DEV Community

Arman Shojaei
Arman Shojaei

Posted on

Path to seniority

Hi friends, I have a big question in my head and it's about the seniority path in front-end development or software engineering...

I'm learning programming with HTML and CSS since 2015 and I guess it's two years now that I working as a mid-level front-end developer and UI designer. I've delivered over 5 big projects with Vuejs and Nuxtjs to companies and the customer I worked for...

But now, I think I'm stuck, learning new things is hard for me and I don't know what should I do to be a senior software engineer that companies want to work with!

Will you share your experience and suggestions, please?

Top comments (5)

Collapse
 
lexlohr profile image
Alex Lohr

Junior developers attempt to enable themselves to understand code. Having learned that, advanced developers create code that is easy to understand. Senior developers aim to enable their team to become more efficient. That's why you'll find it difficult to learn the right things that make you a senior developer, because it transcends mere coding skills.

Collapse
 
arishojaei profile image
Arman Shojaei • Edited

It started out very philosophical at first :)) but, WOW. such a good point, thanks Alex.
Can you add any suggestion?

Collapse
 
lexlohr profile image
Alex Lohr

It very much depends on your situation. It sounds like you are a full-stack freelancer. That makes it difficult to advance further, because you rarely have the time to specialize on a topic. But I think that's exactly what you'll need now: a topic that you not only know, but master. For example, learn Vue so deeply that you could rewrite it from scratch in an interview. Not learning the code by heart, but understanding the underlying concepts.

Collapse
 
aheisleycook profile image
privatecloudev

yep

Collapse
 
smeetsmeister profile image
Jelle Smeets

I might not be the right person to point you in any direction of what frontend framework or technologies you need to learn. But I can share my point of view on seniority.

On the subject of seniority, in my eyes, an overlooked part of it is the soft skill side. Are you able to make a team better you are in? Are you able to bring less experienced developers to a higher level? Being approachable and being able to explain things non-technically help as well.

In my current company, those soft skills helped me secure a promotion to senior developer, even though there were developers that were much more skilled in the hard skills, but lacked the soft skills.

Just my two cents on seniority. I hope it can help you on your journey.