The level of a developer is determined not only by many years of experience. Knowledge and the ability to apply it is what is really important for a developer. The situation when the Junior is older than the Middle or Senior is no exception to the rule. It all comes down to professional programming skills. This does not mean at all that the Senior should be an expert in everything and be able to solve any problem, but it is safe to say that his skills are much higher than those of the Middle and Junior.
But developers of different levels have much more differences than experience and knowledge. There are several other significant factors that help to see the difference. “Am I still a Junior or already a Middle?” - this article will help you understand exactly what the differences between the levels of developers are. And to begin with, I suggest that you take a closer look at these “3 Levels of the Developer”.
Junior Developers
To the specific question “What can you do?” Juniors often cannot give a direct answer. They do not quite understand all the terminology and often do not themselves know what they are capable of and what they are not. A case when it is not completely clear what a person can do in practice and how he applies this knowledge.
Juniors usually cannot explain things that they have not experienced in practice before. If a junior has already worked in some company, then most likely he can already solve problems of different levels, but the main question is how does he do it? Juniors often need the support of other more experienced colleagues to perform the most routine tasks, as they often know one or at most two solutions to the task assigned to them.
There is an opinion that juniors can do nothing and know almost nothing - this is not so. This stereotype is really hard to fight. Junior knows a lot of things, but he cannot always put them into practice due to lack of sufficient work experience. All juniors become Middles and even Seniors, you just need time and work experience, so everything is in your hands!
Middle Developers
A middle developer writes code well, generates a lot of options and knows how to choose the most optimal one from them. He understands the basic concepts and applies them well, knows the programming language in which he writes the code. Middle will easily tell you in your own words how a particular browser works, what tools it has and how to use them, how asynchrony works and other things from the language. Middle knows all the terminology, so it immediately understands what is written in technical articles.
If Junior can come up with only one or two solutions for a problem, then Middle has seen this problem several times, received feedback on it, solved it differently due to the stack, working environment, and other circumstances. Therefore, his soluti
When a developer from can explain abstract concepts and things, he can be considered a Middle Developer.
Senior Developer
If a specialist can move to another department and solve fundamentally different tasks without breaking anything or slowing down the development process, he can be considered a Senior Developer.
In fact, Junior, Middle and Senior are just titles that companies assign to their developers for their ability to solve their problems. That is, a Senior moving to another company or department can become a Middle if he does not cope with the tasks effectively enough.
Another very important difference is how Senior writes the code. If the Junior writes the code so that it just works, the Senior writes the code taking into account further support and scalability, because further, most likely, Junior and Middle developers will dig into his code. Brevity is the soul of wit.
From Junior to Middle, From Middle to Senior
The most important thing is to develop independence and autonomy. There are no universal tips here, you just need to solve problems, look for different ways and options for solving them, and also be able to turn to your colleagues for help at the right time if the need arises.
From Junior to Middle developer, the path is not so difficult and thorny, it can be completed in 6 months with intensive mentoring and diligence. However, in the position of Junior, people can linger for several years! It all depends on the company in which he works and his approach to doing work. To go from Junior to Senior you will need many years of practice, the ability to work with different frameworks and solve problems in several ways.
Important Tip: Becoming the go-to person for advice is the best indicator that you're becoming an experienced and in-demand developer.
Owlab wishes you career growth and never stop there!
