The Senior Impostors 🎭. How to identify and deal with them

What are Senior Impostors?

I've been working with systems development for 7 years, focusing on web development with ASP.NET Core. I've participated in projects that used almost all versions of .NET and I currently I work as a Senior Software Engineer.

In these 7 years I've been able to go through several projects and development teams and something that has caught my attention is what I call Senior Imposters.

I believe that the terms Senior, Junior, Trainee, Mid level etc... are very useful to identify a professional's level of experience, the problem is: What validates that a professional is in fact a "Senior"?

What companies seem to take into consideration most for a professional to occupy a senior position is the length of experience he has, and that is exactly where the problem lies.

Despite the global crisis, especially in large technology companies, the demand for programmers remains high, and often for different reasons, many programmers with little knowledge, but with a lot of experience, have taken on high-ranking positions such as Seniors and Specialists, at least that's what I've noticed, and the result is something, to say the least, worrying.

Many times I've talked with Seniors who didn't know the difference between asynchronous and synchronous methods. This is a basic subject within the backend, especially when it comes to web systems where communication between web APIs can become unfeasible if they are done synchronously, imagine this senior helping juniors, mid-levels or trainees?

Giving bad advice and creating more problematic code? And if you think bad code isn't that bad, I suggest you read Martin Fowler's Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code to see how bad code can be detrimental to all parties involved in a development team.

Another problem is that professionals who dedicate a good part of their free time to the study of the technologies in which they specialize often do not get a good salary and a good position because they simply do not have “the experience of a veteran”.

For me this is very unfair, senior developers should pass a rigorous knowledge test to deserve the vacancy, it is simply unacceptable that senior professionals do not know basic subjects in their area of expertise.

How to spot a Senior Imposter?

It is important to know how to identify a Senior Imposter, as this can help you avoid several problems within the team and often even prevent you from wanting to leave your job or being involuntarily fired.

A very clear sign of an Imposter Senior is their ability to talk, most of them can talk for an hour on a subject but if you write down what he said and do a little research you will realize that most of the things he said are false, he just managed to escape the correct answer by saying fancy words and jargon.

Another sign when it comes to speech, is that in definition meetings such as planning and refinements, he is always questioning things, but normally these questions are shallow, such as, for example, Why use the X framework if the Y is better? Of course, questions are welcome in meetings of this type, but weird questions just waste time and start unnecessary discussions.

But for the Senior Imposter, it's important to ask questions even if they're inane, because that way he gives the image that he's someone who knows enough about the subject to ask questions.

Finally, the definitive sign is the bad code he writes, obviously we are not machines and we don't know everything, our learning is continuous and eternal, but as I said before, a senior must know how to write clean code, he must understand about good practices , if he wrote a dirty code it's because he doesn't know how to write a good code.

If by chance he doesn't write code and is just guiding the team, you can pay attention to the advice he gives, always accept it but question whether it's correct.

What to do if you work with a Senior Imposter?

1. Continue to obey Senior Imposter's advice. Even knowing he's wrong, keep doing your work without causing any kind of friction, that's a principle of the agile manifesto.

2. Do not make any kind of accusation, just observe and if you conclude that your suspicion is correct, you can report the case to your superior, always using respect, without using any kind of pejorative term or offense.

Remember to gather all the evidence to support your argument and always try to dialogue with patience. It is very likely that your superior understands the situation and can, as a solution, offer improvement courses for the Senior, so you will be helping him and his entire team.

If you consider yourself a senior imposter

If you consider yourself one, congratulations, you've already taken the first step, which is to recognize that you need to evolve as a professional, we all need to evolve.

Then, consider it urgent to improve your knowledge, take specialized courses in the technologies you work with most.

Read books that talk about Clean Code, SOLID, Design Patterns, best practices and career development as a developer, such as "Becoming a Better Programmer: A Handbook for People Who Care About Code", by Pete Goodelife.

Over time, you will become a great professional, worthy of the title you carry and leave a good legacy to follow.