HACKER Q&A
📣 _samjarman

Favourite definition of seniority of software engineers?


I'm pulling together a list of criteria for the various levels of software engineers. I know some are public. What are the public definitions that you like the most/feel are accurate with your experience?


  👤 caprock Accepted Answer ✓
Unfortunately, what I see the most is:

An increase in seniority comes with (A) a decrease in hands-on time with technical problems and (B) an increase in time spent on project management, team organization, and people problems.

None the less, there are some possibly interesting resources regarding levels at Honeycomb [1], Netflix [2], and Gitlab [3]. There's a whole book if you're going to venture into "staff" [4]. Last but not least, don't forget the Peter Principle [5].

[1] https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/engineering-levels-at-honeycom...

[2] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/netflix-levels/

[3] https://about.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/developmen...

[4] https://staffeng.com/guides/staff-archetypes

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle


👤 dieselgate
If we’re talking about “favorite” definitions: the more senior the less time one spends at their “desk” - whatever that means now with everyone being remote

👤 ironmagma
Posted a comment about this just the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32826054