“Knowing The Difference Between Junior And Senior Developer Will Help You Find The Right Person For The Right Job”
We often see a job boards that mentions “Junior Developer” or “Senior Developer” title in them when we are scrolling through our gadgets for jobs or potential employees at any job boards. What exactly makes one a senior and another a junior? We might think when someone acquired a “senior” title they has been in their field for a certain amount of time or has a specific amount of work experience. But In fact, several developers can be a “senior” in their 20s. What does a senior developer actually means?
So What Defines A Senior Developer?
Having the ability to code using all of the programming languages out there and even able to build their Jarvis, the Ironman’s AI assistant is not enough to make you a senior developer. A Senior Developer needs to be working in a team; they make their team a better all-around developer. Senior Developer also needs to have a long-term vision, deliver, and consistently produce the business value to the customer that will benefit to the stakeholders.
It’s true that in general Senior Developers are more skilled than Junior Developers, but it takes more than developing skills to be a senior developer. What are the things that you should know about being a Senior Developer?
It Does Not Depend on Your Years of Programming
Being a senior developer doesn’t mean that you’ve had a long career as a programmer than a junior developer. Career length doesn’t always mean a better experience and knowledge, to strive. It all comes down to passion and drive. A developer who spent four years in college majoring in programming will have skills, but there’s a good chance that someone who has self-taught themselves programming over 2-3 years might be considerably more talented- just because they had more passion and dedication while learning during that time.
Steve Wozniak; the co-founder of Apple, is a driven and passionate programmer that is also self-taught. He showed an interest in radio transistors at an early age, and earn himself a ham radio license; allowing him to communicate locally using amateur radio when he was just ten years old. His passion for technology grows, and on his high school age, he taught himself to program. Steve Wozniak shows that with passion, time will not be the primary constraint to strive, and that’s why being a Senior Developer doesn’t always mean a longer career.
Supervising and Mentoring
Being a Senior Developer will give the “doesn’t require supervision” pass, but this pass does come with a catch. Instead of having supervision, a Senior Developer needs to supervise a project and even mentor their Junior Developer.
Having to work with supervision is much simpler than having to supervise someone else’s work, to supervise means you have to observe and direct the outcome of the task, which means more responsibility. As the Senior Developer you have to make sure that every single detail that is worked on is aligned with the business’s goal. While your Junior Developer might only have to focus on one thing at a time, you as the Senior Developer needs to do an all-around job to create an alignment between what your team is working on and the project goals.
Senior Developer should also be able to mentor the Junior Developers of the team. As a team, one man’s shortfall is a team shortfall. That’s why no one should be left behind. To reach project targets and deadlines, everyone should know where they are heading, and how to get there. Senior Developer role is to make sure everyone in their team knows it.
Having an Advance Hard & Soft Skills, Not Just Coding
Coding is essential, but it’s not everything if you’re aiming for the Senior Developer position. Senior Developer should also have advanced hard and soft skills because they are not working individually. Senior Developer has to work as a problem solver; they have to have the ability to experiment and test solutions for problems.
Communication is also a necessary skill when it comes with presenting to clients about the business processes of their projects. Being able to comprehend the full scope of a project and make the best methods to develop the project throughout their team is one of the main features of an excellent Senior Developer.
Conclusion
Senior Developers speak the same language as a Junior, but they approach problems from a different direction. A good Senior Developers knows their weakness & strength, and unafraid to admit it. After all, there’s no such thing as a perfect developer. Understanding when and how to use your weaknesses & strength will help you manage your team and reach project targets.
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References
https://medium.com/zerotomastery/developers-edge-how-to-become-a-senior-developer-f1ec1738cf45
https://medium.com/@clevyr/junior-vs-senior-developers-and-why-they-both-matter-738ff4b0e6b6