Is It Worth Becoming A Senior Developer? Pros And Cons w/ @TechRally

you know this is actually something i just something i've realized on my own and one thing i realized was that being a senior developer right they're all just because you're seeing a developer does not technically mean that you're a senior developer or just because you're a mid-level developer or ev right doesn't mean that you're not senior developer capable right it doesn't mean you can't be a cdeveloper or you're not as skilled as one yeah i don't know about you but when i was a junior developer thinking about i don't know if i'll ever make it to becoming a senior right in this industry i'm curious just from your point of view how was that journey from junior to senior because i'm about to get there i've never i never cared about titles and now it's just being thrown at me yeah what is your point of view in regards to that journey from junior to senior developer and so on i think titles are just titles they don't actually have a lot of value personally for me because technically at amazon i'm not a senior developer but at my last company i'm a senior developer right but i also make more money as a non-senior developer at amazon right so i think sometimes people have this like misconception that like oh if i'm a senior i'm gonna make a lot of money and so you know there are people that are companies that have said that oh we can't pay you more but we'll give you the title right just to make them feel a little bit better but what i really believe is that no one should gatekeep when a developer should go from junior to mid or mid to senior and they shouldn't gatekeep them based on number of years in the industry so what i'm i think that's super important like what hap what if you're able to just kill it for the first two years and you spend all the time just learning how to code while you're working and outside of work you're getting better you're doing open source all of this stuff just to make yourself better as a developer and you're like you might actually be better than people that have been in the industry for five six years that are just like slacking or not bothering to learn new technologies yeah that's super important right because technology keeps changing what do you think i mean react alone changed just react js alone yeah what react was five years ago is what it is today i mean i actually know quite a few people who went from being a developer for two years to getting their senior position after three and i actually thought that was kind of normal and so for me after hitting my five year mark i'm like dang i haven't i haven't been i haven't received a title senior developer but it never personally phased me when i think about that title i don't think people understand that i mean as a junior i never thought i could do what my senior developer did now i can do that and more does that make sense and so i remember thinking i will never reach that level maybe i'll never make it maybe i should just give up anyway since i'm going to be stuck as a junior my whole life yeah but did you why why did you think like that actually because don't you feel like you're getting better and better or is it just i just felt like i just think just this abyss now i'm very thankful for all the companies i worked with that first company they didn't train me in anything yeah it's just his work could do that or like here's what we need to be done you do that and there was no one mentoring me and how to i can actually advance in my career does that make sense yeah uh the company i work at now here in new relic there's people actually mentoring me like i wrote a technical blog and it sucked like crazy right i spent 50 hours trying to write that it was my first technical blog ever i remember writing that and then my boss was like you know what chris let's go meet um outside and what's gonna i'm gonna show you how you can better do this and you know what here the company will pay for uh courses on how to be better at writing technical blogs i can make videos i can make tutorials but blogs writing is another game it's another game yeah not just anyone can do that and it takes a lot of practice yeah and so yeah there was no one in my junior position or even my mid-level position that there was no one mentoring me yeah on how i can get better as a developer it was just his work do it and i think that's when i look back at those years if i really did have someone solely focused on helping me elevate my skill i'd be a much better developer today and i'm not blaming anyone that is that's on me yeah but i i that's when i think about that i think it's really important to choose the right company to work for you have no choice in your first job but your second job you do right i think it's a balance right because sometimes i like to talk or tell people that i work with that hey you have to take ownership of your own career no one's going to do it for you but at the same time if you're in a company that fosters growth and does the mentorship does the pair programming i think pair programming is so underrated but if you're able to just work with a senior developer pretty much like once or twice a week and you're looking at the same screen together and you're trying to do it and they kind of tell you why you may not be doing it correctly and all of that you're just kind of absorbing and stealing their knowledge right so it's a fine balance and it's up to you to decide like hey i just spent eight hours working do i want to do a little bit more and try to be better right and a lot of times i never say you should work more hours because you love the company you should work more hours to get better as yourself like as an individual right because that's a good point yeah i even bring this up where it's like if you have your year-end review and your boss is like well we can't give you any more money chris and you're like well i know how good i am i know i've killed it this year i know how many extra hours i put in afterwards and it's you're gonna tell yourself okay cool you're not gonna give me the extra ten thousand dollars that i expected like why are we 15 000 off and if they say that they can't do it then you go okay it's nothing personal but i'm gonna look for another job that's gonna pay me that money and i have the skills to prove it yep so why not why not just and at that point they have nothing else they can say right because you have the skills and you invested the extra time to do it so no dude that's that's so true it's so funny because when you talked about that that's how what i experienced in my first job i know how much effort i was putting into as a dream developer and getting better you know going from zero to not hero but zero to one zero better uh one and a half you know what i mean not to better i was paid forty five thousand dollars a year and for two years all i wanted was a five thousand dollar raise that extra two hundred dollars a month would have helped a ton at that time living in california but they never gave it they thought i wasn't worth it right and so my guard i was gonna look for a job after my second year i got that job an entrepreneur right and they paid me 70k a year which isn't that much more right uh it's still nice it's but in california it's still not that much yeah or in new york right it's not that much in any of those cities but yeah they didn't value me so they only wanted to give me a pro not promotion but a raise when i left yeah isn't that kind of ironic and funny it's it that's when i truly learned that you you have to treat your career like like a job basically like a business right and your company is not gonna willingly give you more money and yeah it's one of those things where i mean it's not all about money but your sk as long as you have the right skills the money will come right that's what i truly believe and you just have to have confidence in yourself and i think a lot of times like the the line between junior to mid to senior is a little bit of a like a facade because it's just like how confident are you in front of other people no for sure man uh no i agree hundred percent to be honest and everyone knows this but that's how you get the biggest pay increase is when you leave a company right almost every single time unless you finally i feel like that does tend to slow down when you hit the 200k range and you only start to get paid more if you go from let's say you become a i don't know principles or staff engineer or i mean go into the manager position but even then i personally feel like once you get paid as a manager isn't worth all that extra work you have to do for maybe you know 30 000 more yeah it just doesn't feel personally worth it to me right do you think uh the motivation to go from junior to mid or mid to senior uh for you at least what percentage of it was trying to get better and what percentage what percentage of it was wow i need to make more money because this life is not ideal still i mean of course you know we started off really low but yeah you're trying to spoil it you're trying to make life changing money right so like what was that motivation like for you now i didn't care about getting better as a developer i just got better natural just gradually working at the companies i was more focused on building a business on the side because and this is it i know that i could make more money outside of tech then i can interact i think for me personally i just wanted to be happier and i knew that having decide income is more satisfying because now like think of it like this from my point of view my boss i tell him i don't care about promotion i'm not going to work for promotion i will not make decisions at work so i can get promotion i'm going to work the way i do because i actually want to do the work and i enjoy what i do right why yeah if i if i save this company you'll give me what would it be a uh 15 000 raise just to get go from mid-level to senior position you know what i can just make one video a week and i can get that from youtube yeah exactly uh and i have less responsibilities at work and so that's the way i saw things i can make more than my senior developer because i have a mid-level position salary but my pay over that but what i mean my outside my what my side hustle income i'm technically making more than a principal engineer right wait like that's why yeah we'll pick combined and not that i think i'm better than anyone i just that's just the way i think because i keep thinking you know i don't want to work just to please someone i want to work because i love what i do yeah that makes sense yeah yeah and then it's it's it's kind of like a fine balance right because i always i kind of talked about what you have to love coding in one of my older videos because it's something that you're going to be constantly doing for like eight hours a day some people don't i don't understand how much time and investment problem solving eight hours a day it's not just writing you're not just typing a keyboard it's like imagine this you're solving math problems eight hours a day it feels just like that yeah

Channel: Chris Sean

Views: 5,845

Rating: 4.841897 out of 5

Keywords: learn, code, life, of, web, developer, html, css, javascript, query, js, php, angular, programmer, software, frontend, backend, front, back, programming, job, hired, junior, jr

Id: hc8JcA_aySs

Length: 10min 14sec (614 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 08 2021