--- title: "How to tell if you're becoming a senior dev" description: "Annoyed as a developer? This is a good sign. It means you are getting more senior!" date: "2023-09-04T08:36:27.000Z" url: "https://timbenniks.dev/videos/tim/010-j7jsa49zqja" youtube_url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Jsa49ZQjA" playlist: "tim" image: "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/J7Jsa49ZQjA/maxresdefault.jpg" tags: ["developer-experience", "product-strategy", "career"] --- # How to tell if you're becoming a senior dev Annoyed as a developer? This is a good sign. It means you are getting more senior! Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Jsa49ZQjA ## Transcript let's talk about how you know that you're getting a bit more senior as a developer and then going from knowing that a little bit to actually becoming more senior so in this video I'm just gonna ramble on a little bit it's going to be just a monologue of me one take just talking about this thing that I've been you know it's in my mind a little bit because constantly in our careers as developers but maybe also as more managers OR tech leads we go through the same motions of becoming more senior and in this video I want to kind of just reflect on what I think seniority means in this sense and then what you can do once you know that how you actually get there generally and you probably know the same thing as well when you're a developer in your up and coming or even when you're a more senior at one point in time you start to get a little bit annoyed with what you see around you right you're coding something but you got it because there's like a ticket that you have to do and you don't really understand why it's that way because that way is better right you start to get a bit annoyed like why are these decisions being made and why don't I have time to actually do it correctly or why do they choose something that they know is not correct but they're still doing it and you get more annoyed over time in your project right you start to be like hey I don't want to do this anymore it kind of doesn't feel right but it's my job so I'll do the thing and then over time you notice that you get less annoyed right and so that's the thing that makes you more senior so you start to realize that around you things happen but you don't really know what these things are but you start to realize hey they're changing and that the noise meat upsets me why do I have to use angular and I cannot use few why are these decisions being made why do I have to do unit tests or all those little things even business decisions that you don't get from your customer you still have to do them and so what makes you more senior when you know you're in the stage of becoming more senior is you start to notice around you that things are happening that you don't really understand yet but they upset you and that is a really good thing don't worry about it that's actually great the one thing that you have to do is figure out why am I upset and based on this wine you can actually start doing a few things talk to others and figure out this why solve it and suddenly you're more senior and so the overarching story here is if you have more overview of what your disa what like what other disciplines do suddenly these things are not that annoying anymore because you have so much overview you actually understand what these other people do and because of that you actually now are like okay of course you made that business decision because all these things happen around that person and then it's less shitty for you that you have to do a certain thing of course you still might not like it but at least you're not upset as much because you've understood so overview or what I like to say helicopter view is really the way to get more senior the more overview you have of what you do or what others do the more senior you are the less annoyed you are and the more calm you can explain of why certain things shouldn't happen um just because right you can say just because because I'm a developer and I know or you can understand their situation go at it in their context and explain hey but this is what I know as a developer this is what you've chosen because of your business decisions or whatever why don't we do it that way and you find the middle ground it's only your calm the other person has understood and you go because imagine you're just upset but you don't know why they chose something you're just going to be like annoying to them they're never going to change right and so the whole thing is half overview so this works in the macro understand why your product owner chose a certain thing or your customer chose the CMS you hate understand their business implications right but it also works in a smaller sense imagine you have a bug and it's a really annoying thing somewhere and of course as a developer you will likely have an inkling it's this thing so let me just try and fix it but if you don't have overview over their whole code base you don't know why the thing is actually broken you can only make an assumption and it gets you annoyed again if you don't fix it right so what you do is you understand your code base you start taking layers off until you reach that issue and that gives you overview of that bug because you remove the things and you remove the things because you know what they do and the more you remove you'll find that it's actually probably a simple bug to fix and if you cannot find the book yet keep peeling layers or you see it happen change some things see okay this is really why and then move the layers back up and you're good to go so it happens in the macro and it happens in the micro and so you as a developer or a tag lead or something you will be annoyed and don't worry it's normal in everybody's career I've had this on multiple locations like right now I'm at a startup right and I've just worked for two and a half years at the startup the first one I've ever worked on and I wasn't annoyed at all I just just had to learn so much there was so much going on I just had to do my job and then at the end of these two and a half years I started to notice certain things I got annoyed but I didn't know why and now that I've done this a few times in my career I realize okay I don't have to be upset about the fact that I'm annoyed by something I just have to learn why and now I'm in a new startup and I see things happen and I realize ah that annoyance is not that bad it's just I didn't know there are certain Universal problems startups have that's fine nothing to be upset about and now when I see these things I can connect the fact that I was upset before and I'm upset again okay so this is a thing I have to do something with this and now I try to remain calm and just talk to people gain overview have a helicopter if you look down on what are the moving parts and why do they upset me and so just as a last piece because I'm just rambling on here the one thing you should probably that's a tool that can help you is just look at okay is the thing that annoys me in my Mastery in how good I am at something or is it in my autonomy is it something that I can choose myself or not or is it in my purpose is the goal that we're trying to reach not clear and if in one of those three something is not right figure out what that is talk to your boss or talk to your colleagues and just say hey this purpose thing something's off and generally when you talk to your boss and you are this reflective and you say hey in the overview part this annoyed me this I find out and it fits in the Mastery bucket generally when you're that good at explaining your problem they love this and they're like oh so you want to get some training or should we just talk to these and these people and you know what sometimes they may say I know man I cannot fix this but they will then provide you with more overview but I just wanted to give you this rambling Insight something I thought about this afternoon anyways I'm happy coding and feel free to reach out to me if you have any of these questions because I've been a manager Attack lead and a developer and a complete newbie in a startup and so I have this pretty rich history of dealing with these things and helping others deal with it so please reach out and chat alright bye