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Who is a senior developer anyway?

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Backend Boys (and Girls)






Front End Developers



Team Lead







Senior developer: it’s just a job title, after all.




Erin Garlock replied on Thu, 2013/10/24 - 8:36am

Very tongue in cheek observations - I love it.  My definition of senior developer includes a minimum number of years experience, the ability to tackle (and solve, and in a timely fashion) complex problems you would not otherwise be able to without that minimum number of years experience, and above all - three or more of the categories you listed.


Java Guy replied on Fri, 2013/10/25 - 4:59am

Great points, esp about Front end developers.  This quora post was really good re: the front end developer

When I'm hiring, I can find many suitable candidates who are senior developers up and down the server side stack.  But its much harder for me to find a really good front end UI / UX developer who knows all the browser compatibility issues including mobile...those guys are golddust

Lund Wolfe replied on Sat, 2013/10/26 - 10:23pm

I think you have to use years of experience to mark junior, developer, senior.  That said, I don't think it means much by itself, even considering area of experience.

I used to think a junior could contribute with assistance, a developer could work alone and do more difficult parts, or even do the whole project with a sacrifice in quality, and a senior could do a good design or do it all alone at high quality.  A senior would ideally have good people skills, as well as skill in each stage of software development.

I would still hesitate to have a junior design the whole project, but I've seen enough nontrivial projects built by senior developers that were but ugly and small example code samples by no experience graduates that were elegant to know that intelligence or ability or talent is far more important than time experience in building quality, maintainable applications.

"Senior" developers have enough experience and know enough tools and libraries to build it and get it barely functional, but at what cost in quality ?  Don't hire based on years of experience.  Two years experience can be far more rewarding and less risky than twelve.

Kerr Schere replied on Wed, 2013/10/30 - 6:39am

This was an entertaining read.  In the last 15 years or so, I've played all of these roles to varying degrees.  I'm real thankful for having the opportunity to work on many facets of app dev.  People filling all these roles on a team is ideal, though I've been on teams missing some ingredients.  All things said, the most dangerous yet client-centric of these personas is GTD.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen technical debt snowball due to poor strategic vision and shoddy quality from the GTD guy.  He's needed in a pinch, but be sure to sandbox him as much as is practicable.

Amy Schultz replied on Wed, 2013/10/30 - 12:21pm

Really good and funny observations, but I do think the article was diminished by your attempts at humor done in poor taste. Please consider writing as though there were a lady in the room, because there is.  We'll all benefit if the developer community is a more welcoming for all.  I'm sorry, but tacking on "and Girls" in parentheses, and referring to "intellectual masturbation" and "shoving it up" anything really put me off and shouldn't have made it past the moderator.


A sniveling little front end developer (and yes, I get it, that part was written as a joke, I do have a sense of humor)

Bryan Copeland replied on Thu, 2013/10/31 - 12:20pm

 What I've discovered:  
- don't be a Technologist (aka. dreamer) if the company already has licenses in place or prefers to contract with typical big name providers for support
- don't be a Toolsmith if the project/company has low budget (time or money)
- don't be a Backend Warrior if the project/team/company is client-focused
- don't be a GTD if everyone else is change/risk adverse
- don't be a Front End Dev if the backend or middleware is still shaky
- don't be the Team Lead unless your project/team lacks PM or experienced devs
- don't be an Architect if the project/team already has a well-defined process and/or Business Analysts to help with requirements gathering, design decisions and documentation along the way

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