Seniority Levels in Software Engineering (Junior vs. Senior vs. Principal)
Hello friends welcome back and our channel will discuss how to improve our soft skills as software engineers and in this video we'll discuss different seniority levels in software companies this topic is quite interesting because seniority levels are not standardized among companies so every company would say okay this is as juniors this is a .
Senior this is a principle this is a senior tool senior 3 staff engineer but there is no way to measure it to say okay after two years you will become junior after five years you become seniors there is no standard way you might be fresh out of college and you might be considered senior you might be working in the field for 10 years but .
You are still not considered senior so it's a little bit not a centralized similar to other fields we will discuss these three levels and you will know how to grow in this industry and you might also find out if you deserve a promotion you might ask your manager your supervisor because you know you might already put in the work put in the .
Effort but you might actually deserve a promotion but also we'll discuss only three levels like junior senior and principal in every company it might be more than this so between junior to seniors there might be an intermediate level they call it mid level between seniors to principals there might be senior tools .
Senior three staff engineer and then principal one principal too there might be a director so it's not a standard way but it's a good way to divide between these three levels so we'll discuss only junior senior and principal so the first one junior developers they are freshly graduate from college or they already attended a .
Bootcamp they are good software engineers they could write good codes they could write unit tests they could write ci cd pipelines they know different design patterns they know solid principles they are good software developers but the things they haven't done yet is they haven't worked on a real project or a real-life project .
Something running on production we call it they haven't worked on a legacy project so they could build a fresh app or a new app from start ground and it works perfectly but their problem is they haven't worked on a legacy project they don't know how to change applications how to develop it how to apply business requirements how to .
Communicate with business metrics how to seize the long-term solution applied how to solve it to stay for a long time not just for okay we will just fix it for now and then yes the task is done now it should be for the long term to make the tech debt as low as possible and maintained so this is the only difference and yeah of course there are .
Other differences but this is the main difference that would say okay this is still not a senior developer still a junior and there is another big difference which is communication skills we will talk about it when we speak about senior developers but this is the most important part they haven't worked yet on a real project that is working on .
Production some of the ways of course on how to grow first they have to be eager to learn they have to find new challenges to solve they have to find ways to improve their business they have to understand some business they have to improve their communication skills these team skills and so on these are the most important things and of course they have .
To ramp up their skills their new courses their new ways to improve their knowledge so these are the important things and in many companies when these developers ramp up their experience and become more experienced they call them mid-level developers second level are senior developers and they are considered in many companies as .
A powerhouse of the company because they could write very solid goods they understand the business they could implement new tasks they could implement new feature in the current project but the most important difference between senior and junior is having of course like we said they have better experience they already work on legacy .
But the important difference is communication skills they could deal with business people they could deal with development they could translate different areas or different layers and they could also teach the junior developers they have the way to teach it because it's one thing to learn and it's another .
Thing to teach you could be able to understand but you cannot communicate it well to other people but if you could do posts in this case it's a sign that you are a senior developer and the other task above all of these tasks like we said they also contribute in the hiring process so they should be also a good image for their company because they act .
As a good branding for the company so when there is a new candidate they should be able to communicate well the company image and team and teamwork and all of this good stuff to attract this new candidate into working into this new company so to rehab it again they have very good communication .
Skills and they could also teach general developers this is a good sign that they are senior developers if you're currently a mid-level developer and you would like to become a senior developer you have to work on your communication skills and the ability to teach others is always working with new juniors and become more of a leader inside your team .
And teach others cell devil are principal developers and they are like senior dwellers they have good expertise they could build good architectures they could communicate business but few differences then senior developers they have deep knowledge in a certain field this is one thing but the most important difference between principal and senior .
They have bigger influence on multiple teams even without official authority or official title for them they already have good impact they support many teams they could even support teams outside the company they have influence outside the company they even could act as branding for the company you know there are sometimes take branding for the .
Company to attract new recruiters and smart people to work in this company so they could act as thick branding for the company like being a speaker being a youtuber being a book author open repo maintainer or something so they have bigger impact even outside their former way of work not just inside your team but also outside your team and .
Becoming a principal developer from senior developer is a little bit tricky because everyone has their personal story how they became principal developer and i would put a link for a website that collects different personal stories for people how they went from being senior developers to principal developers and sometimes they called .
Principal developers as tough engineers in different companies so i put link for this website so you could read different stories and know how to become a principal because it's not like a straight line from junior to senior where you could improve your skills gain expertise improve your communication skills business skills and so on it's a .
Little bit different because it requires taking bigger initiatives having bigger impact on the company so it's a little bit not easily measured so i would put link for this website and you could check it out and one final thought is that to keep in mind that seniority is not correlationally related to your expertise only but it's more .
Correlationally related to your impact on the company when you have a bigger impact on the company and not just having bigger impact in the technical side but also from the business side because the company is mainly built to make cash to make hard dollars and to make the company make profits so if you have a bigger impact .
From your technical side on the company to improve these numbers in this case you become more senior because you understand how to make your tools your programming your zeros and ones to affect the company's business to improve and become bigger so this is maybe the takeaways that i would advise if you would like to take it from this whole .
Video is that to improve your impact in the company not just from writing code writing functions but also having a bigger business impact and in this case you would become a more senior developer glad you made it to the end of this video i hope you find it useful small announcement i have started a tech newsletter so every week i study between .
14 to 17 hours from different courses online courses different tutorials different books so i saw to make a summary for them for me to remember and then i thought how about sharing them with you so every sunday there would be a tech newsletter it would collect different summaries for all these tutorials that i have learned even some .
Links for different interesting articles different tutorials different books different videos yeah different things that would improve your knowledge and improve your skills to transition from junior to senior developer so subscribe for it and for the first 2 000 spots it would be for free and later it would become paid so yeah save your spot .
So i hope you'll subscribe for it and yeah see you in the next video ciao you