Career progression is something that most of us care very deeply about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of our childhood and adolescence is about progressing and improving, all with the aim of setting ourselves up for the future. When that future begins, it\u2019s natural to want to segment it with the same sorts of milestones and markers that were so rigidly laid out growing up. Sadly, once you leave the rigor of education, it can feel like you\u2019ve been jettisoned into a mess of meetings, deadlines, and endless comparisons to those around you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To counter this, we use titles like junior<\/em>, mid-level<\/em>, senior<\/em>, principal<\/em>, and staff<\/em> to denote where we are in our career and what\u2019s next for us. Each step comes with new expectations, new responsibilities, and more money, but, unless you are at a company with a well-defined career framework, you might be in the dark as to what exactly separates these levels. Is it merely technical skills, or are there other things involved that you need to work on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, let\u2019s get a good understanding of what a junior developer is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking to hire the best remote developers? Arc can help you:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u26a1\ufe0f Get instant candidate matches without searching Try Arc to hire top developers now \u2192<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The only expectations employers should have of a junior developer is that they are willing and able to learn<\/a> and have basic coding abilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A junior that comes in thinking they know it all and are the team\u2019s new rock star will either need to adjust their attitude or find themselves out of a job pretty quickly. Likewise, employers who think a junior can be dumped in the deep end from day one need to readjust their expectations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond this foundation here is the summary of what would make someone a junior developer:<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the above in mind, we can now start to extrapolate how someone goes from junior to mid. Let\u2019s break this down into three sections: technical skills, personal skills, and team skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read More<\/strong>: How To Use Thought Leadership To Level Up Your Developer Career<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where most juniors will want to focus their time and efforts given that writing code and building systems are the core activities of being a developer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Initially, your improvements will come through time spent writing code, making mistakes, and learning from more senior developers. How technically strong you are will depend on your route into the field, of course. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you wrote your first line of code when you were 12 and have coded daily ever since, there is a strong chance your skills are already into the mid or even senior level. However, if you are fresh off a boot camp and have less than a year at the keyboard under your fingertips, things will look very different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In both cases though, if you are in your first developer job, then there will be things to learn. I had been writing code for 12 years before I had my first full-time developer job. While I knew how to debug asynchronous race conditions and modify an Before moving on to being a mid-level developer, you should be able to fill most or all of this list of technical requirements:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read More<\/strong>: What’s the Difference Between a Lead Developer vs Senior Developer?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the first part of the set of skills often described as soft skills<\/em>, a term I really dislike, but one that we are stuck with. The reason I dislike calling them soft skills<\/em> is that it diminishes their importance by implying that the technical skills are \u201chard\u201d and therefore more valuable. In reality, these soft skills are the other side of the same coin and equally important to your career progression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You can write the best code in the world, but if the following skills are a shambles, it\u2019s unlikely you will be promoted in line with your abilities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read More<\/strong>: How to Network: a Guide for Remote Software Developers & Engineers<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n You could say that software is the largest thing we still make by hand. If code were made with physical materials, then a blog would be a house, a web app a town, and Facebook or Amazon a city or country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With this in mind, it\u2019s no surprise that the vast majority of software is written by teams rather than individuals. As a result, a lot of time and effort is spent coordinating the work of developers and helping them to be effective. A great developer is one who recognizes this and embraces methods and approaches for helping their team deliver faster, even at the expense of their own individual delivery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The skills you need to develop here are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read More<\/strong>: 5 Ways to Stand Out & Get Noticed in Your Current Development Job<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n You can also explore HireAI<\/a> to skip the line and:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u26a1\ufe0f Get instant candidate matches without searching <\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/a>Try HireAI and hire top developers now \u2192<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ve covered the main skill requirements that we believe differentiate a junior developer from a mid-level developer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, there is another side to this story, and that is how you use the terms junior<\/em> or mid-level<\/em>. It\u2019s all well and good laying out a dry list of requirements, but we need to consider the scenarios in which we care the most about them and how to confidently deploy them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some would say that you are a junior for a set number of years and then you are mid. But, as we have already discussed, someone with 10 years of solo coding might come in only needing to develop the technical aspects of working on a team and could do that in six months. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Others may have had a product or testing background previously, and, so really it\u2019s only the raw technical coding skills they need to develop. Do they really have to serve two years before they make that change? Of course not. Everyone progresses at their own speed. It\u2019s a balance between how you feel and how your employer perceives you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s look at some different perspectives so we can coordinate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cynically, we could argue that an employer would want to keep you pigeonholed as a junior for as long as possible. Juniors are cheap, after all! <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, if you realize you\u2019ve been held back for a year longer than necessary, you will understandably start looking for another employer who values your skills properly. It behooves your employer to make sure you are appropriately compensated and recognized for the value you bring to the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They invest in you over time, and as your skills grow so does the value of that investment. A good employer should be reviewing you against an internal framework on a regular basis to give you direction and keep you motivated. Ideally, you should be promoted when covering most of the requirements. If you need to cover all of them, they have left it too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read More<\/strong>: 10 Ways to Improve Leadership Skills (& Advance Your Developer Career)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Hiring a software developer is notoriously difficult. There is a vast array of technical concepts you need to know, and, as we go through this digital revolution, there is a huge demand for developers of all calibers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With that in mind, it is understandable that in times of plenty the market may take a different view on what is required to be called a mid-level developer. It might be simply that you have had one developer job, that you\u2019ve passed your probationary period with an employer, or that you went to a top-tier school or coding boot camp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another key component in the market is recruiters. Many see them as a bit of a necessary evil. However, I see them as an amazing ally for developers. They know the market much better than you, they speak to thousands of developers a year, and they communicate with hundreds of companies. Thus, they are well placed to determine your most accurate title. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Recruiters get paid based on a percentage of whatever salary you get offered. Meaning, it’s in their best interest to get you the highest salary possible<\/a>. If they can get you an offer as a mid-level developer with an annual salary of $85,000 rather than $60,000 as a junior, you can bet they\u2019ll represent you as a mid-level software developer!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, we need to consider how you perceive your abilities. Imposter syndrome is very real, especially in the early stages of your software engineering or development career, and you need to factor this in when reviewing yourself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n No one knows everything or is good at everything, but that doesn\u2019t mean you haven\u2019t left the realm of the junior developer. If you are confident writing code independently as part of a team and have examples to show that you meet many, or all, of the points above, then it doesn\u2019t matter how long you have been developing, for you are probably a mid-level developer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you are in any doubt, then speak to other developers who you consider to be around your skill level, those who you perceive as slightly ahead or slightly behind you. Ask them where they think you are and where they consider themselves to be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Frame the conversation as one about general career progression and how hard it is to benchmark. Keep things abstract if topics like this make you feel uncomfortable. If you reference the framework we’ve laid out here and use that as a starting point, you\u2019ll soon gain new insight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read More<\/strong>: Ready to Take On a Senior Role or Leadership Position as a Developer?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n To circle back to the start, we care about the differences between junior, mid-level, and senior developers because it denotes where we are in our career, how much we are paid, and the type of work and responsibility given to us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the early stages around the junior and mid interface, I wouldn\u2019t worry too much about accurately labeling yourself. You probably don\u2019t have the required experience to identify where you fall on the continuum, and, ultimately, the market is going to determine which roles it thinks you’re ready for based on your experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t lie on your resume! Give accurate answers to questions without inflating your abilities. Read all software developer job descriptions with a discerning eye on how you measure up, and you will soon find out where you are on the spectrum. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A junior developer is still a developer, after all. If someone asks why you don\u2019t have junior<\/em> prefixed on your LinkedIn headline or job title given your short work history, simply say the boundary is blurry and you’re open to conversations about roles at any appropriate level. Don\u2019t filter yourself out of roles, but rather let companies do that based on their own appraisal mechanisms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, we hope you found this post helpful! If you have any questions, feedback, or other advice for making the move from junior developer<\/em> to mid-level developer<\/em> in your title, leave us a comment below. Thanks for reading, and best of luck with your career progression!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read More<\/strong>: When You Can Call Yourself a \u201cSenior\u201d Software Developer<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n You can also explore HireAI<\/a> to skip the line and:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u26a1\ufe0f Get instant candidate matches without searching <\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/a>Try HireAI and hire top developers now \u2192<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Unlike most other words in your professional title, having “junior” in there highlights your inexperience. Here’s when you can remove it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":655,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career-growth"],"yoast_head":"\n
\u26a1\ufe0f Identify top applicants from our network of 350,000+
\u26a1\ufe0f Hire 4x faster with vetted candidates (qualified and interview-ready)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat is a Junior Developer?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Technical Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
.htaccess<\/code> file to get rid of .php<\/code>, I had no idea how to handle version control in a team or anything about DevOps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Personal Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Team Skills<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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\u26a1\ufe0f Hire 4x faster with vetted candidates (qualified and interview-ready)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nLeveling Up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The employer\u2019s perspective<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The market’s perspective<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Your perspective<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Summary<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u26a1\ufe0f Identify top applicants from our network of 350,000+ with no manual screening
\u26a1\ufe0f Hire 4x faster with vetted candidates (qualified and interview-ready)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n