I believe I meet your two definitions, but probably not that of the guy you responded to.
I mean I CAN write tests, and I have on a some particular projects, but it was the exception, not the rule.
I'm not trying to ruffle any feathers--I'm not anti-testing or anything. I just never worked somewhere it was part of the culture. Just small shops getting stuff done.
Anyway I don't feel particularly knowledgeable about testing. I encountered a lot of situations (in web dev) where I didn't know how to mock responses and stuff like that, and couldn't get coverage in some spots.
But I debugged complex bugs in foreign systems a lot. I was the go-to guy at one shop for that. Full stack dev, and solo for most of them, so I got to design and implement my own solutions. Discover my own complexity, debug my own bugs. I think I've probably built, and at least temporarily maintained, at least 15-20 rails apps, and there's countless non-rails apps. Many of them are still up ~5-10 years later, just how I built them.
23 years coding, per the author of this piece, but only 5 years of getting paid for it. A generalist in the web world, but little experience outside of web.
Anyway, all that to say, I have no idea if I'm senior or not. I've never been called it. The metrics are not clear (or consistent) and I feel like maybe it's impostor syndrome to NOT call myself senior, but maybe I'm actually not. I don't know!
This also may be partially due to being self-taught. I have gaps in my knowledge that just reflect my own experience, rather than that of a curriculum.
I'll report back if I ever get more professional experience.
I’ve got 15 years paid experience. I’ve never worked on a single project that had significant unit tests. But I’ve mostly worked in 3D games where unit tests are exceedingly difficult for anything beyond utility libraries.
There’s no standard definition of “senior”. Hell, most companies internally don’t even have a clear definition!
At a lot of places you can reach “senior” in just 3 to 5 years. Suffice to say not all seniors are equivalent. And that’s fine. All titles are arbitrary and made up.
I mean I CAN write tests, and I have on a some particular projects, but it was the exception, not the rule.
I'm not trying to ruffle any feathers--I'm not anti-testing or anything. I just never worked somewhere it was part of the culture. Just small shops getting stuff done.
Anyway I don't feel particularly knowledgeable about testing. I encountered a lot of situations (in web dev) where I didn't know how to mock responses and stuff like that, and couldn't get coverage in some spots.
But I debugged complex bugs in foreign systems a lot. I was the go-to guy at one shop for that. Full stack dev, and solo for most of them, so I got to design and implement my own solutions. Discover my own complexity, debug my own bugs. I think I've probably built, and at least temporarily maintained, at least 15-20 rails apps, and there's countless non-rails apps. Many of them are still up ~5-10 years later, just how I built them.
23 years coding, per the author of this piece, but only 5 years of getting paid for it. A generalist in the web world, but little experience outside of web.
Anyway, all that to say, I have no idea if I'm senior or not. I've never been called it. The metrics are not clear (or consistent) and I feel like maybe it's impostor syndrome to NOT call myself senior, but maybe I'm actually not. I don't know!
This also may be partially due to being self-taught. I have gaps in my knowledge that just reflect my own experience, rather than that of a curriculum.
I'll report back if I ever get more professional experience.