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Do you want to be a senior?

Nowadays there's several programming languages for any purpose (web, analytics, cloud-computing, IA, ML, etc...), but even in this big 'era' where each week there's a millions of new ways to solve the same issue, there are several people fighting each other to defend his own way to solve the problem.

We all have this "hater" inside of us, we all like our own way to solve the problem (that's why we do it in first place), but why do we try to convince to other people that our way is the best way? Just because it has worked for us? i think this can be pretty selfish thinking

I have learned across all my (little) career that sharing knowledge is the best way how you can actually learn something.

I always thought that a Senior programmer was this mythical men, stackoverflow-less that always have a solution after been staring at the screen with pensive face for like 10 seconds, but now i understand the real importance (i mean besides of all the mythical-men stuff) of this valuable person: MENTORING

Help and let yourself help

All start from the bottom, we all miss the WHERE on the DELETE statement, we all make the same silly mistakes that the people you call "noob" is making now, and just because you understand them now, doesn't mean all the people will magically catch up.

Sometimes can be really annoying having someone right next to you asking you all about the project, but hey! if explain takes you some time, try understand, without any backup, a project that already has thousands of records and millions of lines of code?. Trust me, at the end of the day you'll get payoff with having someone that you can delegate work to

MENTORING === PATIENCE

Everything become easier when you understand it, but you need to be aware, and most important, never forget what it takes you to do it. Each time a person ask you something, is giving you his trust to help him to solve his misunderstanding, it's already shame enough for some people to ask, so there's no need to be rude when you're explaining something.

I know sometimes it can be really hard to be patient (i mean, at the end of the day you're a senior, it's obvious that you have really important things to do), but helping will always be worth it, and you must find a way (normally people can wait) to make this happen.

What is a Senior?

Besides all the normal task of a Senior Programmer, he/she must help younger people to increase their level

What make's a programmer, Senior?

• Years of Experience: NO!, i honestly think this is not longer a fair measurement to take in count, i've seen so many people with poor years of experience but a really deep knowledge about what they are doing and vice versa

• Solving real hard bugs: is really likely that someone already had the problem you are having now, so is just matter of dig a little bit more to find the solution, although this is a great ability

• Not use Google anymore: you have a great memory, but we are talking about knowledge here

• Really long beard: Hell no! although sometimes helps (visually 🤪)

It's all about Responsibility.

You need to understand that no one but you is responsible for your own actions, if you make a "quick fix" that introduce technical debt in your code, be responsible when you have to refactor it once you have 10,000 rows inserted on your db per day, the same when you don't explain how to setup the project to the new guy on the team, be responsible when he start to adding all the spaghetti code to the repo.

Once you start taking this with more seriousness, you'll be able to see what you are doing wrong.

Go for it!!

I know all of this might sound really disturbing and we didn't get into this to teach people, but this is a win-win situation, and it actually works, you can see it all everywhere, communities, workshops, etc... they all share the same philosophy: Share and Grow

So, do you still want to become a Senior?