That's also my experience. "Senior" is little more than a random title in most companies I worked for. It can be someone in their early twenties who just happened to have worked for 2 years on one product, even if it's their first job. It's frustrating at first to join a new company as someone who is older and has many more years of experience, then you remind yourself it's just a random title and try not to get hung up over it. Like many symbols of status, it's a pretty empty shell.
If someone like Donald Knuth would be forced due to economic circumstances to join a trendy web start-up, he'd be a junior working under a twenty-something senior with little more than some Javascript and MongoDB knowledge. The whole thing's silly, really.
Anecdotally, I feel like this is how my older peers see me.
I've been working (professionally) in this industry since I was 16 years old, I got my first job as a junior after tinkering with computers since I was 8 years old. At the age of 23, I've found it very difficult to earn the respect of the people around me because of my age.
I have the title of senior developer because I've had experience working on scalability issues and complex service based infrastructures, but many of my peers who are my age and recently graduated university and are still in their first junior roles often act like I haven't earned it - despite me graduating with a part-time degree in software engineering (okay, it's not computer science, but I'm still glad I did it.)
My point is that while age is generally a good indicator of knowledge and ability, it's not the be-all-and-end-all.
Don't worry about what others say or feel. You have an audience of two: yourself first and the man who writes your check.
If you are adding value, you're doing it right. You are either a cost center or a profit center. Be the profit center and you will never want for a job.
I'm almost 50 and still in the game. If I'm honest, I still worry from time to time about being irrelevant, but if I'm still adding value, and I am, then what the other IT people around me think doesn't matter. Add value, learn as you go, gain in wisdom and understanding and you will always be cash-flow positive.
Don't make the mistake that so many do that you have to be working on something cutting edge or popular. Those jobs are nice, but I've learned--at least for myself--that I prefer the maintenance jobs. I enjoy taking something and making it better, even if it's just a quick fix, like two lines of code. Own everything you do. Be proud of your work.
You're still young with plenty of time to get where you will be going. Don't be in a rush to "prove yourself" to anyone but yourself and the man writing your check. Don't listen to naysayers, don't get trapped in the mindset that only the new, darling languages are worth investing in. Good programming skills are not language specific. Learn what you can. Use the correct tool for the job. Don't be a method man. Be the profit center.
I've been afraid of this. I've been working at a company for over 2 years. I'm 17, started here right after I turned 15. I've worked on many high profile projects. I've experienced a lot of respect, even with my age, but I don't want that to fade away in years to come.
You're probably going to encounter a lot of imposter syndrome imposed on you by the people around you - ignore it, you're just following a different track to the rest of your peer.
Curiosity: are you from US? Is software engineering seen as less valuable than computer science? I'm asking this because for me software engineering is a more complete discipline and would encompass pretty much everything computer science does.
In the US, degree programs actually called "software engineering" are few and far between; most software engineers who are college educated have a computer science degree.
It's also worth noting that the term "software engineer" isn't regulated here, while other engineering titles are.
> term "software engineer" isn't regulated here, while other engineering titles are
No they aren't. Unlike in Canada, you can give yourself any title without actually having a license in that profession, as long as you aren't being fraudulent in your claim.
I'm from the United Kingdom, where Software Engineering is seen as a lesser degree to Computer Science, in the same way that building CRUD applications is popularly seen as lesser than compiler design.
Sorry, sounds a bit like you're copping an attitude here. There's a lot more to software developement than any one or two things (scaling issues? complex infrastructures?).
Don't be complacent and think because you've done X, you know all about Y and Z.
I once worked with a guy who started with a company at age 16, did a lot of stuff, wrote a lot of code (went to work for amazon after that actually).
Turned out a lot of the things he did, although valuable in the moment to make the sale, were terrible for the long term viability of the product. This kids unguided decisions literally set the company back years when growth took off, and the app couldn't scale, and security holes were gaping.
Just be wary of thinking you know it all, this applies to everyone, regardless of age or experience.
>>If someone like Donald Knuth would be forced due to economic circumstances to join a trendy web start-up, he'd be a junior working under a twenty-something senior with little more than some Javascript and MongoDB knowledge
To play devils advocate, why wouldn't Donald Knuth be the junior given that scenario? In that position he may actually know less relevant knowledge than the junior. I mean many startup/crud apps don't require advance algorithmic knowledge, more front end dev and ability to deliver relevant business value. I wouldn't expect that junior to join knuths team and be put in charge, why should we expect the reverse? Given time yes, If Knuth is more intelligent he could become better at startup relevant work, then he should be more "senior" not before.
Gartner's Hype Cycle also applies to senior engineers. After 2 years of experience, you feel so much smarter than when you just started. You feel you've made it to senior.
But another 5 years later, you notice how little you really knew. You become really senior at 10+ years. Just like the hype cycle.
> When you are valuable and ask for a raise but they cannot give the amount expected because it's already Q4 so they give you the senior title instead.
A misapplied case of carrot and stick; using the carrot to beat you down is not how it works!
The budget has been consumed; business focused on making financial statements look good before being released to the public market for dissemination. At large corp scale, you'll experience shenanigans such as cancelling all flights/travel (unless it has C-level approval) even if it means a loss of potential future sales revenue / blocking entire teams who end up getting paid to sit there and do nothing until the quarter ends.
The other side of this is that departments with leftover budget will cast around wildly for anything plausible to spend it on, lest they have their budget slashed next year, "use it or lose it" style.
The company I work for has made more than a couple big sales in December from this phenomenon. Sometimes they never even deploy the software.
If someone like Donald Knuth would be forced due to economic circumstances to join a trendy web start-up, he'd be a junior working under a twenty-something senior with little more than some Javascript and MongoDB knowledge. The whole thing's silly, really.