What is a Senior Software Engineer? Junior vs Mid vs Senior Level Developers | The Difference

Or maybe you're a snr engineer that is wondering why so many of your "peers" are so terrible at their jobs/roles. Maybe, you're starting to think that snr is just a payscale and nothing else.

A helpful video for me. Thank you ❤

It doesn’t make sense before FAANG interview.

No you are not happy for that college guy. Cause I wouldn’t be.

My nigga, that was a great video.

I know many devs w 20 years of experience who code at a junior level. Especially people who are not really passionate, never test alternatives or never try something new.

Senior is someone that doesn't need help. They can manage and figure things out on their own. A senior knows when to use design patterns, understands state management, concurrency, app life cycle etc... I would agree that years in the industry does not equate to a senior designation, but I also think that every mid and jr wants the senior pay so they will pretend to be seniors all the time in interviews.

As a senior dev I can relate to this and in spades. Plan and deliver stuff that makes your customers (and org) happy, keep things on "auto-pilot" for managers, guide your teammates, take their pain away, and you will thrive.  Never cared for promotions, they just happened, increasingly found myself leading others and high stakes projects. Great vid!

Never been promoted in 15 years of career. I am happy to stay an individual contributor that brings his experience to the company without being burdened with responsibilities and management pressure.

3 years in? I think it'd be interesting for you to look back on this video 5 years from now and see if you still agree with yourself. Maybe a follow up video would be cool. Also, look at code, patterns, and infrastructure you developed at this time compared to what you'll be writing then. If you keep growing, it's massive difference 5 years makes, experience-wise, soft skills, and hard skills. Things I developed 5 years ago makes me want to vomit lol. Just some perspective from someone 25+ years as a developer in and still learning to code :)

The reason you get the title senior is experience. Once you get to senior you generally get paid the correct pay for it. Now like anything else it also falls on you team the team. Also handling the big stuff, and taking responsibility of your boobs and mids.

work time wouldn't matter for senior vs junior (though experience in developing or running projects is a must, but that doesn't mean job-related necessarily and you can do/learn much more solo)

a senior would pick up libraries and languages quicker because they take design paradigms from each other. A senior also would find and solve bugs quicker, do more accurate estimates, and can do designs a junior does not have the expertise to, which will tend to work more often and not need as many tweaks when implementing. They would get more more done and/or to a higher quality (longevity, less bugs, code is easier to work with when specs change, less chance of necessity for a rewrite or blockers that need reinvention due to evolution of a project, concise but better coverage tests, well exercised organisation skills in terms of issues/versioning/releasing and app/feature/library itself but also documentation because they would have had experience in observing people read the docs and integrated feedback from that audience into their writing style). You very much do become a better, faster developer from experience. Though yeah, overthinking your performance and being anxious about it wouldn't help learning, you should only go at the pace that feels natural to you, and if anyone is going to be judgemental about that for some arbitrary non-deadline related reason that's a them problem, not yours.

I clicked this video because I interviewed somewhere and the guy impromptu called me junior when rejecting me, I found this very rude because I didn't claim to be a senior (though ironically the job I got after that interview was a senior title). I was trying to figure out what that even meant. I think, now, that he said it because they couldn't pay my salary I guess (which was just the average for a mid level here). He also kept saying he found my code in my hobby projects confusing, which I think said more about his poor understanding of the language... I've only gotten the opposite remarks in regards to my coding style if I exclude him. Very odd experience. It still rattles in my mind sometimes because it made no sense lmao

edit: NEVER execute on someone else's will, ALWAYS get direct responsibilities. Favours and clout with one person puts you at the mercy of that one person, and if they're greedily hoarding them like that they are not your friend and WILL NOT be good on that promise. You need to remove or re-educate that person, and that whole project has a high chance of slow burning out people (which WILL be new hires over time) and then just dying regardless of the actual original quality of the product because literally no one wants to work for something like that in lieu of their mental health... huge huge red flag. Say what you will about management procedures, but this is the only one that's actually going to save your team if you need HR's help due to the drama that very much will result when someone is operating like this, and even if they're honourable at the start it's far far too easy to slip up and go to the dark side, with perfectly good and totally valid excuses but you need to know and accept your limits amicably, and this will help both you in your future career and whatever projects, people, and even your own sense of belonging and value later on (you'll find people will support you of their own free will and not force you to do things you have weaknesses in, but at the same time you'll discover your actual strengths because they will end up relying on you more heavily in those specific areas, which means you'll "fit" and have a specific role and purpose you are exceptionally good at yourself, this is the whole point of human cooperation as an evolved, thinking species and it's hella cool). Direct responsibilities only.

undoubtedly the BEST video I watched this year - please continue the influx of incredibly valuable insight!

For me, my best bet is the amount "time" and "experience" the person has gone through with regards to his personal career. Also, the amount of "Ownership" to their work.. ownership like if something went wrong.. he is the person should be responsible answering.

Even a new graduate may be more "updated" to a Senior Engineer because he has a one year experience to the system.. and a new employee (who is a senior) just went in.. but a Senior Software Engineer has a significant "Real" stories to tell and how it was handled.

Also knows what things should be "properly delegate" to it's subordinates.. protecting the team and it's subordinates. Maintaining harmony and sustainability.

Also, it can foresee farther than a junior... most of the time... but not always.

Also with regards to Salary.. Remember.. it's not the salary that you deserve.. it's the salary the "you asked for". You have to take it. But please for the good of the universe.. be reasonable as well.

all these titles are meaningless, particularly in an industry where new things are coming by on monthly basis while older ones are dying at same rate..an experienced web developer may not have ever worked in a streaming platform like kafka, while a junior dev may have...and these technologies are so different that you can't expect a 'senior' guy to always know something about these new stuff without ever working on it...so all this senior-junior is bunkum....one diff you can see is that a 'senior' guy chase best practices while learning a new technology while a junior dev would worry more about constructs...

A comment down below.
Good luc*

As a Senior Dev, you have single handedly cured me of my impostor syndrome.
Thank you!

Senior is just a title. What it means can vary between companies. It can mean just someone who is not junior. It can mean someone with just enough of years of experience. It can mean someone who can work independently with little supervision. It could mean that they are in charge of a project. It could mean that they are a subject matter expert at something. It could mean that they make higher level engineering decisions.

What are some basic expected technical skillets required as a senior software engineer? What is the expected code output perday of a senior 🤔

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience! Great video!

Just found you channel, very insightful. You're a nice down to earth guy and I really appreciate it. Some software developers act like they're rockstars at their jobs, which has never been my experience.

So, essentially, you became a senior engineer after enough time in the field. Just goes to show you, there's no shortcuts. A Jr dev wanting to jump to Sr after 2 years is like a LoL player wanting to be Diamond after 2 season. Or a beginner Chess player wanting that 2k elo after 1 year.

You definition is not clear at all, you have mixed attributes of a Senior , a lead and a manager.

I never knew that john wick is a software engineer

This was awesome! Thanks so much. Do you have a Twitter account? I would love to follow you. Would be glad to have a genuine connection.

What should I do
??
I have been teaching myself for two years and build lots of projects.
I applied for many junior but noone gave me a chance. So I twisted my resume amd assuming I have three years of experience.
Now
I got a job offer.
I will take two weeks to quit my current job as cabin cleaner.
Should I tell them the truth or just go for the role ??
I really need advice.
I am very comfortable with React javascript css php amd mysql.
I look forward for any advice please.
I am really scared.

good video!

You are a gem 💎

Dang could take months… lmfao I’ve been out here grinding as a swe since 2017 with a computer engineering degree and still not a senior.

great job.
thank you men

Starting as mid level, and becoming a senior in 2-3 years? Shish, come on. It took me 8 years, and 25+ successful projects, to get the senior title. Just because you succeeded at one project, it doesn't mean you'll hit the ground running on your next one. I'm wondering how experienced is your manager, to propose such a step based on these facts, after working with you for just a few months.

I loved the way you speak

Great video man

Great video man, thanks for the advice.

Imo anyone who has prior mgmt or quality experience usually becomes a Senior Developer/Engineer overnight who may not even know the basics of code or bare bones basics but they lead the team based on their prior experience not tech stack or anything

I am an engineer and live in spain and everyone, in supermarkets, bus stops, gyms, calls me a senior. This is what is a senior.

You look typically like one of the actors at Hollywood. What is name again? Hold on, I think it's is Keeneau. By the way great content . You nail it. Congratulations.

Being senior is not about the amount of work perse. It's about delivering the correct amount of added value with the least changes/risk and about setting examples for less senior employees. Most of all it's about being able to delegate, collaborate and plan.

This video is awesome! Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge!! :)

Look at this handsome devil!

In here India, Companies except that Junior Developer to do Mid Level Developer's work

Great advice!

Great video! As a mid-level engineer this content is spot on. Underrated channel.

Thanks you answered all my doubts.
The video was very informative 😊