Seniority and Soft Skills
"Seniority" is a pretty loaded term, which depends on the organization one is in, and what that organization wants to get out of it. After all, at Alice’s Software Factory there might be a bajillion gradations involving all possible combinations of [ junior, senior, systems, lead, principal, etc. ] and [ developer, engineer, analyst, architect, wizard, etc. ]. And additional combinations too — senior principal systems analyst wouldn’t be out of the question. If you ignore the labels, there is a much more basic question at hand here, and that involves the people attached to the titles. To wit, what allows people to climb up these ranks? Mind you, this is more abstract than just straight up software engineering — it’s about pretty much any field, and how you differentiate “seniority” in that field. Me, I tend to break this up at a very high level into a few basic categories, viz. Junior , Mid-Level , and Senior . The difference? I’m glad you asked! A Junior pe