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When looking at companies' job offers, it is common to see junior and senior positions which are clearly distinguished in their offers, each one with its respective requirements. In several cases the main difference is the number of years of professional experience, but in my opinion there are more factors rather than just the number of years (I know people with a couple years of experience who are more skilled than others with the double of years).

In general, what is the motivation of this distinction? When did this terminology started to be used? I know other professions that don't make this distinction, but it seems to be quite common in the IT industry.

A. Rodas
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    I refer you to: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14914/whats-the-difference-between-entry-level-jr-sr-developers/14972#14972 – HLGEM Apr 09 '13 at 20:57
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    motivation for this distinction is very well described in this fantastic answer: "Experience implies skill and judgement, skill does not imply experience or judgement... You can be highly skilled but lack the experience to know when to apply that skill..." – gnat Apr 10 '13 at 09:48

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The education system in North America where in 4 year programs the names for each level are Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors respectively. The idea is to differentiate those new from those that have developed proficiencies so that those new to the field could be seen as Freshmen or Freshers depending on one's cultural reference.

There can also be the use of Junior and Senior when it comes to someone being given the same name. For example, while my legal name would be John Brock King II, some places may want to refer to me as John King Jr. while my father would be John King Sr. as he had the name before I was born.

Junior / professional / senior categorization would be another question from Programmers.SE that may be useful to note here as another reference.

There are a couple of other systems that companies may use as a general point:

  1. Numeric levels - Some companies may have a Programmer I, Programmer II, Programmer III as ways to differentiate different skill levels rather than use the Junior, Intermediate, Senior terms.

  2. Terminology for each level - In this case, there could be a series of terms that cover the same thing in theory but within a specific company form a hierarchy where there could be programmer, developer, engineer, and architect that each represents its own level even though some people may see some of these terms as close to interchangeable.

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JB King
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  • Thanks, the second link in concrete is really useful. I thought this site could be appropiate for this question, but definitely it can fit better on Programmers.SE. – A. Rodas Apr 09 '13 at 21:55
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Every profession I have worked in has used some equivalent of these terms. They pretty much date back to the middle ages when you had apprentices, journeymen and Masters of a particular profession.

While they often seem to be deternmined by number of years, really the true distinction is in the difficulty level of the work you can assign and the abilty to work with more or less supervision.

HLGEM
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  • Thanks for your answer. My question was more focused not only on why did this terms appeared on IT (from your answer I understand it is just a common/historical categorization), but also if it is really relevant to the job description (maybe "looking for .NET architect with at least 8 years of proven experience" could be more accurate than just the use of the word senior). – A. Rodas Apr 09 '13 at 21:43
  • @A.Rodas - do you frequently see job postings indicating jr/sr without some other qualification like minimum experience? Most places have their own criteria. –  Apr 09 '13 at 21:54
  • @JeffO Yes, most of job offers I see emphasises primarily on the corresponding category, followed by the number of years of experience. However, I mostly search for job offers in Spanish IT companies, where job descriptions are sometimes quite vague. – A. Rodas Apr 09 '13 at 22:12
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While I can't speak to the origins of the terminology, it's motivation is apparent; Spending enough years at an endeavour, even with just a modicum of skill at it will result in ability that the skill alone would not confer.

  1. Force of Habit While time could serve to improve skill, the mere fact of having carried out a task (or group of related tasks) will inevitably result in your proficiency at it. Take any profession. Plumbing, wine-tasting. While you may not have grown in skill in 7 years at a plumber, you'd have stared at so many elbow pipes that you can give details about it that a rookie won't have, simply because he hasn't seen enough pipes.

    In the technology field, spending enough years with a piece of technology will inevitably result in you experiencing some corner case that would be unlikely for anyone else. You've implemented a framework so many times you've covered most of the gotchas and pitfalls.

  2. Lessons learnt Employers looking for experienced hands know what they're doing. When most of us are starting out, all we have is textbook experience. Anyone who's been in the field for a while will tell you that theory doesn't always translate well into practice. Mistakes will be made. Bugs will be introduced in stable codebases. You will UPDATE without a WHERE at least once. These are mistakes that your first employer or two will have to suffer.

    The employer that wants 5 years experience expects these mistakes of a newbie and won't want to be the one to take the hit. They expect that at 5 years, some other poor shop has paid the blood price of your goofs.

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