[ravenstine]

> "Years of experience" VS "Technical ability" is at best reductive, at worst completely wrong.

I'm not sure it's a completely useless model, but it's problematic. One problem that comes to mind is that a certain number of seniors are going to settle into their role and are going to be driven by different things than a young kid at his first junior dev job. The junior may be more driven because there's more at stake and may come with a fresh perspective since they're actively learning.

> they are bare minimum requirements for an engineer that has a couple of years of experience, they're not what is needed to reach the senior software engineer level.

Depends on who defines "senior". You're correct in terms of what it is to be a senior engineer. To get the title of senior engineer is more a function of time and social skills.