If You Want to Be a Senior 5 Years Early, Do These 5 Things

How to become a senior software engineer?

Do you struggle with knowing how to become a senior?

I was like that once too!

Many of devs encounters with that in their career like you, like me. To handle this problem we need to understand what is the senior software engineer and what responsibilities he has to do?

Let’s find out together!

What is a seniority?

Seniority means you need to know expert knowledge to build a project. You have to know a lot of things about your expertise.

As an example if you are web developer you need to know html, css, bootstrap, tailwind also js and frames, how to deploy a website to server, configurations, domain services, website security and test.

Seniors’ main responsibility is taking ownership of bigger projects. They are the captain of a ship or commander of an army. They should know what you’re talking about and what you need to do.

How do I go from junior software engineer to senior?

Having advanced technical skills, a good understanding of the architecture of software, and being excellent in the management of projects allows a junior software engineer to grow into a senior one.

To achieve this, they should take on challenging projects, commit to continuous learning, and seek mentorship to expand their knowledge and expertise.

1. Understand The Role

It’s first step to become a senior. You need to understand what you want. Becoming senior is not just a title. You should know that after you become a senior, you have to work harder, you are responsible for your other teammates and you have to guide them.

As a senior software engineer, your task is not to write just clear and efficient code. You should broaden your views on projects and make sure the technical solutions help reach business goals.

You can write code like you invented it but this is not companies want. They need a leader to their engineer army.

I remember that I was struggling with a SQL query in my first web developer full time job. It was nearly 50 lines of code. I could not handle it. My dear master always was there to help me.

At that company, my master, my senior helped me a lot to improve myself. When ever I did not build code, he sat down my chair and taught me like he was born for this.

🪄So it’s just not coding it’s developing others.

2. Grasp The Key responsibilities

There are a lot of sentences to say. I just want make it clear to know for everyone who wants to become a senior.

• Design and architecture of solid software systems that are scalable, efficient, and aligned with business objectives
• Write clear, maintainable, and efficient code that follows best practices and industry standards.
• Managing the projects and leading, coordinating with respective departments in order to ensure on-time and within-budget delivery
• Mentoring junior engineers, guiding, and making sure the environment within a team is conducive to collaboration and inclusion
• Making strategic decisions on technology stacks and software development methodologies
• Ensure the security, stability, and scalability of software solutions. Conduct code reviews, enforce quality, and facilitate continuous improvement within the development lifecycle
• Conducting code reviews, enforcing quality standards, and integrating continuous improvement processes into the development lifecycle
• Keeping up with new technologies and trends in the industry to help innovate the organization

3. Learn As much As You Can

Yeah right! You already did not know that? You have to open learning new things everyday. The technology developing day by day. Our profession area is more complex than others.

I don’t mean we are more valuable but we need to stay updated all the time. You can learn with video tutorials, seminars, documentations or github repos. For me every morning I read a new github repo to learn something that I don’t know.

I usually look at new articles on Medium. There are amazing devs all around the world. Some one always ahead. You can learn from them.

1. Learn From School/On Your Own

I don’t know how your career started. Some of us attended to computer majors and some of us started when they were in high school. Both way are good for starting.

When you are in college you take classes about all programming types. The self-developer is working on main area that he wants. The 2 approaches have different advantages. While one has knowledge of every field, the other specializes in a single field.

We need these two types. What ever you are in, just keep learning.

2. Get Experience

Make projects as much as you can. It’s key of becoming master. Each project teaches you to solve a new problem that you did not encounter before.

I was in college. Most of my friends were obsessed with graduating. I already knew graduating wouldn’t solve my problem. I needed to learn how to code and deploy a project.

I was lucky to find my passion about programming. I was going to work as a web developer. Still I do. In first year I started to learn basics of web. I launched my personal website.

It was amazing. My friends did not care much but I knew it should be. After 3 years I was working for a company which is making web apps, crm systems and still I was not graduate. Some of them graduated and did not find first job because they did not learn coding.

🪄 So like I said before: Learn as much as you can!

3. Advertise To People

Let people know what you are doing and how you are doing. People forgets immediately. You need to remind yourself to them.

For example I launched my website and I still update it daily. I post an article on medium daily and spend time on social media daily.

🪄Let people know what you are doing!

4. Dive into Technical Skills

So far so good, right? In the internet there are tons of technical source to learn deeper. You have to know both code and why code and how to build development area.

You also understand how systems works. Because at some point you need to take forward your projects beyond the known world. If it weren’t so, everyone would be a senior, right?

1. Core programming languages

The core programming languages like java, c and python are should known for ever developer at least one of them. The known programming tools, programmes, web and software are built with them.

Take a deep look on them. Learn how does that work. Also programme an app. For example python is using every area of development. It has many libraries such as dJango, tensorflow and numpy.

They make easier to code and shortens the duration of coding.

2. Software development lifecycle

The software development lifecycle (SDLC) is the cost-effective and time-efficient process that development teams use to design and build high-quality software.

The goal of SDLC is to minimize project risks through forward planning so that software meets customer expectations during production and beyond.

It has some main princibles to follow:

• Requirement analysis
• Planning
• Software design such as architectural design
• Software development
• Testing
• Deployment

By learning SDLC, you will improve your ability to both improve yourself and master the process. Its use is inevitable for large projects.

3. Algorithms and data structures

It makes the system run faster and more reliable. It can also be called the foundation of computer science.

It was a course I took in college and had a hard time with. It’s a field that really needs to be learned.

They are used in virtually every software system, from operating systems to web applications:

• For managing large amounts of data, such as in a social network or a search engine.
• For scheduling tasks, to decide which task a computer should do first.

4. Documentation and code reviews

MAKE DOCUMENTATION! Please do it. We really need that. Yes you know how does code work but developer after you? He is not know anything about your code.

Jokes aside, large applications have hundreds of pages. If we do not create documentation for areas such as endpoints, back-end services, it will take a long time for a new developer to adapt to the process.

The code you wrote needs review all the time. I use github to review my code. Especially working with different branch helps me a lot. When you review your code, you find better solution most of the time. If you don’t, it’s mean you are goddamn genius.

5.Advanced problem-solving skills

You should approuch problems calmly. There always be bugs, system can crush anytime or like CrowdStrike example a newbie can commit a code that crushes app.

So you need to learn how to approuch problems and solve them. This makes you a really good leader for your team. Think about your memories.

Did any team lead get angry with you because you were slow or you did some mistakes? How did you feel?

So be polite to every one.

5. Code Even While You Sleep

I literally mean that. I work 8–10 a day until I become a senior. It took a lot of time for me. I was now thinking about code even when I wasn’t in front of a screen.

You must code every day because you are developer that want to be a senior. People should think about you knew more than them. Actually it should be. If you reallt don’t know nearly every thing about your major, how do you teach or guide them to code right?

Conclusion

In this article we talked about how to become a senior early. There are several methods but I tell you what I see. The key of succes is working hard at computer science.

You need to understand that firstly. Today and everyday I code at least 2 hours. The world is changing and coding will not same.

So what do we say: Stay connected, stay online.

See you on another article and Have a wonderful day!