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We dont have lords, kings, and buffoons in our little Software Development World.
They might use more exotic terms too, depending on the creativity of your management.
These titles aim to describe your role in the company.
People holding these titles will share some common features.
Consultants should not do that though, but its another subject.
How do I know?
Im a Senior Developer: I know everything!
Dont expect to be enlightened though, they carry very basic information.
Typically, hell code using some good old CSS, HTML, and often JavaScript.
This can be a blessing, or a fatal curse.
Hell put together the gears and cogs of a software, if you will.
As a backend developer, I definitely respect that.
I dont care about cars, either.
A big corporation mostly controls what website youll see and consult.
Its name begins with a G. Can you spot it?
The web developer is often opposed to a more traditional kind of developer who develops desktop applications.
These applications are not executed by a resource-intensive surfing app but by an OS (Operating System).
Why somebody would do that?
Youll spend some time coding in some wonderful offices, of course.
Whats the point to be a software engineer instead of a developer?
Nobody agrees, because nobody really knows.
These roles can be mixed.
For example, a company might search a developer whos 70% code monkey and 30% lonely coder.
Youll be only there to follow blindly every decision taken by your superiors.
Your name will be engraved in a scary and strict organizational chart.
You have a software which will make everybody rich (except you, of course).
As a Code Monkey, you dont think.
These companies have often a pretty poor company culture.
Despite these ceremonies, the mindset of agile software development itself will be highly misunderstood.
you’re gonna wanna expect ahigh level of entropyregarding their projects, too.
They will then impose infinite death marches to eventually burnout everybody.
If you are a code monkey, follow Gandalfs precious advice: flee, you fool!
Then, the screen transition to black forever.
Loneliness stays till the end of time.
Hes the only developer on his project or, worst, in his company.
The life of the lonely coder is full of sadness.
Avoid this situation as much as it’s possible for you to.
In that case, the risks could be acceptable when the potential benefits have more weight.
We are all humans, we all do mistakes.
No way around that.
The ultimate coder
The Ultimate Coder is the best of the best.
He needs to know everything the other developers of the company know, plus the stuff nobody heard of.
Infinity is not enough to speak about his knowledge and skills.
I see many companies searching for the ultimate coder.
They are the Saint Graal in our industry.
The ultimate goal of many recruiters out there.
Do you think many companies need this crazy amount of knowledge?
Nop, not at all.
Very often, good-enough-code will serve companies better than more-than-perfect-software-which-will-be-still-shining-in-20-years-but-takes-two-years-to-have-two-functionalities.
There could be different reasons:
Its really common in the startup world.
Its even more dangerous if they sacrifice soft skills on the shrine of purely technical skills and knowledge.
As some studies found out (including the famous Rework from Google), individual skills dont really matter.
The team dynamic and the complementary skills of each member do.
Its called collective intelligence.
The ultimate developer is essentially a myth, anyway.
This title is often awarded to the developers who prepared the best for interviews.
The ultimate God
This is a funny variant of the ultimate coder.
Searching a fullstack developer can be a conventional way to be on the quest of the ultimate God.
Unfortunately, if the ultimate coder is a myth, the ultimate God is a scientific impossibility.
Runaway from this position, even if the salary is astronomical.
The fooled developer
Some companies are masters in the art of illusion.
Most of the time, they even succeed to fool themselves.
The fooled developer is the unfortunate programmer who thinks that hell work for a company with a good culture.
Sometimes, the management will honestly project their dreams on the company, blind to the actual reality.
It will make them passionate, convincing, and, accordingly, even more dangerous.
Being a fooled developer is never a good surprise.
Again, give a shot to find something better.
They are useful to understand problems and solve them using, most of the time, automation.
You know, what software is usually good at.
They have a whole array of soft skills they might have learned with their experience.
Design, customer care, UX are taken into consideration.
The valuable developer, ideally, might have as well some knowledge about the mindset necessary to work iteratively.
Hes not afraid of experimenting and going out of his comfort zone.
He likes metrics and studies to backup his ideas, avoiding the everybody-does-it and it-is-known-that-this-is-the-way-to-do-it arguments.
These titles will determine what position, in the companys hierarchy, you have as a software developer.
Often, nobody took time to drew the organizational chart, but it exists anyway.
The junior developer
Every developer has been called junior.
Youre Junior if you dont have enough years of experience in the software industry.
Youre the rookie, the newbie, the unskilled mistake-maker.
Therefore, youll be, in general, less useful, providing less value.
All of that stays pretty vague.
If you look a bit closer, you begin to see some flaws.
Its difficult to compare the level of knowledge and skills.
We mostly all learned differently our craft.
Every man is my superior in some way.
Consequently, a Junior Developer can be better, more productive than our 10 years veteran.
A Junior bringing a lot of value, but still not considered and paid as much as the others.
Thats another problem with this title: it will decide how many zeros your payslip will have.
Youll understand easily that many companies are eager to call everybody Junior.
I wont lie to you: this Junior concept is very strong in the common wisdom.
If you didnt understand yet, I dont like to use Junior as a title.
Youll wake up and youll hear a beautiful whispering in your ears.
The whispering will soon become the most beautiful symphony youll ever hear.
The music will be crystalline, flowing from the sky like the purest water would quench your thirst.
Youll be able to touch it, with all your senses.
The light around will intensify and envelop your soul, procuring an infinite feeling of joy and warmth.
It will be like millions of comfy pillows surrounding your whole being.
Fantastic Muses will give you all the knowledge you need and the self-confidence you lack.
You will be blessed by the Perfection: no error will ever spoil your code again.
Your software will become instantaneous masterpieces and commercial success.
Praise, glory, and fortune will always be on your side.
This is how youll become a Senior Developer.
At that point, you might decide that, yes, youre a senior.
In short: its random.
The Senior Developer should know a lot.
Theoretically, a Senior Developer is somebody who has a lot of experience and, therefore, whos skilled.
Practically, hes somebody who can prepare well fortwisted interviews.
These interviewers will claim thatif the Senior Developer doesnt know this or that, hes not a Senior developer.
As we saw above, everybody can have a very different set of skill and knowledge.
We use the title Senior Developer as an absolute state, even if its a relative one.
A team should thrive to have members with complementary skills, not clones.
Otherwise, your collective intelligence, as a team, will stagnate.
Is the candidate a Valuable Developer?
Thats what the interviewers should ask themselves.
Im sure you did.
Thats what I wanted to do when I was 8 years old.
Unfortunately, my mom destroyed my dreams long ago.
These are no real jobs!, she claimed.
Im a Ninja now!
I feel always embarrassed when people use them.
I need to remind you, however: were not 8 years old anymore.
Wrapping the titles up
What did we learn in this article?
Most titles are meaningless in a general context.
Titles can be used to describe your role, but as well your rank in a company.
Are you a Junior, a Senior, a Wizard?
I vote for a Fooled.
Otherwise, how can you add value to something which has no solid foundations?
you’ve got the option to then learn about the managers intentions and the company culture.
There are millions of companies out there, and many of them are interesting to work with.
You simply need to find them.
you could read the piecehere.
