[mkinsella]

This is the biggest difference between a Junior Engineer and a Senior (or Staff Engineer).

A Senior Engineer knows what the highest-value work is and is influencing/driving the roadmap. A Senior Engineer says 'no' more often than 'yes' and backs it up with a 'why.'

[ZephyrBlu]

It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy though.

Most Seniors are driving the roadmap simply by virtue of being a Senior, and most Juniors have no opportunity to influence the roadmap because Seniors control the decisions.

Of course ideally everyone can contribute, but I think that's relatively rare.

[mixermachine]

If the structure of a work place is very strict, then yes this is 100% true.

I how ever could already experience a more open scrum process in which we all have a say.

For me it all started in an university project with four (incl me) people. I denied a good portion of the requests my supervisor gave me there, not because they were bad, but because they simply did not fit into the time budget or were not realistic. She was actually very happy about that because she was not that tech savy back then and learned a lot threw the process. Very good experience for me and we finished the project on time and exceeded expectations.