Let me give you an example. A common complaint on this forum is from new developers who say, "The codebase is a mess. The comments are all lies. There's no unit testing. There are no code reviews. There's no documentation. My coworkers don't care." Etc. You know the complaints, this sub is full of them every day. A senior comes in on day one and deals with it all. No unit tests? Write some, then document the unit test tools and methodology on the corporate wiki. No corporate wiki? The senior starts one. Codebase a mess? Never saw one that wasn't. Coworkers not committed, not very bright, don't care about anything? Normal. Ignore them. In other words what the juniors think are reasons to quit, the seniors see as problems to be fixed or worked around, because every company has those problems. More on reddit.com

It's been my experience that the more senior you become, the importance of raw technical ability at the micro level begins to taper off and your ability to communicate/mentor/coordinate/influence/evangelize with your junior devs, execs, architects, and other teams takes priority. Functional understanding of both the depth and breadth of your LOB/orgs current and future technology stack (and current pain points) and how they currently/should/could interact is more important at senior+ levels IMHO. As a newly-minted lead engineer, I've [begrudgingly] begun to delegate development tasks to my junior devs, regardless of how much I love to just code all day. Most of my time nowadays are relegated to meetings with architecture/project team/management/vendors, system design/architecture, feature/story writing, technical writing/diagramming, and POC/experimentation (this is usually where I can get my coding fix). More on reddit.com

What is expected of a senior software engineer will vary on a company by company basis. Most commonly the requirements I've seen for senior software engineers includes the ability to: Mentor less experienced software engineers Break down the technical requirements of entire blocks of work, or entire projects, to help distribute that work across other engineers and/or milestones Regularly review and offer solid feedback on code written by other software engineers, including those that are more experienced than them, to help deliver a more polished and secure feature Clearly communicate between stakeholders (product, ux, etc) during planning and development of a feature Be able to own and/or maintain an entire feature on their own Be able to maintain a level of calm when things inevitably go wrong (a bug is introduced, a deadline is missed, etc) If you think you have a firm grasp of the above, I'd say interview up and find a senior software engineer gig elsewhere. It's a red flag that your own company isn't offering you a clear career path for this, nor providing you a career manager who can help you go down that path. You owe it to yourself to find better, and remember to ask about how career pathing is handled during interviews at prospective companies. More on reddit.com

I would not look at the YEARS. These are rules of thumb used by recruiters who (mostly) don't know what they are talking about. They will ask you to do bubble sort programming exercises and other nonsensical tasks to prove your ability - they largely have zero idea about project management; bruh react / vue / ember 10 years of experience in back stack and front stack Rails; JS experience required. People asked about Ecmascript. No, I want JS. SQL highly regarded: MYSQL and NodeJSQL devops min 7 years. bootstrap, tailwind, svg, inline css, tailinwid css, postcss, nodeJS, Please specify your current title and FAANG manager in the header of your email. These recruiters do not know half the stuff they are writing about, many are too lazy to find out. But i digress: The key is to make money for your employer. Identify problems, and solve them as efficiently as possible. The yardstick is money. More on reddit.com