Originally published in Dev Knights
A year ago I read an article published in the software magazine Software Gurú by Basilio Briseño where He stated that PHP is one of the least paid languages in Mexico and why. In his article he also published a salary range based for every type of programmer made by the programming group "PHP Mexico".
Although the salary range skill classification is aimed towards PHP programmer, the type of programmer classification
can be applied outside php programming. The following list suggests what a Rookie, Junior, Senior and Master developer skills are expected to get into that classification.
The salary range could be generalized as follows:
Rookie usually writes code without consistency in indentation or conventions and usually copies and pastes anything found on the internet that seems to do what it was asked to deliver and that, according to the forums, is the solution.
Apprentice has accepted that he/she needs to improve and decides to learn the best practices and apply them. He/She consults forums not for searching code that he/she could simply copy/paste, instead he/she analyzes it and asks her/his issues after having investigated by his/her own.
Junior knows what design patterns are and applies them, understands the basics of what MVC, REST, CRUD, ORM, SQL Injection, XSS, I / O Sanitization, etc. are, applies this knowdledge alogside other techniques; He/she is an excellent learner and uses third-party APIs.
Senior is capable of developing his/her own tools and APIs, is aware of how his/her domain language works internally, is highly interested in the performance of applications beyond its ease of development, he/she is not satisfied with the functioning and design of all third-party tools and APIs as they come, and always seeks to innovate and create things that improve performance, facilitate their work and the speed of their deliverables; contributes with code in different projects and communities.
Master is capable of developing his own extensions, gems or libraries, and optimizing them for his/her best use; contributes to Open Source projects and he/she is normally dedicated to improving the performance of high performance applications. Knows the domain language its origin and differences with others languages.
Core contributes to the development of the core of the domain language; contributes in some extensions, gems or libraries and public tools; He/she is a frequent speaker at international conferences and it is usual to see his/her name in the credits of changes of version of his domain language.
So ... What kind of programmer are you?
Many developers are called Senior after years of work, or experts in some framework or language when they only do tutorials; however, your work and contribution and how it affects other's people work (not only in your workplace) tells vastly what type of programmer you are.
Top comments (40)
By these definitions, I blur the line between Jr. and Senior right now.
You don't have to use "him/her" you can always just use they/them/their if you want to use genderless pronouns.
Thank you so much for that advise. 😀
Sorry, I know my reply was short and to the point but I did enjoy your post.
Don't worry about that. I learned something. I feel nervous when I write something in english.
You did fine. :-) Keep practicing and you'll get more comfortable!
By your chart, I'm apparently Senior level...which I sort of knew, but still blows my mind (imposter syndrome and all that).
Of course, this seems quite oriented towards web app development. Some of us don't ever need to know or care about REST, MVC, ORM, and the like, simply because we don't work with those databases or web development. Not to say that I don't have a conceptual understanding of these issues, but I have literally never had a need to use them in the wild. ;)
In the same way, I virtually never use third-party APIs, again because I don't work in any sector where that matters. The third-party designation is useful, but this goes way beyond APIs.
All that is to say, one should never bind general expertise designation to certain technologies. Someone can be a Core Developer in, say, High Performance Computing, and never once in their career need to care about audio codecs; by contrast, someone can be a Core Developer in multimedia playback, and never once in their career need to care about HPC.
Thus, allow me to suggest a revision to one part of your chart:
Thanks for your comment Jason
"Many developers are called Senior after years of work, or experts in some framework or language when they only do tutorials; however, your work and contribution and how it affects other's people work (not only in your workplace) tells vastly what type of programmer you are."
Agree with this note. I think the title of "Senior Developer" should consider not only years of work or education, but also knowledge, skill set, applicable projects worked on, and contribution to the community as a whole. Great article!
It seems like that scale has a very specific type of programmer in mind, given that 'master' seems to be better than 'senior' by virtue of working on open source projects, which is compounded by 'core' involving development on the language itself.
If I have to, or someone else, classify the kind of developer I am, I 'd love to be classified as how much contribute to the art. That's why I share this.
Thanks for comment
I understand that, and that’s an admirable goal to have.
It’s just that the way it’s put forward is like saying that there are 3 stages to people’s lives:
You (hypothetically) wanting to one day marry and have children is far different from the implication there that this is the specific path that people ‘ought’ to progress along. Some people prefer the single life, some people don’t don’t wish to marry (with or without wanting to have children), and some people people simply don’t want to have children.
Similarly, open source development and language or ecosystem development are praise-worthy endeavours, but they are not inherently linked with greater mastery or greater experience.
But as I said before: it is indeed an admirable goal.
I would agree, this seems very focused on coding, API and tool development, and open source contribution. But it misses other "soft" skills that I feel also contribute to the senior and master levels such as: Mentoring, leadership, planning, negotiating scope vs cost vs delivery time, and quality assurance. Although not strictly programming skills I would expect a senior developer to possess at least some of these.
But maybe it was your intent to place the focus of this on pure coding skills, which I think you have covered nicely.
I don't know what i am,i copy past code from internet but i know the basic of MVC, REST, CRUD, ORM, SQL Injection, XSS, I / O Sanitization...
And i know design patterns and i used them in some projects i worked on.
The main reason i copy past code is that i have bad memory, i easily forget what i wrote yesterday or in the morning
I'm not sure I fit into any of these definitions and i'm not sure what to do about it. I'm 41, married, 3 kids, and i've coded since I was 10. Between 10 and 18 I would consider myself a rookie. I made games and tools in Pascal, Basic and Assembler. After This I graduated to Apprentice but I didn't take my study beyond A level(I'm in the UK). When I left college I got a job in retail and spent the next 15 years in various retail jobs. During this time I taught myself OOP, C, C++, x86 assembler, dark basic, open gl, PHP, Asp, Asp.net(VB, not c#) and continued my learning until about 6 years ago when I decided to enter a competition called ModJam.
This competition challenged coders to build minecraft mod's in a weekend. I had never touched Java but REALLY wanted to create something so during the weekend in question I tasked myself with learning enough Java to create a minecraft mod. This was a very steep learning curve but it paid off. I created a mod that actually ranked. Fast forward a couple more years and I returned to Java to create several more mods. I was more confident now and spent a lot of time getting to know the language. I probably invested somewhere in the region of 500 hours in development and learning time. As of today those mods have had over 3 million downloads. I don't really get much for them but with a limited portfolio, they feature heavily in my job interviews.
Finally 2 years ago I went back to school and as of this year I now have a degree in computing. This would move me into the Junior position?
Now my problem is I have no focus in the technology I use. I've build wordpress sites. I've imported flat file databases from one application to another without knowing the internal format of the database. I've written the odd game here and there. I've modded minecraft. I've dabbled with Android Studio, I've got a raspberry pi running nginx set up to replicate live streams to 2 different platforms. I've build apps in electron and laravel. I've run an online shop with my wife. I've played with react and three.js.
I get phone calls from recruiters several times a week and they all ask me the same question. What level of developer am I. What am I worth, and if i'm completely honest. I have no idea. If I hang the imposter syndrome at the door then I feel like I could be a VERY good fit for the right company, but i've yet to find the right company.
If anyone has any suggestions i'm open to them.
I do agree with your classification, but I think it also depends on your maturity in the language. For example, I would say I'm a Senior PHP developer, but as I'm quite new to Go development and still learning every day, I would say I'm a Junior Gopher.
I'd say the jump from Junior to Senior would be not necessarily mastering all the basics mentioned but knowing them well enough, and the company problem well enough, to suggest and CREATE a solution (ie. your own apis, tools). I believe the proposal and creation of that solution might make you senior? (just a theory, thoughts?)
I currently fall near the Junior level it would seem, but I'm starting to get my feet under me in terms of the Senior level. This is definitely a great delineation between skill/knowledge levels, and of course adjustments have to be made depending on the industry and type of development you're doing. Fantastic article!
Almost at the end of the bridge between Apprentice and Junior. 😅
Same
Soft skills and English proficency (offshore jobs) are also taken into account when it comes into salary ranges.
Moreover, I'd add knowledge of Design Principles like the ones you find in books like Clean Code, Clean Architecture, etc. in the Senior level description. Perhaps you included them when mentioning "facilitate their work and the speed of their deliverables".
When it comes to "Senior" levels, there are people who are really obsessed with performance, they believe that every programmer should be a rock-star, making code changes that make a project diffcult to read and follow ("separation-of-concerns" no longer exists..., violating DRY an SOLID principles, etc. ). In fact, it becomes really difficult to work with them when it comes to negociate alternatives.
In my case, I'm not and will never be a Master, Core "type" of programmer and also lack some of the Senior "skills", as I don't have any interest in "contributing with code in different projects and communities." and yet I have a high salary because of skills my employer considers add value to their company.
I kind of get the Apprentice/Junior/Senior... Even if I agree it is too specific on the technologies.
But I don't get Master and Core. Working on an open source project, performnce optimization, the programming language... You can be part of the team doing that, provide valuable contribution and be an apprentice or junior. Actually many of the great things we actually use and all were designed by apprentices and juniors. Student not even having their diplima first. Why ? Not because they are super smart, they may very well be, but mainly because it is their assignment.
And quite often there a master or senior behind, you may not even see or know about. The professor maybe, or an experienced dev in the company, that guide and help the junior.
Where I work there junior and senior in every domain.
If I want to impress you I'll say I designed software for controlling spacecrafts, and that I did greatly improve a search engine widely used today worldwide that I designed processors, did quite some artificial intelligence stuff, before its current come back and all. And that also I did quite a few time performance optimization...
This is all true, but this doesn't mean I am kind of super human. I was not alone and the most crazy looking stuff I did when I was clearly a Junior ;) And my colleagues did it too. They are not super human neither. Or kind of master hidden in a cave.
As for conferences and all, it sound nice, it is. But after some time, you discover that many of the guys there, not all, they have to be great presenters, teachers. But they don't have to be master, they may be, or may be not.
A Junior is enough, and there many there too. Actually, if you spend most of your time going to conferences, you don't really have time to work on projects, make them live or improve on advanced topics. You often go on to teach and advertise hello worlds example or report what fantastic stuff your company/university whatever has done. I know people they do that most of their time. And that's okey. But they are not necessarily master. or super senior.
I'd like to add a "good engineer" between Jr. and Sr.
Good engineers know what they can do and cannot, easy/fun to work with, and are dependable that when they say "done", it means done well. When they have some problem or questions, they ask for some advice from more senior engineers.
I miss Test-Driven-Development, because this is what makes the difference between a Junior and a Senior.
You are so RIGHT!
By these definitions I'm junior level, yep I knew that but thanks for the article. It help to know where to go from there