Stop Being A JR Software Engineer | Prime Reacts

Поділитися
Вставка
  • Опубліковано 28 лис 2024

КОМЕНТАРІ • 362

  • @bobanmilisavljevic7857
    @bobanmilisavljevic7857 Рік тому +657

    I aint stoppin nothin

  • @daniel7440
    @daniel7440 Рік тому +153

    According to the thumbnail, the only difference between a junior and a senior developer are glasses

    • @conorx3
      @conorx3 Рік тому +10

      Wear glasses for a 50% pay rise.

    • @anon-fz2bo
      @anon-fz2bo Рік тому

      CTO: wears contact lenses

    • @norliegh
      @norliegh Рік тому +1

      also stroke color

    • @FarrukhTahirYT
      @FarrukhTahirYT 10 місяців тому

      well obv when you damage your flippin' eyes for years coding, u'll be wearing glasses when senior

    • @DClearEE
      @DClearEE 9 місяців тому +4

      Java Senior Devs wear glasses because they can't C#
      *bud dum tiss*

  • @EdwinMartin
    @EdwinMartin Рік тому +363

    I'm a senior developer and I'm constantly learning new things. I know most seniors do. Some might not, but so are some juniors who don't like to learn new things 😉 I also think that Impostor Syndrome (it's real, look it up) is a blocker for many juniors. The most important take away from this article is: never stay longer than two years at your first company. I've seen it many times. A "junior" jumps to another company and they stopped being seen as a junior, get a nice pay rise and they're feeling more confident.

    • @skyhappy
      @skyhappy Рік тому +9

      ​@@kidmoseythat is very surprising, if this is a notable company can you name it? Such talented interns seem like they only go to notable companies. And how did you know they know more than the seasoned devs?

    • @doomguy6296
      @doomguy6296 Рік тому +13

      Well.. there is always at least one imposter among us

    • @themaridv2000
      @themaridv2000 10 місяців тому

      amongus ​@@doomguy6296

    • @1haker
      @1haker 10 місяців тому +3

      100 % true. 2 years in first company is maxiumum

    • @majordelays4909
      @majordelays4909 9 місяців тому

      Maybe switching up your team is enough

  • @FrederikSchumacher
    @FrederikSchumacher Рік тому +21

    5:15 is where it's at for me. Wholesale agreement. Senior devs have started projects with naive assumptions, have dropped such projects and called it a learning experience, have struggled to maintain doomed and flawed projects, but also have started successful ones, experienced successful ones. Most importantly in all of this, they gathered this experience and express it in some way through idioms, prose, references, intuition, adapting(!) best practices. You don't just stop being junior after N years, or N projects. You transition to senior when the reality and consequences of your trade, tools, work have shaped you and express as general purpose competence.

  • @kasper_573
    @kasper_573 Рік тому +281

    Aside from the problem of determining exactly what counts as seniority, it's important to consider this distinction: There's a difference between the title "Senior Whatever" and the concept seniority. You can BS your way through a career and speedrun yourself to a title, but achieving seniority in practice cannot be cheated and will require you learn and experience the right things.
    Now, I know what you're thinking. Gatekeeping seniority? Nice. No, that's not my point. I just think titles are bullshit, and the sooner you forget about them and focus on improving yourself, the better. Sure, ask around what people consider seniority and use that as a guideline on what to improve on, but don't get too caught up on getting some title.

    • @0xCAFEF00D
      @0xCAFEF00D Рік тому +8

      People are confusing seniority with expertise and people really shouldn't confuse the two. Often if you're senior at a company you can have picked up some expertise in the product. But being an expert is defined by merit not seniority. You've sat and worked through many iterations of this and you know a thing or two.
      Linus Torvalds is a Linux expert, he built the thing and kept building the thing for many years. When he says something about Linux we listen to it more than when I do. It's an expedient way to filter opinions. And yes this is explicitly an elitist opinion I hold. I struggle to understand why people think elitism is wrong. Especially in the small. I would never put some new Ubuntu user who just wrote hello world in C as a kernel maintainer.

    • @StephenMoreira
      @StephenMoreira Рік тому

      Yep.

    • @cornoc
      @cornoc Рік тому +3

      I think this article also misses the expectation that a senior will be more mature and less likely to create a mess. They should be capable of seeing what problems and edge cases could occur before they come up, and guide things in a direction that will ensure less surprises pop up as development moves forward. This requires not just experience but also a willingness to think ahead in detail. Maturity is also about having the capability and the right attitude for figuring things out on your own in an unfamiliar area, which takes more than just expertise: I've seen people with a strong foundation of knowledge who still act like they're lost as soon as they hit a minor roadblock. And finally, there's the "soft skills" aspect of knowing when things are worth arguing for and when they aren't, and when a decision really matters and when it probably doesn't.

    • @heytherehowdy
      @heytherehowdy Рік тому +1

      I have been at the company I work at for almost 7 years now. Although I would technically have seniority, someone else who only has worked for 2 + years got a managerial position. I'm not sad about it or anything. He just has the skills to be a manager more than I do. I like my position and will keep learning :). People that pull the seniority card and complain have some internal ego issues to deal with....

    • @anon-fz2bo
      @anon-fz2bo Рік тому +1

      yea, another difference is salary & what u actually do on the job

  • @jfbarbosaboro
    @jfbarbosaboro Рік тому +23

    Someone told me once "10 years of experience is not the same as 1 year of experience 10 times".

  • @PoorlyMadeSweater
    @PoorlyMadeSweater Рік тому +49

    3:49 I think the real phenomenon the author is trying to articulate is that people new to a skill will cover a lot of ground learning the basics, while the senior is learning the finer points that take more time and experience to discover and understand. This learning curve creates a sort of "catch-up" effect, where a newbie may only take 2 years to cover half of the knowledge discrepancy of a 10 year senior employee.

    • @AmandaVieiraMamaesouCult
      @AmandaVieiraMamaesouCult Рік тому +1

      It's the law of diminished returns.

    • @Tidbit0123
      @Tidbit0123 5 місяців тому +2

      I think there is a very wide application of the term "newbie gains" but it's only really described as a thing in muscle building. Totally agree.

  • @georgehelyar
    @georgehelyar Рік тому +24

    At my work the role profiles are clearly defined, but the gist of it is when you're a junior you need help to complete most tasks, when you're an (intermediate) engineer you can complete most tasks on your own, when you're a senior you can complete your own tasks while also helping others with theirs.
    Anyone is free to pick up any task, and people are encouraged to go slightly out of their comfort zone. They might need help this time, but they will be able to do it independently next time.
    I also remind juniors that experience comes from learning from failures/mistakes, and more experienced engineers got that way by making mistakes and learning from them

    • @liquidsnake6879
      @liquidsnake6879 Рік тому +5

      In my company it's different somewhat it's more about how much impact you have, you're considered a senior when you're actively involved in evangelizing and pushing new ideas throughout the company. Not just focusing on your little piece, but the whole product, across all teams. If you do that often enough then they rank you as a senior, if you're just coding in your "cog in the machine" then you're stuck permanently as an intermediate at the highest
      It's somewhat unfair because if you're not a very social person you kinda get shafted no matter how good you are at coding, but the logic is the most senior developers should be the ones most comfortable with debating ideas and so will make themselves known though those kinds of cross-company discussions and debates

    • @georgehelyar
      @georgehelyar Рік тому +2

      @@liquidsnake6879 yea that's one way of doing it. The soft skills do become more important the higher up you get, no matter what. We tend to find good ways of doing things and then share them with other teams, and a senior might have to give a presentation to maybe 50 people or so. Eventually, the cross team aspect becomes more of a staff engineer thing, but how do you show that you're capable of doing that? You do it as a senior enough to get noticed.

    • @mats66
      @mats66 4 місяці тому

      ​@liquidsnake6879 I don't think it's unfair or being shafted that you never get to be a senior even if you are really good. What you describe are experts. Being senior is not only about skills. It's about mentoring/training others, take active part and contribute in meetings and decision making, think about the bigger scope, develop and spread best practice etc.

  • @pesterenan
    @pesterenan Рік тому +91

    I'm having a much more upfront attitude since I started watching your videos, whenever someone asks if I can do something, even if I don't know how in the moment I'll gladly accept the task and work my ass off, just get the experience. If I have problems in the way, I'll ask for help, but at least I'm trying new things, and that's what makes me love software development right now. Well, that and learning Vim motions, I use neovim, btw...

  • @im_cloudy
    @im_cloudy Рік тому +37

    Just the beginning of the video encourages people to finally start doing shit in their life.
    When I was young, I've been making games, lot of games, never really finished any, but still had lot of ideas and passion to do them. Never gave up on idea. I think this is actually the best way how to become really good developer, by creating something in your free time and enjoy the fuck out of it.

    • @GuitarWithBrett
      @GuitarWithBrett Рік тому +4

      💯 fun and passion are critical. I’m an engineering manager in my career now so don’t code much during work, but I’m still always learning all the time. Often it’s stuff not directly applicable to work. For example, lately I’ve been into learning how to make NES games. It raises so many interesting questions that I can see my work code from another angle (we use elixir, react , and a lot of other tools).

    • @jkf16m96
      @jkf16m96 Рік тому +5

      Managing your passion becomes a really easy skill to improve, but hard to catch or realize, it is something you have to improve.
      And managing the passion of your programmers, is also really really hard.
      Ideally, for a side project/personal project to work, you have to focus on small, palpable features, and keep building from it.
      In a videogame, I've been encountering stuff like, over-engineering my project just because I thought that would play well in the long run.
      Spoilers, you simply don't do any shit.
      So now, after learning that, I focus completely on testable features.
      First feature, a player that moves
      Later, it shoots directed towards the mouse
      Later, it can take damage when touching something.
      And so on and so forth.
      The easy fix, it just sounds like "avoiding over-engineering" right?, But we usually don't avoid it by accident because we don't comprehend what are the consequences.
      Well, the consequences are, you simply can't feel the serotonin of having your code do something.
      It's the same feeling with Haskell, I haven't program with Haskell just to tell you, but from experiences I've read, it seems one has to really manage Side effects in some weird way, just to finally have some functionality and receive that serotonin.
      But I don't know eh, maybe I'm confusing it with functional paradigm applied to another language.

    • @matheusjahnke8643
      @matheusjahnke8643 Рік тому

      ​@@jkf16m96
      About Haskell....(we interrupt this comment section for the obligatory explanation of Haskell)
      All types are pure.
      The "main function" in other languages is an IO ()
      Read "IO " as "An action that returns some "
      So you can't have:
      firstCharOf (readLine)
      (assuming firstCharOf takes a string and returns a character)
      Because readLine takes a string while readLine is an action returning a string...
      you have to do
      line

  • @Redwizard26
    @Redwizard26 11 місяців тому +6

    Experience doesn't stop seniors from wanting to learn new things but decades of burnout, loss of passion and golden handcuffs do. I've met plenty of seniors that are as curious and passionate as someone who is still falling in love with coding. But I've also met plenty that stopped wanting to evolve.

  • @adriankal
    @adriankal Рік тому +8

    This mainly about how to look like a senior not to become one.
    There are three things that matter: coding skill, environment proficiency, and communication skill. You become senior when you can use those three to solve problems. Tip: code rarely solves problems, removing code more often solves problems. Using right tools, writing a good documentation, figuring out and implementing procedures etc solves 90% of problems.

  • @GuitarWithBrett
    @GuitarWithBrett Рік тому +27

    Great stuff. As engineering manager for over 5 years , I’ve had to train a lot of jrs how to become more sr quickly, as well as talking to srs about mentoring. I’ve realized it’s mostly about promoting exposure, challenging them with work outside their comfort zone, and pairing with Srs. The speed people do this is partly due to personality, but a lot is just showing people how to learn and gain experience faster. “apply what you learn” is great advice. I totally agree Experience is key, expertise is important but requires experience to apply it. Also, many problems aren’t solved by expertise but instead from experience. For example, how decide when and why need to roll a custom vs use a library ? How keep hard code maintainable ? .. expertise doesn’t solve these.

  • @thecyberyak
    @thecyberyak 7 місяців тому +1

    This is encouraging. I always thought that "Seniors" were based on years experience but this sheds light on the mentality that is truly different.

  • @cheebadigga4092
    @cheebadigga4092 Рік тому +5

    Agreed, debugging is the best indicator to prove (to yourself) that you know your way around the language and the tools you're using. It also shows you what you're lacking which in turn makes you better at all things involved.

    • @DefinitelyNotAMachineCultist
      @DefinitelyNotAMachineCultist Рік тому

      Is it abnormal if a newbie fresh out of the code monkey mill (college) seems to have more of a knack for debugging than people who've been in the project you just joined (or other projects) for several years longer?

    • @cheebadigga4092
      @cheebadigga4092 Рік тому +3

      @@DefinitelyNotAMachineCultist absolutely not. Some people have better skills at figuring out patterns, some people have no sense of logic at all. Some people are able to quick maths quantum mechanics while others can't even calculate basic algebra in the head, but can still code and debug (like me). I was for example always good at everything maths that was space-related, like vectors, matrices, imaginary and complex numbers. But basic algebra and geometry I was the worst. But code and debugging, figuring out patterns, realizing what some code is doing or trying to do with executing it is where I'm the best at. The brain works in really weird ways but as far as I can tell, if you let it, it will work the way that's best for you.

    • @DefinitelyNotAMachineCultist
      @DefinitelyNotAMachineCultist Рік тому +1

      @@cheebadigga4092 Makes sense. Speaking as a newbie code monkey in that position, it just seems to conflict with an idea that seems repeated often.
      That debugging skill seems to consistently correlate with experience.
      Unless fiddling with and debugging weird Linux setups for months in my college days somehow transfers over to other things.
      When people say experience, I guess they don't always mean experience in an official job position.

    • @cheebadigga4092
      @cheebadigga4092 Рік тому +1

      @@DefinitelyNotAMachineCultist in my opinion experience should be independent of job positions or companies.

    • @DefinitelyNotAMachineCultist
      @DefinitelyNotAMachineCultist Рік тому

      @@cheebadigga4092 A shame that experience independent of job positions or companies doesn't count for CVs where I live lol
      Pretty sure even freelance work counts as a red flag for some recruiters.

  • @thingsiplay
    @thingsiplay Рік тому +132

    Prime is not a genius. He learned and earned everything by hard work.

    • @steamer2k319
      @steamer2k319 Рік тому +15

      Through hard work, he has realized much of his potential, yes. I think he also started with greater potential than many others.

    • @benkay8661
      @benkay8661 Рік тому

      Now evaluate race and IQ.@@steamer2k319

    • @sorvex9
      @sorvex9 Рік тому +11

      He works too hard, in a video he said he only allocated like 1 hour to his kids every day. I don't think that's good for either.

    • @zoeherriot
      @zoeherriot Рік тому +2

      @@sorvex9 during weekdays or weekends? This is not unusual, if you work a full time day, and the kids go to bed early, it's hard to do otherwise. If it's 1 hour on weekends too... yeah. That's a problem. :)

    • @PabloDeLafuria
      @PabloDeLafuria Рік тому

      señor gen*

  • @peppybocan
    @peppybocan Рік тому +50

    I would say there is a line we should consider calling people senior and when we should not. Consider Alice, Bob, Clide and David. Alice went to work for Google for 3 years, and then she went onto working for Microsoft. Bob, graduating the same uni, took a different route, Bob went the startup route, spent the same amount of time at a small startup led by people who worked at Google and Microsoft. Clide, graduated the same uni, but went to a small, established company, that was not really trying to become the next Google, money was good, and Clide had more opportunity to work on his personal projects, travelling and so on. Clide was never truly challenged and got the senior position, because he stuck around for long enough. David, the same uni, went into a hedge fund as a quant dev. raking money with big bonuses. Brilliant guy, very smart, but never got to lead a team, delivering big projects, never really dug into the software architecture.
    They all have 5 years of experience. But they are all different, and they might be "senior" in their own field, e.g. Alice has a knowledge in the "web-scale" projects, Bob has a startup knowledge with amazing tutors behind him, Clide has a deep domain knowledge about the product (and its implementation) his company is selling and David has made the hedge fund tens of millions dollars, and knows how to make it rain. They are all senior enough in their own domain. Yet, they lack knowledge in one or more areas and they are not necessarily interchangeable.
    Some people don't get to become senior engineers for the things they have experienced and seen, but because they were long enough at some place. This inflates the ranks of "senior" engineering. Not everybody gets to work for the top companies, and work on the hardest problems (webscale, low latency, etc) and that's why I think sometimes we have to be careful when interviewing, whether the candidate is truly senior enough. What does the company expect from a "senior" engineer differs vastly.

    • @adriaanbeiertz5933
      @adriaanbeiertz5933 Рік тому +2

      This is it

    • @Диего_де_ла_Вега
      @Диего_де_ла_Вега Рік тому +8

      I think it's because our field isn't as mature as other fields are, the different disciplines are only starting to be clearly defined. In the world of buildings, you would hire a senior architect that build small homes to design a dam or in medecine you wouldn't hire a senior podiatrist to be the open heart surgeon on the hospital just because he is a senior MD.
      I bet in a few decades there will be clearer distinctions between different jobs. there probably won't be anymore polymath software engineers that might end up doing everything.

    • @ProdbyHway
      @ProdbyHway Рік тому

      Good example.

    • @Neuroszima
      @Neuroszima 5 місяців тому

      You only view it from one perspective, meaning coding. If the only senior level problem for you is "low latency, webscale" and for example not "bring big money to company at a constant rate through investing", or "bring us a steady flow of clients for a foreseeable future" then that's a false. These are also in some sort a senior level problems but in other domains.

    • @mats66
      @mats66 4 місяці тому

      There is no exact definition of what a "Senior developer" exactly is. It's not possible to compare like this. Different people and different companies define it completely different.

  • @Voidstroyer
    @Voidstroyer Рік тому +4

    In my first job I went from a "webservices and content junior" to "webdevelopment specialist" within 1 year. I got 3 promotions "junior -> medior", "medior -> allround-ICT", and finally "allround-ICT -> webdevelopment specialist" in that year. (note that I said "in my first job" so that means I had no prior work experience at all).
    I think that the title "junior developer" is more applicable to measure how long you've been in the role in that specific company. It's usually the first few months when you change jobs that you will feel like a junior. Once you know (almost) everything about the software and infrastructure that your company uses you could consider yourself intermediate. And once you start contributing in big ways you can call yourself a senior.

  • @mfpears
    @mfpears Рік тому +2

    21:10 It's also a practice in humility. Being able to drop preconceptions and just adapt to incoming information quickly. That is a skill that all software engineering teaches.

  • @Psychobellic
    @Psychobellic Рік тому +61

    Yea I left my Jr position once my Sr started to "You wrote it, you manage it", also at the same time saying "Just do what I told you to, don't step outside of the guidelines I drew", fun times

    • @kippers12isOG
      @kippers12isOG Рік тому

      Sounds like a dickface

    • @cultofhercules
      @cultofhercules 9 місяців тому +3

      perfect time to hop

    • @adammiller9029
      @adammiller9029 8 місяців тому +2

      Those arent divergent types of guidance.... One is guidance around design/architecture, another is around who is responsible for maintaining something. Every time you write something, it shouldn't whimsically become their job to maintain it for you. But as a senior resource they should be helping to determine guidelines they and team members follow...

  • @DNA912
    @DNA912 9 місяців тому +2

    I've worked for one year now, and the first assignment I got (I work at a consulting company) was to join the team that took care of a 20 year old system that for the last like 5 years only been on life support. That was extremely useful because it has opened up my eyes for a bunch of problem that can emerge only years after deployment. Like production crashing because a the logging disk becomes full (it was never cleared in a decade, and no one notice because it never got full). And I've really observed how my senior colleagues work, and it's not about technology or anything like that, it's the mindset they have and what they see when they look at the same thing I look at. In meeting when we get assigned new project systems to setup, the types of questions they are immediately is the type I realise half way through coding it up.
    TLDR, seniors see a lot more pit falls and earlier

  • @andrewdddo
    @andrewdddo Рік тому +6

    dude totally resonated with this - i'd consider myself a junior developer from industry standard since just starting out. I feel there's still so much more to learn through experience that I'mma work on every day!

    • @TheEsotericProgrammer
      @TheEsotericProgrammer Рік тому

      The thing is, I have no commercial experience but I’ve developed entire enterprise scale projects by myself incorporating optimal conventions, documentation, design patterns, vcs, devops, ci/cd pipeline, testing etc, so I feel slightly overqualified for junior dev jobs but I’m still gonna have to get one

  • @TLWishere
    @TLWishere Рік тому +18

    I am not a web-dev. I am an educator. But I watch these ThePrimeTime videos for motivation in my career. Definitely good content that transcends the web-dev community into my field. Thanks Primeagan. LEARN, LEARN, LEARN.

  • @bdidue6998
    @bdidue6998 Рік тому +3

    Seniors are people who embrace and experiment with new things so they know when/how they work and when to use them. They level up their team through their forward thinking knowledge, and are always sharing. Seniors deeply understand the business needs and what to prioritize tasks. Seniors also are good and open to mentoring new hires and juniors so that they can excel as engineers. Seniors also are great with cross collaboration. Seniors can come into any new company, and take a few weeks to a month to understand everything and become a force at the company. It's not about knowing one particular library or framework well, it's about how well you learn and implement

  • @leekuncoins6347
    @leekuncoins6347 Рік тому +8

    According to some HR, Senior Developer ~ Silver Rank , they wanna find some Challenger Dev with 50 years exps and can build time machine and quantum computer in a month

  • @Papa_Static
    @Papa_Static 3 місяці тому +1

    I think Prime and Kent are talking about two different types of seniors in the intro tbh. Prime I think is talking about senior devs at places like Netflix or other tech forward companies. I started at a telecom company, and the Sr devs there were exactly like what Kent is talking about. I ran into this same mindset while interviewing at a few other places like Arris (a hardware company) and other older slower companies. That type honestly made me consider leaving the field altogether. Then I joined Meta and ran into the type of Sr devs Prime is talking about where we were constantly being challenged to try new things.

  • @CardinalHijack
    @CardinalHijack 6 місяців тому +3

    "enteral junior situation", said by person who has been software engineer for a year and a half.

  • @aidantilgner
    @aidantilgner Рік тому +15

    I've been at my first dev job for coming up on 2 years. I'm on a tiny 3 person team, with only 1 position above me until the owner. Basically, there's no vertical movement. Because of this, I've focused almost all of my spare time on working on side projects, learning new technologies, and recently open source. I know I need a new job but it's much easier said than done. I've been applying for months now, and in the one interview I got, I built out a demo for them as an optimization for a product that they had. They loved it but decided I didn't have enough industry experience and gave me no further feedback upon inquiry. I've been applying to mostly intermediate and senior level positions, because those are where I feel I could experience the most growth, and I believe I could succeed in those positions. But I'm afraid that I may need to start applying to junior level positions instead, just to get noticed on the applications. Sorry for the rant, but advice would be appreciated.

    • @olafbaeyens8955
      @olafbaeyens8955 Рік тому +1

      Luck plays a role here, I had 2 years hard time to get into the profession. But at home I kept my knowledge sharp.

    • @QCAlpha-212
      @QCAlpha-212 Рік тому +1

      I have this exact problem. Side projects are the only thing keeping me sane.
      Also thought about applying to Junior again but then thought about how many people are actually juniors vs 'mid' level and Im like 'maybe not'.
      Competition is super high right now, but its even higher at 'Junior' which is fucked.

    • @olafbaeyens8955
      @olafbaeyens8955 Рік тому +2

      @@QCAlpha-212 It will become better in the next year(s). You only lose when you give up.

    • @colefrankenhoff1428
      @colefrankenhoff1428 Рік тому +2

      Network, network, network. Applying online is really tough

    • @aidantilgner
      @aidantilgner Рік тому

      @colefrankenhoff1428 good point. Thanks for the advice!

  • @ekted
    @ekted Рік тому +2

    In my experience, there are 2 kinds of Jr Devs: people who know how to code but are never going to really get it or get good, and those who are intelligent, creative, and passionate about the work. The former should not be hired; they are all too easy to weed out in a technical interview. The latter are basically Sr Devs the day they start programming; they just don't know it yet. The labels Jr and Sr are more about a company's need to "manage a career" by promotion. Most passionate developers do not want to do anything but. They do not want to become development managers, or move into marketing, or become a director/VP. Companies do not get this. They think if you love your current position enough to reject any notion of promotion, that there is something wrong with you, and that you should be fired for having a bad attitude about your "personal growth".

  • @CoIdestMoments
    @CoIdestMoments Рік тому +2

    In a previous company, there was a senior developper who was 19. Some nerd kiddo who started coding at like 10 years old and basically when he finished high school he was already a senior programmer, he was offered a senior position out of high school, without ever being junior.

    • @wake-digital
      @wake-digital 6 місяців тому

      Well he was a Junior when he was 10 lmao. No-one is born a Neovim god.

  • @MilMike
    @MilMike 7 місяців тому +2

    I am a mid level and companies often wanted me to become senior and coworkers are asking me why I am not a senior.
    I am also an introvert so senior means to have more meetings, more talking, more pair programming, more human interaction... I don't want all of that.
    I act sometimes like a senior, but I rather stay under the radar..

  • @sharoncohen318
    @sharoncohen318 Рік тому +1

    "brown bag lunch meeting" just sounds like forcing your coworkers to work through lunch...

  • @ZarBluestar
    @ZarBluestar Місяць тому

    It’s not about what you know. It’s not about what you’ve done before. It’s about what you do now - proactively sniffing out issues and stopping them at the design level. It’s about planning ahead to write the best code possible in your domain. And it helps to get your hand in every pie. When you’re novel to the field, get a breadth of experience across as many verticals as you can. Be able to consult on the bigger picture early, so you can build varied expertise. And voice ideas & suggestions every time. Even when you’re wrong, demonstrate you are thinking about the broader context

  • @extremeweirdness1528
    @extremeweirdness1528 Рік тому +3

    I am at a company where the seniors are so bad that I had to steer the ship as a junior software developer.
    Don't consider that myself anymore.

  • @mats66
    @mats66 4 місяці тому +1

    I've seen many (most?) developers never reach seniority nor expert level. They are just developers. And it's not necessarily about experience. Many (most?) people simply doesn't have the personality traits to be Senior.

  • @doomguy6296
    @doomguy6296 Рік тому +7

    "Experienced developers are also likely to miss important new features in languages and tools because they're just used to doing things a certain way".
    I totally agree with this. This is normal human behaviour and this is to be expected. Once we establish "how things are", we become less flexable to what is possible. Which is why it is important to always challenge the facts that we know and our views on things.
    An exmaple in the software development could be, for instance, that every time we learn a new language, we are bringing our experience from the previouse one and try to do things the way we already familiar with. Such as moving from Java to Python, trying to minic irreleveant patterns, or trying to make OOP in Rust

    • @Jabberwockybird
      @Jabberwockybird 10 місяців тому

      But missing a neat little trick they could be doing is not the worst thing. There are dozens of languages and thousands of neat tricks out there. If someone doesnt learn a few of them. It's okay. Just becuase you made some cool plugin doesn't mean everyone is obligated to use it.

  • @olafbaeyens8955
    @olafbaeyens8955 Рік тому +1

    Senior means: Your colleagues and bosses think you are a mad man when you see things no other one sees.

  • @u9vata
    @u9vata Рік тому +3

    Honestly... At my very first official work I already did most of the architecture work - why? Because I saw that people were annoyed by the technology needed (OSGi - and it was not a choice, because the company we integrate with needed it in their architecture that we do this way) or when someone put together project skeletons... or putting together some arcane maven stuff for a project where you feel people are exhausted from that even by seeing it.
    Guess what: People always like when you WORK. I also did overtime and did not care or whine, but was happy I close the gap in experience. In mid of the project I was pretty much architect on the whole bigger project, later I was training juniors and interns, later got my own team.
    One of the intern + later junior that I was training is also senior now there - so you can do this!
    What I could not really do: Become PM. I was having it as a goal and already had projects where I did huge part of that organizational roles, tender writing even, contracts, etc. Still I never got it officially and there I felt there is some "who will code if you go to management" kind of "you are too valuable as technical person" view so I feel it was more glass ceilingy for this...

  • @daveb3910
    @daveb3910 9 місяців тому +1

    A "senior" i work with got his title because he had 4 years of "coding" experience on his resume, BUT looking at the resume it was friggin medical coding for insurance! Can't program his way out of a paper bag! Titles mean nothing
    He's also a narcissist and the only way he hasn't been fired is because he used people. But everyone has caught on now and he's sinking quick.

  • @fanciestbanana4653
    @fanciestbanana4653 Рік тому +1

    6:50 This is very common in old projects, especially in languages with terrible tooling like c/c++.

  • @RicoTrevisan
    @RicoTrevisan Рік тому

    “Sr Dev: someone who can take a Jr to Medior to Sr.” - an add-on to all the stuff that Prime already mentioned.

  • @nony3882
    @nony3882 5 місяців тому +2

    I would also advise sr not to act like jr. Doing repetitive works without thinking out of the box and automation, losing interests in learning, driven by hype instead of reason are just examples

  • @AlecSorensen
    @AlecSorensen 11 місяців тому

    So much depends on the person. There's a huge difference between a senior developer who entirely motivated collecting a paycheck and one who is curious about the code. What Kent is saying CAN be true of senior developers is 100% true of the senior developers who are primarily motivated by a paycheck. They won't try new things if they don't have to, because that's extra time and effort. The same can be true of junior devs who are just trying to skate by, however, most junior devs feel less secure in their jobs and are more eager to please.
    However, someone who is motivated by their curiosity for coding and a personal desire to learn, whether they are senior or junior, is going to experiment with new tech and new coding patterns.

  • @GottZ
    @GottZ Рік тому +1

    oof.. this senior description fits me so well after this.. on top of that I even fix and report random bugs I encounter in the wild west of GitHub.

  • @nangld
    @nangld Рік тому +3

    I can't even get a junior job, despite designing own programming language and writing software in them. I even made a better HTML together with a rendering engine. But everyone says I need a psychiatric evaluation. I think I will write my own operating system instead.

  • @Hector-bj3ls
    @Hector-bj3ls 6 місяців тому

    I went from junior to senior at my company within 2 years. The advice in this article is basically exactly how i did it. Boiled down into a single sentence would be:
    To be moved up, move yourself up.

  • @TheHTMLCode
    @TheHTMLCode Рік тому +1

    I couldn’t agree with the “seniority” definition more. I’ve been with my company for 5 years now and I consider myself senior because of three facets
    1) general programming and infrastructure knowledge
    2) business domain knowledge
    3) system domain knowledge (how all of our subsystems communicate)
    If I entered another company, I’d drop steps 1 and 2 and just be a guy who knows how to program and understand other niches like docker and kubernetes…whilst those skills are valuable and allow you to build upon parts 2 and 3 quicker; I’d absolutely call myself a junior in a new business domain

  • @DurduSM
    @DurduSM 9 місяців тому +1

    just started learning programming, it is a bit overwhelming but i guess the first checkpoint is to work my a.. of to get to be a sh.. junior. thanks Prime you gave me something to aspire to become.

  • @liquidsnake6879
    @liquidsnake6879 Рік тому

    On the topic of new features one thing that sticks out in intermediate/junior devs is their eagerness to pull in 100 libraries to change the syntax to do some esoteric wrapping syntatic sugar nonsense because some guy on Twitter says it's the greatest thing over and it's going to change the world.
    Senior devs see through it and reject unnecessary crap in their bundle that unnecessarily complicates their DX for a simple syntatic sugar feature that you don't even use that often

  • @WaddleQwacker
    @WaddleQwacker Рік тому

    Note that all these points basically carry to any job with a junior/mid/senior system. It's a bit clunky, sometimes it is used as an arbitrary way to categorize and lowball ppl on their pay or assignents, sometimes it's cleverly used to spread the work to the right people and for propper onboarding and training, ... But it all fluctuates and at the end of the day you can be in your first job and become as independent, fast, reliable and even able to teach others like a senior should in theory be able to.

  • @Altaria26
    @Altaria26 Місяць тому

    You absolutely do not need to speak at conferences and meetups as a junior in your first year, that's insane talk.

  • @cariyaputta
    @cariyaputta Рік тому +3

    Imagine writing an article teaching people how to hitting mega jackpot by spouting generics advices like just believe in yourself and buy tickets constantly. You're hitting senior role in a big corp after just a short time? Good on you then.

  • @GnomeEU
    @GnomeEU Рік тому +1

    Get in a team that respects you. If they don't trust you that's their problem.
    Some teams / CEOs / leaders / managers trust you from day one and praise your skills, and for some you're never good enough.
    It's possible to change someone's mind *sometimes* but not always.
    I don't think that seniors are afraid to learn new things. Some are, some are not.
    If i already found a great technique that works well for me, why change that.
    Not every trend is worth following.
    Sometimes they release new stuff and I'm the first on the hype train, because the new tool solves problems i've always had with the old one.

  • @rylsdark
    @rylsdark Рік тому

    being Senior is the same as being Wise. its your ability to recall your experiences and be able to avoid problems that have yet to happen.

  • @arcanernz
    @arcanernz Рік тому

    11:53 I completely agree with removing the position of architect since it leads to so many bad outcomes like lack of ownership, good theoretically but bad in practice designs and you can’t be an expert on every system.

  • @heater5979
    @heater5979 Рік тому +1

    "Senior", "Junior", bah, stuff and nonsense. Back in the day my job title was "Senior Software Engineer". That after only working for two years and half that time I was involved in electronics more than the assembly language we used at the time. "Junior" = younger, "Senior" = older. These terms do no relate to how much of a software wiz you are in any particular field or in general. There is no way what you call a "senior" developer of web apps or such is going to be a senior developer of things like ship simulation or jet engine management systems. It's not all about code, languages, libraries, debugging. There is a huge amount of problem domain knowledge and experience to take into account.

  • @MikeZadik
    @MikeZadik Рік тому

    My trick: look for things that will come up soon and preemptively find a solution, pitch it and offer to implement that for the team or even the other teams. Suddenly you find yourself in a cross-team role, responsibly for an important coming matter. Software Supply Chain Security might be one of those topics currently.

  • @michaelanthony4750
    @michaelanthony4750 Рік тому +1

    "Perception is 9/10's of the law" yup

  • @Ataraxia_Atom
    @Ataraxia_Atom Рік тому +1

    This is why it's best to take "any" job and get a year or two of experience and then jump to a conpany you really want to work for

  • @MariusSchwendtmayer
    @MariusSchwendtmayer 3 місяці тому +1

    Juniors don't realize how many companies are still doing models database first and writing their own sql queries for migrations or even running some old php madness or ajax in their code base
    The world is yours.

  • @idk_who_am_i2748
    @idk_who_am_i2748 Рік тому +1

    5:56 As one of the team that has to mop up the VB6/Textfile Sync/"What the fuck is Normalization" horror that the senior "head of dev" caused (written in a time where C#, json/xml where a thing). I can tell you there are seniors that won't changes their ways unless they are forced to violently by the EOL.

  • @jl_117
    @jl_117 16 днів тому

    theres def a lot of developers i worked with where i think “10 yrs of experience? he sucks!” lmao

  • @DNA912
    @DNA912 9 місяців тому

    A Senior colleague of mine said that you cannot be a senior engineer until you crashed production at least once.

  • @csy897
    @csy897 Рік тому

    In order to be seen as senior within a little over a year, there were many weekends burnt and overtime hours I put in. Mostly because there aint no one who would give you space and time to create tools you feel your platform needs.
    I agree that you need to do that and also pick up tasks and even ask to help with projects with more advanced features just to gain experience working through problems. But most people aren't willing to put in that much extra time.
    That being said, I'm pretty confident I can get someone from junior to a solid mid in 3 months. Like, enough so that given the technical direction they are mostly independent and can produce most features. You don't have to be a senior, but you most definitely should stop being a junior.

  • @GeorgGanev
    @GeorgGanev Рік тому +1

    i joined a company as junior dev and after about a year i got the senior title. i didn't even get a pay raise and when i asked for one, i didn't get an answer. i switched companies (to get a hefty raise) and still am a senior dev but honestly close to noone cares about your title. all they care about is what you have been able to build in the past

  • @TemperedWill
    @TemperedWill Рік тому +2

    that's so true, btw using Vim instantly made me Senior dev skipping Junior and Middle positions EZ

  • @strawberrychocolatefudge6210

    I know a "junior" dev with 30 years of experience. He knows a lot but don't care about advancing his career so he got stuck doing junior work for life.

    • @Jabberwockybird
      @Jabberwockybird 10 місяців тому

      Sometimes people just don't want the extra stress of responsibility. Work life balance is more important

  • @jimbojones8713
    @jimbojones8713 Рік тому

    Stop being a junior or I will take your job real quick buddy
    -Chat GPT

  • @zoeherriot
    @zoeherriot Рік тому

    You are right. There is no requirement time. But there is a flipside. Some people expect to become seniors simply because time has expired. It's like the flipside to the coin.
    If you can work really hard, then yeah, you could be a senior within two years. If you do the bare minimum, and ask to be made a senior because you've been a junior for two years... then no. That's not how it works.

  • @jakejakeboom
    @jakejakeboom Рік тому +1

    I’m at a company with little flexibility to get to a senior title without many years of investment. Probably won’t stay too long, but I have learned a lot. It’s an embedded role, and my day to day involves reading data sheets for our SoC, debugging our boot loader (assembly mainly), writing and debugging low-level drivers (C), etc. I’m one of 3 devs on my small team, and I’m the one most responsible for low-level changes and fixes. I found a bug in our trap table this week, which needs to be ported upstream and may be present in already shipped products. I spent a week performance testing and debugging issues with our L2 cache controller, exchanging email with our chip supplier, and prompting them to send out an updated errata sheet. Im trying to get more comfortable taking initiative on problems that I find and advocating that they are worth some investment.
    Does that sound like a junior embedded engineer? Probably not, but it’s fine, I’ll have some great experience and should hopefully be able to jump up to a staff or senior position next time I change jobs.

  • @pencilcheck
    @pencilcheck Рік тому

    engineers who are set in their ways are engineers who have PTSD, and simply refuse to move on because they don't want to improve their workflow, they just want to get through the day and do something else. I wouldn't say those people are good for positions that require innovation (like new projects in big companies, or startups), they are probably good for maintenance as they are resistance to change.

  • @shiuido359
    @shiuido359 11 місяців тому

    The push for this kind of mindset is how companys get a senior dev while paying a junior wage. Best thing you can do as a junior dev is apply for dev roles. Once you get a dev role apply for senior dev roles. Once you get a senior dev role apply for principal dev. Doing the job of a higher rank for free is NOT a good use of your time or energy.

  • @hamzadlm6625
    @hamzadlm6625 Рік тому +1

    I quit my first startup company job after 1 year to get out of the junior perception, and they for no reason, gave me the title CTO on the letter of experience

  • @pencilcheck
    @pencilcheck Рік тому

    that's why people who get promoted usually have some relationship with their superior and that's how they are promoted.

  • @MatiasKiviniemi
    @MatiasKiviniemi Рік тому

    IMO "senior" is not about development/tech skills as such but knowing the company environment (although in practice some people will get hired as seniors still). I.e. you could have a decade of experience in the tech but you don't understand the environment you can still make stupid mistakes. It's about knowing the non-documented dependencies. Practical outcome is that you can be trusted to not make a mess.

  • @Jabberwockybird
    @Jabberwockybird 10 місяців тому

    4:30 not all water moves at the same speed. It'd fast in the middle, it can be slow in the outer fringes. Just barely trying. Just enough to get by

  • @ariadnepereiradasilvavieir4189
    @ariadnepereiradasilvavieir4189 3 місяці тому

    I don't know what senior developers do in my company, as they rarely share about it.

  • @randyriegel8553
    @randyriegel8553 10 місяців тому

    I'm a senior. Developing for over 20 years (last 15 in C# and SQL). I've used tons of languages over the years but that is my niche. In my current company my boss asked if I knew Python. I said I know about it. He asked if I'd try to fix a problem with a script than ran on the server overnight every night. I'd never seen Python code in my life I mainly was in the C type languages. Syntax confused me a little but fixed it in about 2 hours. Could have redone that as a console app in C# in about 10 minutes. Python on my hatred list made it right there beside PHP 😁

  • @sergioortiz7288
    @sergioortiz7288 Рік тому

    The Michael Jordan meme "stop it get some help" is pretty good

  • @stuntclutch
    @stuntclutch 5 місяців тому

    1 year 7 months to become a senior dev. A lifetime to become a senior reader.

  • @officialraylong
    @officialraylong Рік тому

    Ambiguity around Jr./Mid/Sr./Staff/Principal seems to come down to having no growth framework with objective criteria for advancement. A Jr. Engineer may need a lot of support on small tasks. A Sr. Engineer should be able to own and drive multiple epics in their team. A Principal Engineer should be working close with Sr. Management to make systemic improvements to the organization across multiple teams (or not; depends on the organization).

  • @kdcapparelli
    @kdcapparelli Рік тому +1

    "If you focus on comfort you will get dispair" Because... while you are focusing on the confort YOU WANT, you are also afirming you do NOT have comfort and, therefore, emitting uncomfortable vibrations, which can lead only to more and more uncomfortable situations, which in turn begets dispair. Make sense ?
    The trick is thus to be aware and focus more and more on what you are ALREADY comfortable with. Enjoy it, be thankful, and the notion and feeling of comfort will grow stronger and spread into other areas of life, provided you are not qualifying them as uncomfortable anymore. Focus enhances the energy and strenghten the feelings. And absense of focus make then weaker and weaker, and in time they tend to simply vanish away. Make sense ?
    This is half the path. The other half I share some other time, ok ?

    • @ThePrimeTimeagen
      @ThePrimeTimeagen  Рік тому

      please, no need, at least for me. i certainly do not subscribe to this type of thinking

    • @Zer-ei4co
      @Zer-ei4co Рік тому

      Minus the vibrations (may be metaphorical?), that actually makes sense. Sounds along the lines of Stoicism or Buddhism. Former seems like appreciation of the present, and latter can seem like denial of your “needs” or training yourself to better ignore them.

  • @abhaysingh.632
    @abhaysingh.632 9 місяців тому +1

    I started learning GoLang and I started using NeoVim
    Left the JS/TS (but my job requires it so need to do that, trust me I can't escape it)

  • @foswa6335
    @foswa6335 Рік тому +1

    Prime this was a great video. Thanks for this!

  • @ameliabuns4058
    @ameliabuns4058 Рік тому

    As someone with 2 months of experience it makes me happy as im really doing all this stuff! I have rhis personal project called "bunget" that's a budgeting app I'm working on, and i use it to practice things i learn on it.

  • @frstchan
    @frstchan 3 місяці тому

    Ah yes, speaking at conferences as someone with severe social anxiety sounds like fun!

  • @makeavoy
    @makeavoy Рік тому

    I was coding for a decade and then had a year and half professional experience, and yet a hiring manager still told me i was “entry level” and come back when i had 3 years of professional experience MINIMUM. Well now i have 3 years and no one will even interview me 😮‍💨

  • @benyamin7363
    @benyamin7363 8 місяців тому

    With that mustache he most definitely is a señor developer

  • @botskikawottski1337
    @botskikawottski1337 Рік тому

    I know 11 programming langues, been a developer for 15 years, completed multi million dollar projects but I am sure as hell still a Junior.

  • @alexgabriel5877
    @alexgabriel5877 Рік тому +4

    why is it between junior and senior? isn't there middle level developer where most people are? =)

  • @amesasw
    @amesasw 11 місяців тому

    I see a lot of people with only 2 to 3 years that feel they are senior, buy they don't contribute to projects at a senior level. Some do in as little as a year. But most I feel let off the gas or get lazy. There may not be a minimum time necessary, but I feel like many people with only a few years fall short of a senior dev contributor.
    I know a couple devs with just 2 or 3 years that are far more useful and insightful than devs of any tenure. But many are not.

  • @TruthAndLoyalty
    @TruthAndLoyalty Рік тому

    Imo, seniors are more likely to consider new ideas. Juniors are more likely to follow the crowd and spend more time looking for premade solutions than just building them (leftpad), which just happens to include new things. Seniors form opinions about most new things rather quickly and don't have much interest in the majority. Most new things aren't new ideas anyway.

  • @aprilmintacpineda2713
    @aprilmintacpineda2713 Рік тому

    Going for experience to measure "juniorism" would be a contradiction to the first statement that said no absolute time limit to when you finish being a junior, because experience is gained through time which then implies that there has to be a range where that "juniorism" happens and ends.

  • @RhythmnOfThought
    @RhythmnOfThought Рік тому

    0:36 Stop it, get some help.
    That meme is from an anti-drug campaign featuring Michael Jordan.

  • @InfernalLegion84
    @InfernalLegion84 Рік тому

    After quite shitty day at work (2yr java dev) that made me doubt in my abilities, that's the video I needed.

  • @coffeedude
    @coffeedude Рік тому

    I'm not even an intern yet but this article made me set my sights higher

  • @procode_eu
    @procode_eu 7 місяців тому

    In my career, I cared a lot about quick advancement and having senior-level status as quickly as possible. It took me around 4 years despite of I didn't have any tech degree. It was a difficult time and I was fighting for more than I was able to deliver. There were even some job losses connected with this attitude. I was caring for the growth of income so, I knew what I was going into. 😁😁

  • @doomguy6296
    @doomguy6296 Рік тому

    He didn't say experienced engineers ALWAYS hesitant to try new things. You maybe not hesitant but many are. Again, normal human behaviour: being comfortable with what we have. New things start uncomfortable and one with experience needs time and enough motivation to cross that

  • @mfpears
    @mfpears Рік тому

    11:50 Most devs just don't care. I've been an architect since day 1, and most devs I've worked with might have an opinion on 1 thing, but other than that they just show up and get paid.

  • @wanyansu
    @wanyansu Рік тому +1

    I think the meme is Michael Jordan, 'Stop it, get some help'.