Yapping Session 07 - About Seniority in Programming

The longer I'm in this business, the more I notice seniority is weirdly subjective. At my current job, what people call “senior” depends mostly on how much you know about the product, not how deep your technical skills actually are. Fair enough, I'm aware of my weak spots, so I don't claim to be perfect in either category. Still, it's frustrating when you have a whole team of people who are basically all mediors, yet someone's called a senior and I'm called a junior.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind being seen as a junior, it actually makes the team more lenient when I'm slow or I make a mistake, which is fair. But it is strange when folks are labeled “senior” and they perform at about the same level I do on most tasks. I've worked with true seniors before. That level isn't just a slight step up, it's a whole other universe in how they think about problems and solutions.

In theory, seniority should be about skill depth, judgment, ability to break down complex problems, design systems, and guide others, not just knowing all the quirks of one product. Industry definitions tend to reflect that: seniors are expected to solve complex problems, own big features, and mentor others, whereas juniors are still learning basics and need guidance. But in practice, every company's labels are different. 🤷

And here's the kicker, even “objective” skill tables HR likes to use aren't truly objective if there's no shared standard. Companies make their own spreadsheets, HR gets happy because they can slot people into categories for compensation, and boom, you have these arbitrary titles that don't match real ability.

My theory, the whole concept of senior/mid/junior roles was probably invented in some boardroom as a way to justify pay gaps under capitalism. From HR's perspective, it looks tidy, you pay less to some and more to others based on whatever internal rubric you cook up. But since there's no industry-wide baseline, it's still subjective.

In a better world, that sort of system could motivate people by giving clear skill paths. Instead, in a lot of places it demotivates because the labels are poorly defined and used inconsistently.

This ties into another problem, compensation and recognition. Some people do critical work for a company and still aren't appreciated financially or formally. You overwork them, burn them out, then act surprised when they leave. That's not good management, it's negligence. If someone is moving your product or team forward, you need to notice that and act on it. Good management is not just about technical oversight, it's socio-economic insight, respect for people's contributions, and active support for growth.

I've seen it personally, in a previous job I left because management was completely unqualified to manage anything. Not technically, not socially, not strategically. It was laughable. Salary was decent, I'll admit, but salary alone isn't everything. The lowest level workers actually managed themselves. How absurd! 😀

So yeah, that's my rant on seniority. The labels mean almost nothing without context, and the way they're used in most companies today is pretty bad for both craft and morale.

See ya 😛