Why is senior dev title given so easily nowadays? If the average career is 30 years, I would think a senior dev would be someone with 15 to 20 plus years of experience.

A person at my work was just given the title and they've been out of school for 7 years. For the record, I've been out of school for 5 years and I'd say I'm in between beginner and mid level. The title has nothing to do with skill, just the knowledge that comes with working in a field for a long time.

The title is due to amount of responsibility a developer has. Thinking it's about age is tad retarded.

Unfortunately I have met a few developers with 20-40 years of experience who I wouldn't trust to do a basic task because they do a shit job. I have met 1 or 2 that are extremely good.

I have also met people with 3-10 that are very good. I have met people with 5-10 that I wonder wtf they did to get through the interview.

I've met 0-3. They mostly all can't design a solution.

If someone learns how to do something the wrong way, then does it like that for 20 years, they are not a senior developer.

I've been out of uni for less than 5 years and I'm working as lead architect and agile consultant for a number of .net projects.

Although I don't rate myself highly in some areas, in others I do. I have a good head for patterns, work on a lot of side projects, read documentation thoroughly and read tech books every other day for years now. I don't know if I'm a proper senior developer, but in the small companies I've worked in I definitely am.

@craig939393 definitely everything you said is true. But if a 20 year dev is incompetent, its should show up in the interview process. Unless the interview process is lacking. I'm more thinking they have experience with things that just takes time in the industry to get. In 20 years, a competent developer has: dealt with a wide variety of solutions, different types of customers, failures and reflected on why it went poorly, etc. All those just take time and more time.

It just seems like more and more young developers want to upgrade their title quickly so they can get the higher paying senior level jobs. Which I understand, just seems the term senior should be changed to something else.