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by delichon 675 days ago
To me being a senior software engineer means that when your production system goes unstable from gremlins or cosmic rays or other mysterious sources of chaos and the business that pays for your food is in jeopardy, there's nobody to pass the buck to. You just have to buckle down and figure it out or update the resume and start working on your excuses or apologies to newly unemployed coworkers and their families.
2 comments
Vinnl 672 days ago
Well, except for perhaps to a staff engineer. Or a senior staff engineer. Or a principal engineer. Or maybe a senior staff principal engineer? The VP of Engineering? The CTO?
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bux93 672 days ago
a vendor
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zelphirkalt 672 days ago
Vendor is a trump card in this game. Surely no one can do better than a vendor, from which we buy a solution! Best of all, we can then shift the blame too! Our customers cannot use our product? It is the vendor's fault!
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bravetraveler 672 days ago
Don't forget the venerable Financial Institutions and their cousin, Insurance
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consf 671 days ago
So is it not just about coding but also about owning the issues?
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spacephysics 671 days ago
To me senior means ownership above everything else.

Owning a part of the system implies that you’ll do (or organize) the risk analysis of new features, cost-benefit of bug fixing, coding (or at least outlining the design), support via documentation, communicating to product owner/stake holders/support.

Elevating from senior to staff (or principal etc) would be projects with larger scope, moving parts, and higher risk/reward.

I think its easier to see a junior to senior (if say we have two buckets).

After senior it gets tough. Does their role involve purely tech lead/coding? Or some managerial politics, pushing engineering culture/direction in whichever way is best for the company.

Really depends on the company itself, which I think is why it’s hard to standardize.

CTO at my own startup? Really a glorified senior dev with some communication and business mixed in. Upper senior dev at Netflix? Most likely masters or PhD level (not necessarily with the degree) understanding of some C.S. concepts that matter at that scale.

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