Are you a Senior Developer: The Seniority Checkup
It’s a never-ending debate in software development- what does it take to be a Senior Software Developer? Is it a mere count of the years spent in the industry, a selection of skills, or a mix of a wide range of characteristics?
There’s an endless number of resources dedicated to finding the one-fits-all answer to this question, like this article in the Guardian , this Quora discussion, and an endless number of Stackoverflow threads . The secret formula, however, is yet to be figured out.
We at SFL decided to ask developers themselves in a poll, by selecting the most widespread requirements and characteristics, and estimating their importance. Here are some of the most common characteristics listed as must-have for senior devs:
- Has at least 5 years of experience as a software developer
- Exhibits leadership skills, participates in decision-making and delegates tasks
- Can handle the entire software development life cycle
- Acts as a mentor to less experienced colleagues
- Knows the team dynamics and regulates the atmosphere within the team
- Has deep technical knowledge
- Can produce clean, maintainable code in their domain
- Knows the best practices in their domain and can implement a variety of different solutions
- Doesn’t need to be micromanaged
First, we asked our team to single out 5 most crucial characteristics. The results came as follows:
- Having deep, technical knowledge is the most important factor, picked by over 87% of respondents.
- For 84.2% Seniority is strictly connected to acting as a mentor for less experienced developers.
- Knowing industry best practices and implementing various solutions was picked by 82.05% of respondents.
- Next in line, with 82.05% is exhibiting leadership skills and participating in decision making.
- Last but not least, writing clean, maintainable code is considered a top priority for 74.3% of respondents.
When asked if someone with under 5 years of experience can be considered a senior developer, 84.6% of respondents said that they can, and something that matters here is rich project diversity.
67% of respondents said it’s not mandatory for senior developers to be able to handle the entire software development life cycle.
What else identifies a senior? Some of the most common answers were personal maturity, ability to handle stress, willingness to share information with others, capacity of being part of the Product Management team, learning fast, finding solutions quickly and being self-motivated.
Finally, we asked the respondents to evaluate these abilities on a scale from 1–5, ranging from not important at all to a must-have:
These results indicate that having deep technical knowledge, being able to write clean, maintainable code and knowing industry best practices are of core importance, followed by exhibiting leadership skills and acting as a mentor for less experienced colleagues.
Do you agree?
Let us know in the comments!
About this author:
Armine Hakobyan is a digital storyteller with a heart for technology and innovation.
