To answer the question, first ask yourself why it matters? Does the the title come with increased pay check?
For someone looking at a resume, the title means next to nothing. What matters are the particular skills you have, and how many years of experience you have.
The real purpose of the junior/senior titles are to justify the hourly rates of consultants. What determines who gets them is a question of supply and demand: If the client demands x senior consultants on a project, but the consultancy currently only has x - 1 seniors, someone junior will magically find themselves promoted. It has nothing to do with skill or experience.
Really? do years matter that much? Because I know people with 10+ years of experience who still copy paste code without understanding and program without thinking about performance, and look like they always will
Years of experience is a somewhat reliable proxy for wisdom, but of course far from a perfect indicator for actual wisdom. But it doesn’t matter that it’s not perfect, since nobody gets hired solely because of their years of experience. Most everyone still have to go through an interview process.
Also, my point wasn’t exactly that you can necessarily claim wisdom/maturity because of your years of experience, but rather that it’s hard to credibly do without it. Ie., it’s really hard to get hired into a “senior” role with only one ore two years of experience, no matter what your title was in your old job.
I think it matters because unfortunately titles do matter to most people. When I first started applying for my first Dev job and asking who was hiring I often get this Response, "Oh right now we're only looking for Mid-Level - Senior Developers". Not everyone hires Junior Developers.
I'll have to disagree to this part of your statement "and how many years of experience you have.", because I don't think years of experience always determine how much you know or can do. People learn at different paces and will decide how much they will want to dive deep into what they're learning. I've met people with less years of experience who know so much more than me & I have met people with more experience than me but not know as much as I do.
Titles will help put people in the right positions so they can continue growing. If people decide to claim titles they aren't fit for, failure maybe evident. 🙂
People who are looking for, say, a senior developer, don't care if you actually held such a title at your former job. They care about a skill-set, and – perhaps more importantly – a maturity or wisdom that comes only with experience.
If you've only a few years of actual job experience, few employers are going to take you seriously if you label yourself senior, regardless of whether or not you held such a title at your previous job. You would have to be able to back it up with some convincing evidence at the very least, and if you are able to do that, then what does the title itself matter? If you've been massively involved with an open source project (and have the commit history to document it), then no employer is going to hold it against you if your actual job title was "junior front-end developer".
I remain firmly convinced that the junior/senior classifications exist only as a way for consulting firms to signal which consultants cost what.
That's true once you get to the point where people start phone screening, interviewing, etc.
If you think "junior" isn't a keyword that gets filtered on by people (or software) LONG before it gets to the point that someone even begins evaluating skill sets, then...well, frankly, you've been lucky to only work in environments that are way more progressive than most companies are.
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To answer the question, first ask yourself why it matters? Does the the title come with increased pay check?
For someone looking at a resume, the title means next to nothing. What matters are the particular skills you have, and how many years of experience you have.
The real purpose of the junior/senior titles are to justify the hourly rates of consultants. What determines who gets them is a question of supply and demand: If the client demands x senior consultants on a project, but the consultancy currently only has x - 1 seniors, someone junior will magically find themselves promoted. It has nothing to do with skill or experience.
Really? do years matter that much? Because I know people with 10+ years of experience who still copy paste code without understanding and program without thinking about performance, and look like they always will
Years of experience is a somewhat reliable proxy for wisdom, but of course far from a perfect indicator for actual wisdom. But it doesn’t matter that it’s not perfect, since nobody gets hired solely because of their years of experience. Most everyone still have to go through an interview process.
Also, my point wasn’t exactly that you can necessarily claim wisdom/maturity because of your years of experience, but rather that it’s hard to credibly do without it. Ie., it’s really hard to get hired into a “senior” role with only one ore two years of experience, no matter what your title was in your old job.
I think it matters because unfortunately titles do matter to most people. When I first started applying for my first Dev job and asking who was hiring I often get this Response, "Oh right now we're only looking for Mid-Level - Senior Developers". Not everyone hires Junior Developers.
I'll have to disagree to this part of your statement "and how many years of experience you have.", because I don't think years of experience always determine how much you know or can do. People learn at different paces and will decide how much they will want to dive deep into what they're learning. I've met people with less years of experience who know so much more than me & I have met people with more experience than me but not know as much as I do.
Titles will help put people in the right positions so they can continue growing. If people decide to claim titles they aren't fit for, failure maybe evident. 🙂
People who are looking for, say, a senior developer, don't care if you actually held such a title at your former job. They care about a skill-set, and – perhaps more importantly – a maturity or wisdom that comes only with experience.
If you've only a few years of actual job experience, few employers are going to take you seriously if you label yourself senior, regardless of whether or not you held such a title at your previous job. You would have to be able to back it up with some convincing evidence at the very least, and if you are able to do that, then what does the title itself matter? If you've been massively involved with an open source project (and have the commit history to document it), then no employer is going to hold it against you if your actual job title was "junior front-end developer".
I remain firmly convinced that the junior/senior classifications exist only as a way for consulting firms to signal which consultants cost what.
Adam,
That's true once you get to the point where people start phone screening, interviewing, etc.
If you think "junior" isn't a keyword that gets filtered on by people (or software) LONG before it gets to the point that someone even begins evaluating skill sets, then...well, frankly, you've been lucky to only work in environments that are way more progressive than most companies are.