What Makes a Senior Developer… Senior?

And how to be one of them

Photo by Jefferson Santos on Unsplash

I worked with so many developers for more than fifteen years of my life and still working with a bunch of them. I have seen junior developers with twenty (yes, 20) years of experience and senior developers with only five years in the industry.

When I was just starting, I wondered what differentiates the senior developers from others.

Over the years, I became a senior developer, then became an entrepreneur, an engineering manager, and a CTO. Here’s what I learned about what makes a senior developer senior.

I’ll also give tips along the way for junior developers to help their way up.

Making Requirements Clear

Development starts before coding. Actually, if you don’t manage the part before coding well enough, you may have a tough time crafting good software.

As a developer, some people will always give you some requirements about the projects you’re working on.

If the requirements are reasonable and clear enough, it’s a good thing. But, to be honest, it’s rare. So, you probably won’t have great requirements.

This may have different reasons. But I saw two main reasons: 1- Business people don’t know what they want in software terms 2- Software people procrastinate to write reasonable requirements.

The solution is actually pretty easy. You sit down with the requirements and the people who wrote them and ask questions. It may take some time, but it will take longer if you don’t do this in advance.

The questions you should ask may vary from task to task, but the main idea is the following: You’ll need to understand what exactly happens and when. Remember that you’ll also need the failing cases, not only what happens when everything goes right.

Designing Good Software

The framework to achieve excellent software design will be the hardest process. After you have great requirements, it’s easier to have an inclusive software design. You’ll always have room to improve yourself on this topic.

As Uncle Bob states, “A good architect maximizes the number of decisions not…