Junior in place of Senior developer: what will happen?

If Junior took the place of a Senior developer without asking, then there will be a dismissal. So they cut off one scenario.

And now seriously. Many junior developers sleep and watch their careers skyrocket, quickly climbing the stairs of Junior Middle Senior Lead. But they are not always aware of their knowledge, skills and areas of responsibility. Let’s talk about what the average Junior programmer will face in the position of Senior programmer, so that the “younger ones” know exactly what to prepare for.

IN
what is the difference between Junior
And
Senior?

In terms of knowledge of the language and other theory, there may not be a difference between a junior and a senior. But practical skills, experience in applying their knowledge in solving various work tasks for juniors may be completely absent. Therefore, the junior is given a task and detailed explanations are given on how to do it. The results of the work of a junior are also checked by more experienced colleagues: a senior programmer or a team leader.

As a rule, the task goes through several iterations, during which June rewrites and improves his code. When a junior developer learns to work independently, he can apply for a transition to middles. The work of middle specialists no longer needs to be controlled, but they still need explanations on how to do this or that task.

The senior developer is well versed in his part of the project. He understands what needs to be done and why at the moment, sees mistakes and knows how to fix them. Unlike a junior, he knows how to communicate with colleagues, explain to them what, how and why to do in a project. In a word, the senior works at a high level of abstraction and sees the whole picture as a whole.

Zones
Responsibility Junior
And
Senior
developers

The task of a junior is to write code, and the tasks of a senior are everything else related to the implementation of the project. The senior helps colleagues and can manage the work of the unit. He must be able to solve all the tasks that arise for the team, choose approaches and understand how a particular stage of the project will be implemented.

As a rule, a junior is responsible for small parts of the functionality, and a senior can be responsible for the entire product.

What will June screw up, sitting in the Señor’s chair?

Due to lack of experience, June will screw up everything that can be screwed up. Just because he doesn’t know exactly where the holes are on the billiard table. Jun can’t write code on his own, he doesn’t know the project deeply, he can’t manage commands. Therefore, with equal probability, he will fail any sector of responsibility of a senior programmer.

The difference is in thinking and understanding how things work:

• Junior, rather, works on a local task, his/her knowledge often does not allow using the functionality that is in the project’s libraries.
• Junes often implement functionality with excessive code duplication, often choosing an inappropriate data structure. Interaction with other parts of the project or with other design decisions is difficult.
• Junior’s communication can be lame, as there is uncertainty about when and what to ask, in order not to show the incompleteness of their knowledge in some sense.

Junior is more focused on completing his tasks, often works on fixing defects, has little influence on the development of the project, and communicates more with other developers.

Senior, on the other hand, is able to independently perform tasks, helps less experienced employees, is able to analyze the problem and provide solutions with a detailed conclusion of the advantages and disadvantages of each of the solutions.

Before discussing the difference between positions, it is worth taking into account that the concept of “Senior” can vary greatly from company to company. If we are talking about a small company, where the standards and development requirements are at a low level, then, in fact, Junior can be in the position of Middle or even Senior. But if we are talking about a company of a different level, for example Yandex, then such precedents are not allowed there.

I had an experience when, after receiving a diploma and moving to Moscow, I got a job as a Senior, although before that I worked as a Junior. It happened because this company was an integrator and overstated the positions of developers in order to sell their services at a better price. Senior developers, in fact, were architect-level people.

The main differences between the positions

If we consider the issue at the level of the world market, the difference is significant. Junior is the same developer as Senior: this is not an intern, but a person who can do the same job, but with a different efficiency. He also does not have years of experience and answers to many questions, which is why he constantly needs to adjust his work and help him understand generally accepted practices.

Responsibilities of Junior and Senior programmers

The areas of responsibility of Junior and Senior differ much more than skills. Usually Senior solves architectural issues, takes over negotiations and decomposes, distributes work. Junior is engaged in the task and constant self-education.

What will happen to Jun in Senior’s place?

If we assume that Junior is in the Senior seat, then the effectiveness of the entire team will most likely drop, since communication and negotiations will not be as effective. Also intricate technical tasks are unlikely to be performed correctly, and this will entail problems. In general, such seat changes rarely occur, and if they do, they are supervised by senior colleagues.