[game_the0ry]

> A bit of a cynical take (on Hacker News no less) but after being in the industry for a while, my view is that the best definition of “level” is self-referential: it corresponds to the ability of a person to convince others that they are at that level.

I agree on paper that this is a great heuristic, but an employer would be more than happy to pay you a junior or mid compensation while extract senior level contributions from you. I see your point, though, and I agree for the most part.

> In other words, you can consider two hypothetical futures for a company: one with a specific person and one without that person.

This another tricky one - I agree on principal but I have seen this not work out in practice. For example, I have seen very senior people leave suddenly (like no notice period) and the business does not even skip a beat. In some cases, things get more efficient. My point being - employee level and comp sometimes do not map to contribution + business value.

That being said, I observed the above at big companies, where inefficiencies can hide in multiple levels of hierarchy and bureaucratic red tape. Its also why I hate working at big companies.

[trelane]

> an employer would be more than happy to pay you a junior or mid compensation while extract senior level contributions from you.

The problem with this argument is that the level also gets you a seat at tables you otherwise don't get invited to. The places where the decisions get made.

So "senior contribution" is not always possible without having the senior level on paper.

[game_the0ry]

Debatable.

I have seen "senior" people hired from outside that do not make the same level of contributions as some one who is less senior by title and has years of tenure at their current position.

This is super common bc many companies would rather hire from outside instead of promoting from within. Also why there is so much turn over (engineers last for like 2-4 years then move on).

[saghm]

> I agree on paper that this is a great heuristic, but an employer would be more than happy to pay you a junior or mid compensation while extract senior level contributions from you. I see your point, though, and I agree for the most part.

In some ways, this actually makes sense to me. In my opinion, senior versus junior engineer seems like it should be about the skills and abilities of an individual, whereas one's compensation and actual title depend on a lot of environmental circumstances (company politics, for lack of a better term). While "soft skills" are an important part of a senior engineer, I'd argue that the set of soft skills useful to an individual contributor engineer doesn't necessarily overlap a ton with the soft skills needed to be able to effectively secure a promotion and/or higher compensation; navigating the corporate bureaucracy to the benefit of the team is primarily the responsibility of the manager. Finding a way to express the "level" of an engineer separately from their situation at their current company doesn't seem that crazy to me.

[fifilura]

> For example, I have seen very senior people leave suddenly (like no notice period) and the business does not even skip a beat.

Maybe that senior was great at training their replacement?

[game_the0ry]

> Maybe that senior was great at training their replacement?

No, this was not the case. It turned out that those folks that left just did not contribute beyond superficial "management", delegating to subordinates, coordinating emails. Sort of like a "team secretary".

[fifilura]

Ok, I'll guess I'll double-down since I am getting downvotes and it is still on topic.

I would be proud of someone said that about me. I have introduced new technologies (that work well) but I have also spent a significant amount of time training juniors, that I now know could handle the stack without me. Much because of their hard work of course, but a little bit because of me.

Maybe I was a one-trick-pony and this is all I knew. Or maybe I would continue improving the products by introducing new ways of working or implementing great stuff in the future.

Neither of this will be noticeable in a future without me.

But the worst kind of senior ought to be people that leave suddenly, leaving a chaos behind them.

It is like the "hero" who creates a chaotic product and puts a 100 hour week of bugfixing just before the release.

Compared to the person who just plans a product and executes according to schedule without leaving a mark.

What do you prefer?