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This kind of question doesn’t have a good answer. Many companies have a different interpretation of what “Senior” means. A senior software engineer at one company could be considered a junior dev at another. The levels that are attached to some like I, II, and III are even more arbitrary. So depending on what company this is, this can be anywhere from 0 years to 10 or more.
Agreed, for us it’s experience time, but if yo deserve it.
It took me 8 years to Senior. Then two as lead. 5 as EM. 5 as Director. And now I’m a VP.
Having said the above, every org is different. In the orgs I’ve been a part of 8 for senior is pretty good not exceptional. The bar was high, principal engineers were very rare, and the seniors were all excellent. But I’ve seen some acquired companies that basically place everything who isn’t bad into a senior dev role.
Agree with the above answers on variability, but around 5 years across different companies that were all startups.
3-4 for senior. I learned the product like the back of my hand, and spearheaded the migration from on-prem to Cloud. Now I’m working on large, far reaching projects, designing architecture and have been leading our team this year in dev tasks/strategy. My manager has mentioned his intent to make me a lead next year but we’ll see how the cards play out. I think it does depend on type of experience and complexity of issues you face to a degree.
I’m an outlier.
1 year as SWE (first job after college) to Lead SWE (Fortune 50)
1 year to Sr SWE/Principal (F50)
2 years to Director of R&D (F25)
3 years as Director (F25)
Total 7 years to get to current role VP of Software Engineering (F15)
I have 6 patents for the F50 company (2 solo and 4 with the team) which they’ve used to corner the market. They have no competitors for the product I developed. Annual revenue for the product alone $15B.
4 years from bootcamp to senior, but I had to seriously work crazy hours to get above the competition. My experience pre engineering definitely helped with Product challenges
Is it the number of years, or more the impact you can make?
Better yet... what qualities did you show you had, or did you gain to become a Senior Developer?
4 years to get to "senior", then 2 years to "lead", then 3 years to "senior lead". However this was all title inflation at my last company. I left to join big tech and would consider this "senior" role more challenging than "senior lead" in my previous role. All roles were IC. It's very much dependent on the company.
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2 years out of college working hard and learning on my own time. It helps if you switch jobs
Same here. Two years for me as well.
From my experience, I agree with previous messages that companies have they own definition of seniority.
IMO “time” is not the best component to think about this.
Technical knowledge is important: variety of experience and deep knowledge (specialist).
But other skills also help you get there faster: how well you can communicate technical problems to non technical people, how you speak and collaborate with your peers, ownership and on…
If you ask your managers what are the expectations for senior position within your company and work focus on it, it probably will get you there faster. 😉
2.5 years to Senior and 1 more to Principal. I’d say I’m more of an exception than the standard, at my company included.
Just out of college at my first job, it took me 5 years to move from associate, to intermediate, to senior I (they had two levels of senior). Then I changed employeers and was hired at the bottom at the new employer as a SWE L3 (it paid better so I didn't mind going back down the job ladder) and it look me 4 years to make it to SWE L5 (the job title being Senior SWE).
You can grow to senior fast if you push yourself outside of work to keep learning. Do your own projects; just self-learn. That in conjunction with work will push you to succeed.
I helped mentor a friend at two companies, and within 2.5 years, he became senior making 170+. But he worked his butt off, both at work and on his own time. And he pushed himself to obtain many certs.
About 3 years for me to be senior. And yes, some companies definition of senior changes. Sometimes senior comes with the amount of money you ask for.
Mostly, it comes down to the experience you have,. And again, if you push yourself outside of work, you will gain more experience fast.