Why is the line between juniors and seniors so often misunderstood?

#architecture #career #engineering #softwaredevelopment

In simpler CRUD-based projects, complex architecture quickly turns into technical debt.

Here, developers with a pragmatic, delivery-focused approach (often juniors) tend to be more effective — because business reality values simplicity and speed.

But once a project grows beyond CRUD into service-based or domain-heavy complexity, that’s where seniors show their real value.

The ability to define clear context boundaries, design proper abstractions, and think in terms of scalability and maintainability isn’t something you gain just by writing code for years.

The Real Difference

The difference between a junior and a senior is not about years of experience.

It’s about maturity — in architecture, long-term maintainability, system evolution, and even teamwork and collaboration.

I’ve seen people with 3–4 years of experience act more mature in architecture and team interaction than someone who’s been coding for a decade.

That’s why, instead of counting years on a résumé, we should assess engineering maturity.