Photo by Beth Macdonald on Unsplash
You're asked to review and merge pull requests
Half your day will be writing comments in PRs.
Sometimes you get a call from someone to clarify a comment, it becomes a 45-minute session where you open 12 Chrome Tabs, MS Paint and start drawing boxes and arrows.
You're spending more time in meetings than programming
The other half of your day will be participating in meetings. Sometimes you wonder if it's even necessary that you're there. Then a PM has an idea for a new feature, and you're glad you were there to advise them about it before they ignored you.
You're bald
Your body has decided to drop your hair to keep your brain cooled to do all the processing it has to do on a daily basis. You've received a letter from the world's bald association asking you to join their monthly meetings.
You're asked for your opinion when the team is making design decisions
You spend years learning and working hard to become someone who other people look up to. Now you are that person. It means more meetings.
You get called in the middle of the day randomly to give your input or answer questions no one else knows
They say "It will be 2 minutes" in their message. It becomes a 30-min call.
You're writing more documentation than coding
There was a time when you didn't even think where those docs came from. They were there from the beginning. You never stopped to think who wrote that. Now it's on you.
You realize that no one teaches you how to write docs. Docs are one of the most important aspects of great codebases. Yet nobody really teaches you or prepares you to write good docs.
You still feel like a newbie
Your feeling of knowledge oscillates between "I know everything" and "I don't know shit"
You're asked to do presentations
Sometimes you think using Comic Sans is fun because it pisses off the designers.
You have a stash of memes from the internet to add to your presentations. You only do the presentation to show the memes.
You realize coding skills are not everything
Helping other teammates, devs or not. Sharing what you know. Trying to create a good environment for everyone to work in. Being a good person. Those things are more important than knowing how to implement an A* Algorithm
I'm sure I'm missing a lot of things. If you can come up with one please share in the comments ð
Top comments (32)
Also, you come up with more and more reasons not to code things (as a team). Junior Devs usually see every problem as an unwritten script or function, but Senior Devs will suggest a change in process or leveraging vendor tools instead of homegrown solutions. At the end of the day, the most secure, performant, and maintainable code is the code you never write.
It seems so counter intuitive! Maybe I'm just not ready for a senior * position
True, thanks for sharing :)
Also senior developer search of how to get date in javascript
I have a bookmark
I just grab my old date handling lib, gloss over it with the latest applicable standards, and drop it into
/utils, because I'm past convincing there might be a better native solution any time soon...I got very confused about the hair thing, fingers crossed for that ð.
The most important point I think is "You realize coding skills are not everything", especially because when we start we are so focused on the technical part and at the end of the day, we love it but yes, it's not everything especially within a team.
I believe it too. Technical skills become secondary with time.
I can relate with being asked to give input on how something is implemented. It always seems like it is going to be fast and then hours later you realize that you've been doing a deep dive into why something is constructed the way it is. Great Post ð
Thank you!
Almost all of them, except the Bald. I guess I am not a Senior already haha.
Btw, thanks for sharing ðð»
These are just signs you don't have to fit all of them. I still have hair too ð
Love to hear that ðð»
This post left me confused because I can relate to some and not to others! ð
Me too I still have hair
I am just afraid about the hair part, especially because my hair is starting to get like Vegetaâs hair shape
I'd worry if you get the letter from the world's bald association ðšâðŠ²
I guess I'm not a good senior software engineer (but I am)
I only fit maybe 2 criteria
Remember these are just signs not a list of criteria. I still have hair ðšâðŠ²
Also teaching Junior devs :) and write blogs like you hahahahaa
I always tell junior devs to write a blog so they solidify everything they learn. Teaching things and writing is a cheat-code for skyrocketing your career ð
More and more of we don't do this here ð