This is one of my favourite questions to ask, and I’ve brought it up in senior engineer interviews—both as the interviewer and the interviewee.
The title "senior engineer" is super vague—no official standards, no checklist of skills, no licenses.
Over the years, I’ve heard some pretty cool and thought-provoking answers.
I’ve been in the industry for over ten years now, and when I get asked this question, I usually give a semi-joking answer:
*"If you can convince another 'senior' engineer that you’re a 'senior' engineer, then you’re a senior engineer." *
So, what’s your definition of a "senior" engineer?
Top comments (1)
I'm absolutely not a senior software engineer, but in my eyes, the amount of experience with soft skills as well as experience in the "development" part of software development is what makes a software engineer a senior. Specifically, developing software with a bunch of other people and dealing with the repercussions: merge issues, 10+ branches, vastly different opinions on design philosophy/code quality, etc. Anyone can code, but it takes a lot of experience to be able to code effectively in a big organization.