Why do some devs never outgrow the junior level?

[@JoshIbbotson]

So essentially 1. They stay in the comfort zone 2. They don't consider long term career 3. They don't go deep on understanding the tech they work with

[@saiuan4562]

There is a big difference between 10 years of experience and 1 year of experience 10x times.

[@Qyn06]

This is a great reason to hop jobs or at least projects. You really don't know your own level until you've been around the block. And even then, titles are more akin to rough guidelines. I've met "software architects" whose job consisted mainly of project management and their coding skills were at a junior/low-mid level. I've subcontracted as a "senior developer" in a project for two years, yet I wrote only a couple hundred lines of code during my whole tenure and ended up doing a buch of stuff related to architecting and technical management.

[@FredrikChristenson]

I agree. A bit of variety in roles is one of the most effective ways to get a real understanding of how the industry works and what the common skills are. By far the best way to gain "true seniority" imo.

[@seigneurdesbouseux6603]

The main issue is companies wanting people to master everything but are not willing to pay more in exchange, or to recrut more developers. This leads to ridiculous leetcode exercises, real time tests wanting you to learn all java syntax by hearth, unreal deadlines and so much work overload for understaffed teams. We need distinct roles to keep the workload doable, for instance that's why so many lead developer's burnout, as they are torn apart between management and code, they don't really perform in any of those because they can't focus. The most healthy way is to have an idea how everything works but you should not have to master everything as we need to keep distinct roles for the grand majority of jobs. So that If a developer's want to improve, master every layer of his work, from the first line of code, to teamwork and production maintenance he should have a fair salary and a company that understands that he can't be everywhere all the time. For instance we should not expect from a front end developer to master devOps and UNIX systems, because at the end only the companies win.

[@ArturdeSousaRocha]

Conversely, the industry's level of requirements is a way towards cognitive overload. DevOps used to be a dedicated role for historical reasons but it was a good thing because it requires a different mindset. So the industry is pushing towards the "jack of all trades, master of none" situation.

[@Dextrostat]

I wouldn't call it Jack of all trades, more 'Master of everything unicorn' that companies want. I feel like Jack of all trades kind of developers are at a significant disadvantage than specialists.

[@DamnedVik]

Moved to another country not long ago, and I was shocked at the amount of middle and even senior "developers" whose coding skills would be considered junior or even intern-level in my country. Had people with 4-5 years of experience who don't know what a hash map is, or wasn't even aware that such a data structure exists. For me, and most of my friends, the inner workings of the hash map was one of the first questions to even get a job as a junior dev. Also had people with ~11 years of experience who regularly make the most stupid mistakes you can imagine. Almost every PR from them has a couple of hundred comments pointing out bugs in their implementation or guiding them how to simplify a lot of their code. I'm not saying that my country has the best developers, but I never saw that many bad developers

[@aRazvan994]

Hi, do you mind sharing the countries in question, please? Sounds awfully interesting from a social perspective. Also, is this your first job in the new country, maybe you were a bit unlucky with the company you joined. Cheers

[@DamnedVik]

​@@aRazvan994 I moved to Japan. Original country, I think, is not that important. And unlike popular belief, Japanese write quite good code. It might be not the most optimal, but at least it's working, and usually without any bugs. The issue is other foreigners. I admit that the hiring process in the company is quite broken - they hire almost everyone who can speak English. But I talked with some people from my home country who also work at the same company, and looks like the situation is basically the same in all departments - people with multiple years of experience who can't do anything.

[@roko567]

​@@DamnedVikwhats the original country?

[@aRazvan994]

@@DamnedVik I see, thanks a lot for the reply and I hope you get better luck soon!

[@Ceaser-r5t]

@@roko567 may be Germany.

[@khashe]

Have you ever had a situation where the environment you're in is too fast-paced that you can't learn properly? This might sound weird. I would expect being a high pace environment would improve my skills, however it just highlighted my slowness. I am under constant pressure of estimates that most of solutions in code seem like a bandaid, shitty fix. It's just a constant, non-stop sea of issues and tickets that need resolving at all times.

[@bjul]

Hi Fredrik, why have the uploads to Spotify stopped? Sorry if this has been answered before, I usually listen through Spotify. Thanks for all your knowledge sharing, really appreciate your insights and perspective on things.