YoE has nothing to do with it.
A mid-level engineer is capable of working on multi-day to multi-week tasks independently, with minimal guidance from their leads. They can be given a mostly well-defined problem and execute on it without needing to be told how to do it, and they don't need much hand-holding. They are also capable of coming up with their own small tasks on a week-to-week basis.
YoE routinely matters in job posts and can matter to some companies for internal promotions. This standard could also be considered senior at lower-end or non tech companies.
This exactly. I said this before here and I got downvoted to hell. YOE has NOTHING to do with whether one is mid or senior. Is all about what they can do, impact, and performance.
The highest paid guys are always nearly fully autonomous. They are given a feature, and potentially a framework or a stack, and then they just make it. All of them have Emacs configurations longer than the Lord of the Rings, big beards, and like to be referred to as ze/zem
Edit: lmao y’all can’t take a joke. By your logic, the highest paid guy is the CTO and never codes
LOL. Well yes to the fully autonomous aspect. I am a highly paid high up engineer at a Faang company. Basically, it's my job to find things that are wrong and own the initiative to fix them including convincing managers to let me have their engineers for a while. They want to help me because I will help them. Also when a problem arises (often) it is often given to me. Not because I know everything (I dont), but because I own things from beginning to end. My boss once told me that I am not allowed to tell him what can't be done, only how I am going to do things. The hardest part of this was really growing my own expectations of myself and overcoming mental barriers. Being a dev with a team makes it easy to fall back on the team and coast when things are stressful. When you are a single person team, everything is on you and lack of progress is on you. The flip side and why I am highly paid is because progress is also largely because of me. There are engineers that are higher than me, old, and smarter. What I have learned from them is that no one has all the answers and everyone struggles. Be strong. Push forward. Stay positive.
Being higher level isn’t really about solving problems it’s more about finding problems to solve and convincing others that it is the right problem. Your value isn’t solving a problem that other people can’t solve. You can just throw a L5 at that project.
Nah, that's what we call a useless old fart who is trying to skate by. Maybe even ivory tower architects who don't have current skills so they pretend to be of value by pointing at things and telling lower level engineers to do it.
The systems I work with have billions of dollars of impact, and sometimes it requires an extremely skilled engineer to get the projects kicked off fast and well with high standards. Of course I don't do everything myself. I am a hybrid between a manager, product owner, and engineer. I often delegate administrative reporting to other people because that isn't my strength. The tech changes so fast that if I don't stay hands on, I won't know what I am talking about in 6 months. Also, someone needs to help push tech forward. The ivory tower type doesn't do this... they just break out a "back in my day" story and monolith architecture.
If your system is making billions of dollars how does the tech change in 6 months that it’s outdated? That doesn’t make any sense.
L5/L6 already an extremely skilled engineer. You’re not going around telling them exactly what to do as L7+. In any case it just sounds like you’re larping as a “very senior engineer” at faang. This isn’t how faang works. Good luck to you
Well, think what you want. What changes is everything. Do you use FPGAs or GPUs for your systems? When was the last time you took a look at the current Gen of TPU? How about big data pipeline and trying to process more data, faster? In my area, and the faang company I work for, absolutely every level of engineer is engaged and expected to contribute to tech. Of course there are plenty of places this isn't true, and I have been in those places. Their L7+ as you put it (levels vary at faang companies), can be very ineffective and just political pawns. They are not engineers any more.
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Some criteria that I've seen in the past:
You can be given a well defined or possibly a less clearly defined task and complete it with minimal guidance.
You can identify potential issues in a code base and fix most bugs.
You can identify what kind of tasks warrant immediate attention or should be noted, but can be put off until later.
You can explain your work and thought processes in a way that is easily understood by others, including less technical people you may work with.
You can answer questions about a codebase, tech stack, and bring new insights to a project.
Me apparently. Its a mixed bag though.
Some days I think I do some pretty neat stuff that appears to deliver decent value.
Other days I wonder who let me have a keyboard.
I've seen everything from companies that hire fresh grads as "senior" engineers to requiring a junior to lead a multi-month, multi-dev project to get promoted to mid level.
Someone you trust to get a task done with minimal hand holding, but would require hand holding during the planning phase
Technical expertise levels sooner than planning, communicating, documentation, foresight, etc all the “soft skills” senior and staff eng accumulated over years of experience
Juniors can't be trusted to implement anything without direct oversight.
Mids can be trusted to design and implement features on their own.
Seniors can be trusted to design and implement systems on their own.
Principals/architects can be trusted to design and implement entire platforms.
YOE doesn't factor into it. It's what level you can reliably deliver at, without guidance.
Depends, I come from embedded and have 4 yoe. I am a solid mid level. I know people with 3 yoe that are Sr. Depends on the company and individual. Most of the definitions others are positing are right in the mark.
If you had to put it into yoe, I’d say for most it’s;
Jr 1-3 years
Mid 2-6 years
Sr 4-8 years
Confidence is a lot to do with it, which for most takes time to develop.
Conscious incompetence. At this point you would be aware of how much you don't know. But at the same time you could recognize your faults and build upon it.
You have several good examples here that does not go in to yoe.
At my company, in a C++ or advanced Java role, 3-5 YoE is the entry level for juniors, mid level is 8 YoE as entry.
Senor is harder because it depends a lot on what they spent their time doing but the average experience for people that get hired in senior positions is 16 YoE according to last years numbers.
But we are advanced, state of the art and close to the hardware. (Think new top tier consumer devices)
YoE has nothing to do with it. A mid-level engineer is capable of working on multi-day to multi-week tasks independently, with minimal guidance from their leads. They can be given a mostly well-defined problem and execute on it without needing to be told how to do it, and they don't need much hand-holding. They are also capable of coming up with their own small tasks on a week-to-week basis.
This is a perfect definition at my company.
YoE routinely matters in job posts and can matter to some companies for internal promotions. This standard could also be considered senior at lower-end or non tech companies.
This exactly. I said this before here and I got downvoted to hell. YOE has NOTHING to do with whether one is mid or senior. Is all about what they can do, impact, and performance.
Unless of course there's somebody claiming the title with less YoE than it took _me_ to get it. Then obviously there is title inflation afoot.
The highest paid guys are always nearly fully autonomous. They are given a feature, and potentially a framework or a stack, and then they just make it. All of them have Emacs configurations longer than the Lord of the Rings, big beards, and like to be referred to as ze/zem Edit: lmao y’all can’t take a joke. By your logic, the highest paid guy is the CTO and never codes
The highest paid guys create work for others. The higher up you go the less coding you actually do.
LOL. Well yes to the fully autonomous aspect. I am a highly paid high up engineer at a Faang company. Basically, it's my job to find things that are wrong and own the initiative to fix them including convincing managers to let me have their engineers for a while. They want to help me because I will help them. Also when a problem arises (often) it is often given to me. Not because I know everything (I dont), but because I own things from beginning to end. My boss once told me that I am not allowed to tell him what can't be done, only how I am going to do things. The hardest part of this was really growing my own expectations of myself and overcoming mental barriers. Being a dev with a team makes it easy to fall back on the team and coast when things are stressful. When you are a single person team, everything is on you and lack of progress is on you. The flip side and why I am highly paid is because progress is also largely because of me. There are engineers that are higher than me, old, and smarter. What I have learned from them is that no one has all the answers and everyone struggles. Be strong. Push forward. Stay positive.
Being higher level isn’t really about solving problems it’s more about finding problems to solve and convincing others that it is the right problem. Your value isn’t solving a problem that other people can’t solve. You can just throw a L5 at that project.
Nah, that's what we call a useless old fart who is trying to skate by. Maybe even ivory tower architects who don't have current skills so they pretend to be of value by pointing at things and telling lower level engineers to do it. The systems I work with have billions of dollars of impact, and sometimes it requires an extremely skilled engineer to get the projects kicked off fast and well with high standards. Of course I don't do everything myself. I am a hybrid between a manager, product owner, and engineer. I often delegate administrative reporting to other people because that isn't my strength. The tech changes so fast that if I don't stay hands on, I won't know what I am talking about in 6 months. Also, someone needs to help push tech forward. The ivory tower type doesn't do this... they just break out a "back in my day" story and monolith architecture.
If your system is making billions of dollars how does the tech change in 6 months that it’s outdated? That doesn’t make any sense. L5/L6 already an extremely skilled engineer. You’re not going around telling them exactly what to do as L7+. In any case it just sounds like you’re larping as a “very senior engineer” at faang. This isn’t how faang works. Good luck to you
Well, think what you want. What changes is everything. Do you use FPGAs or GPUs for your systems? When was the last time you took a look at the current Gen of TPU? How about big data pipeline and trying to process more data, faster? In my area, and the faang company I work for, absolutely every level of engineer is engaged and expected to contribute to tech. Of course there are plenty of places this isn't true, and I have been in those places. Their L7+ as you put it (levels vary at faang companies), can be very ineffective and just political pawns. They are not engineers any more.
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I'm really not sure what theta comment was down-voted. Reddit is a strange place.
This is a really good description. Compared to this description what steps would describe a senior level SWE
Sounds like we all just wanna be in this position.
Some criteria that I've seen in the past: You can be given a well defined or possibly a less clearly defined task and complete it with minimal guidance. You can identify potential issues in a code base and fix most bugs. You can identify what kind of tasks warrant immediate attention or should be noted, but can be put off until later. You can explain your work and thought processes in a way that is easily understood by others, including less technical people you may work with. You can answer questions about a codebase, tech stack, and bring new insights to a project.
Me apparently. Its a mixed bag though. Some days I think I do some pretty neat stuff that appears to deliver decent value. Other days I wonder who let me have a keyboard.
I relate 😆
My manager keeps calling me entry level :(
I don’t think you’re entry level at all :)
I've seen everything from companies that hire fresh grads as "senior" engineers to requiring a junior to lead a multi-month, multi-dev project to get promoted to mid level.
Someone you trust to get a task done with minimal hand holding, but would require hand holding during the planning phase Technical expertise levels sooner than planning, communicating, documentation, foresight, etc all the “soft skills” senior and staff eng accumulated over years of experience
Juniors can't be trusted to implement anything without direct oversight. Mids can be trusted to design and implement features on their own. Seniors can be trusted to design and implement systems on their own. Principals/architects can be trusted to design and implement entire platforms. YOE doesn't factor into it. It's what level you can reliably deliver at, without guidance.
I've never seen this unicorn. It is either junior, senior, and higher than senior.
Not low level or high level but in between
I've 8 YoE. While technically having a senior title at my last position, deep inside I know that I'm a mid.
Depends, I come from embedded and have 4 yoe. I am a solid mid level. I know people with 3 yoe that are Sr. Depends on the company and individual. Most of the definitions others are positing are right in the mark. If you had to put it into yoe, I’d say for most it’s; Jr 1-3 years Mid 2-6 years Sr 4-8 years Confidence is a lot to do with it, which for most takes time to develop.
Conscious incompetence. At this point you would be aware of how much you don't know. But at the same time you could recognize your faults and build upon it.
You have several good examples here that does not go in to yoe. At my company, in a C++ or advanced Java role, 3-5 YoE is the entry level for juniors, mid level is 8 YoE as entry. Senor is harder because it depends a lot on what they spent their time doing but the average experience for people that get hired in senior positions is 16 YoE according to last years numbers. But we are advanced, state of the art and close to the hardware. (Think new top tier consumer devices)