In IT industry we can see the range of job titles sometimes it is hard to distinguish exactly what people do. However commonly known roles are: Software Engineer, System Analyst, Business Analyst, Product Owner, Technical Support, Network Engineer, Project Manager, Software Tester etc. Out of all these roles, in this article I would like to highlight more on Programmers. Sometimes we can categorize programmers by Successful, famous, working, amateur and average based on their capability to deal with the situation and these levels are not serious though! Not every developer aspires to the same things in their career, but everyone should have answer to the one serious question. ‘What do you want to do with your life?’
Agile doesn’t emphasize on developer’s levels. Although, IT companies distinguish the software developer’s ladder into 3 steps – Junior, Middle and Senior. Industry define these positions to better understand the qualification, experience and salary level and responsibilities. Junior developers are inexperienced and just graduated and they have the mindset of software should be working by any means. They considered working Software and good Software as the same. Junior developers with certain years of experience can use their skills for mid-level specialist. And those are the most impactful numbers in any organizations. Mid-level developer should understand the functional programming and they should be able to implement those. And Senior developer have to thing outside the box not just in the coding skills but other analytical skills.
Also, Agile approach generally encourage pair work, less-skilled workers learn more quickly by doing real work, rather than only through training. This gives them the opportunity to improve sooner. Agile development Framework– scrum relies on its 3-pillers: Transparency, Inspect and Adapt. Transparency in every move of the software development, tasks and backlog movement is necessary to work on for cross functional team. Inspection in Scrum can be realized by scrum activities and all level developers should be accountable for their assigned tasks. Adaptation in a team should be continue process, it always embraces and Adapt changes, so that we can constantly improve. Adaptation means that we change what does not work or what could work better for us. Decisions are made based on observation and experimentation mostly by senior members in a team.
The difference between a junior, mid-level, and senior developer isn’t all about years of experience. It is safe to say that senior developers are more skilled than junior and mid-level developers. But knowledge is not the most important factor. Senior developers write easier code and come with a different mindset than junior developers. But it’s about more than just coding skills. Knowing what questions to ask and how to follow up on those questions is essential. And it is something that only the senior developer, with their wealth of experience, knows how to do in all situations.
At last I would like to say, to grow as a junior developer – you should focus on writing simple code and going through multiple development cycles. To get from a mid-level to senior developer you should focus on learning more than just fixing routine tasks. You should be willing to take the hardest tasks. Another responsibility of a senior developer is to be the fallback for less experienced developers.
