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Does anyone have experience with becoming a Senior Dev "early" (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 weeks ago by python@lemmy.world to c/cs_career_questions@programming.dev

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As in, either at an early age or early in their career.
Because I'm 26 with about 3-4 years of experience (maybe 5 if I count my apprenticeship), and my company keeps reiterating how they promote based on skill and knowledge, and not based on age. I know that I fit the soft skill requirements for senior dev on the internal checklist. And I know that I could absolutely handle the 6-week project that potential Seniors are asked to do, because all of my experience is extremely specialized into the exact current field and position I work at.

So I'm playing with the idea of asking to become a senior next year, because I plan on leaving the company and the title would look good on my resume.

Does anyone around here have experience with doing something like that?

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[–] Mikina@programming.dev 3 points 2 weeks ago

I'd say go for it.

I can't speak for development, because I worked in Cybersecurity as a pentester, so it might be different, but my experience is that the main difference is how much oversight you are getting. I've seen super skilled juniors that didn't need any oversight and seniors whose work I'd describe as mediocre.

If you trust in your work, then it's mostly just a fromality that will get you more money. And even then, I'd say the main difference is that if you don't know something, you have to ask for help (which should be ok and encouraged, if it's not extremely often), instead of having someone watching over you (or in my case of pentesting, doing the project with you). In all cases, if someone, senior or not, wasn't sure about something, needed feedback, help with a bug/script or just to discuss something, just asking others was never a problem.

So, yeah, if you fullfill the requirements your work has, then there's not really a reason not to ask for promotion unless you are really insecure in your work and preffer to have more guidance.

I didn't really rush for promotion because I was more comfortable with the leeway it gives me, and not having that much responsibility, but tbh even if I did ask for it it wouldn't really change much - I was already working mostly independend, reliably and had the required knowledge. It has, however, cost me a lot in sallary over the years, so it probably wasn't worth it.