participating in a thread on LinkedIn when someone said:

If somebody worked for 10 years for same company and did pretty much same things is he a “senior” and “senior” in what?

Which I though was a valid question. So what constitutes a "Senior" developer? Is it a skills set? It some trait? Is it tenure? Is it earned or given?

I have my own ideas, but I'm curious as to what others think.

-tg

[szlamany]

My first instinct is to say a "drop and run" person - in any situation.

Second maybe "ability to lead a team".

Back when I worked for a company I had the title: Research and Development Group Leader.

That says "senior developer" to me - and more.

10 years at one company doesn't make a person a "senior developer" - I've seen lots of folks that "stagnate" in a "peter's principle" ceiling of ability.

With that said - third would be "staying bleeding edge" in technology.

[dilettante]

I think it is about knowledge of the employer's business, suite of existing applications, and demonstrated ability to get things done than bleeding edge technology. I can buy the part about providing leadership to more junior staff though.

I'm not discounting the need to be open to change and prepared for it ahead of time to provide leadership there too, I just don't think it is primary to being "senior." Desirable yes, required probably not.

[Shaggy Hiker]

In my case, it has to do with nothing more than pay grade, and since those haven't changed in well over a decade, everybody gets hired at the 'senior' level because we can barely compete even at that level of pay (in fact, we can't, so we hire well above the baseline for senior, too).

[Nightwalker83]

I would have thought a senior develop would be a leader of a team or in some leadership role.

[dilettante]

In the normal order of things "leadership" is one of the things workers should expect from supervision and management. Management isn't for everyone, so a "senior" worker position is where things top out.

Pay grade issues can be a problem in many specialized career areas.

If workers' pay exceeds that of their managers people have little incentive to take on such roles, which can be full of their own headaches and take them away from the work they worked hard to get good at. Yet if a technical manager's pay exceeds that of peers managing clerical staff it creates rifts and upsets H.R.'s idea of neat hierarchies based on pay grades.

In a mature organization of any size this can result in severely reduced pay all around, negatively motivated people becoming managers, and the best people jumping ship. You can end up with ineffective or dictatorial managers while workers fall into a general depression, producing organizational maliase.

After a couple of decades (sometimes sooner) things fall into a state of decay, despotism, and stasis.

Here comes the predatory vendor and outsourcing!

$18 million computer system fails DMV

[kareninstructor]

My classification is Senior Analyst, which means supervision in regards to a project, better skills over a developer or analyst at solving problems. A Senior Analyst may or may not be a Team Leader. If a Senior Analyst is also a Team Leader (as I am) they are given a 10 percent pay increase over a Senior Analyst. I know some Senior xxx who where moved into this title because of people they knew not skill which is wrong and has done harm more than once.

[DataMiser]

I always looked at it as being the leader of the group or at the very least someone capable of leading the group.

[dilettante]

If this had been posted in Chit Chat I'd have said Señor Developer speaks Spanish. But since it wasn't you've all been spared that remark.

Doh!

[B61Nuke]

Someone capable of team leadership thru wisdom and a well rounded skillset learned from years of education and experience in his chosen career.

[jcis]

In my opinion it's not neccessary related to leadership. Just as an example using programmers:

Trainee: No experience
Junior Programmer: 6 months - 1 year experience with certain tecnology
Semi-Senior Programmer: 1 year 3 years experience with certain tecnology
Senior Programmer: 3 years+ experience with certain tecnology

Seniority depends on tecnologies and years of experience, so, the same programmer can be Senior in VB6, Semi-Senior in .NET and junior in JAVA, just as an example.

Most of the times there is no leadership in any of the previous positions, they are all just programmers, as an example how it works on companies like EDS (now bought by Hewelet-packard):

Project Manager -> Technical Leader->Programmers

(with leadership decreasing left to right)

[NeedSomeAnswers]

I always looked at it as being the leader of the group or at the very least someone capable of leading the group.

They way i see it a Senior programmer shouldn't necessarily have to have team leading skills(certainly not in terms of people anyway), i would say it is more about responsibility and experience.

In my team i can give my Senior Developers a project and they can pretty much run with it themselves including putting a project plan together if needed. I cant do that with the more junior developers.

An Example, currently I have a mini project were one of our products has a print services component (the application is web based and much of the printing is done by a server based service) which crashes a lot on site, my senior Dev has never worked on this project before, but yesterday i put them on the project to try and stabilise this service. All i did was point them to the project in source safe give them a brief of what the issue(s) are and i can pretty much let them run with it confident that they will follow all necessary procedures.

[RhinoBull]

Interesting discussion...

I think "senior" is someone who is proficient in various technologies, can guide other developers (and not necessary supervise them), can also assist with architechting solution.

I also think it may come down to "who's in charge" at your next employeer and those people can determine the hierarchies as they understand it or get it from the book which usually expresses opinion or one other person but for some reason works as "industry standard".
Title definitions vary between different businesses; they may look similar but I have never seen identical.
Even pay rate could be significantly different (what is considred "senior" in one place can be "just above junior" in some other).

Personally, I don't care much about the title and its definition as long as the role and pay fit my needs.