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by iteria 1019 days ago
What you're talking about to me is mid-level work. Seniors deal with ambiguity and feasibility analysis. Non-technical people often don't understand the level of tech necessary. They'll say, "I want a bridge about this long" very nice, but but did you consider the about wind that whistles through this area ? Also, how many lanes? Yeah that many is too few because once this bridge goes up we're not gonna be reasonably able to close it even for maintenance. We need at least 4 lanes. Isn't there a cement shortage? Hm.. maybe we can use this material instead? No. I don't think building with wood for this length is a great idea.

You get the picture. Yes lead developers exist, but they only have so much time to do little battles and they're busy making sure the big things are arguing correctly. Senior engineers should be able to talk to design about a redesign necessary because iOS just isn't capable of this it turns out or the cool effect you saw is only available on a version we don't use and can't update to right because complex reason.

If you're just taking your requirements and working without having to negotiate with another person, you're probably not doing senior work.

Some of it I the site I don't think is senior work really unless you're a tiny shop, but they're not weird since these are all skills a for senior adjacent roles that any senior might be called on to take randomly. It's not uncommon in many shops for leads to be a spontaneous and temporary role for some project that disappears on major release.

2 comments

Sorry for the late reply (I have been too busy!), but I appreciate your helpful response. Thanks!
I'm not even sure that a mid-level engineer would be just taking specs and implementing them. Maybe early-mid, the sort who are moving up from building easy things to building bigger things, but even at mid level an engineer should be able to take ownership of some small set of related features for a system.
Everyone is building to spec. As you get more senior the specs just get more vague ;)