Matheus Lima on what makes you senior:
But if you strip away the title, the salary, and the years of experience, there’s one core skill that separates senior+ engineers from everyone else: reducing ambiguity. Everything else flows from that.
Senior engineers look at the big, messy, abstract thing and start digging:
- They ask questions nobody else thought to ask.
- They separate what matters from noise.
- They identify what should be done now vs. what to punt.
It’s one of the reasons why senior engineers are worth their salaries. Not just because they write good code (which they often do!), but because they derisk projects.
