Growing from mid to senior

In my 12 years of working experience, conversations about growing from a mid-level employee to a senior are often vague and grey. Promotion criteria tend to go too much into detail about technical abilities, quality of work and achievements. I would not be surprised if there were attempts to quantify things by including hard metrics, such as number of successful projects or launches. Don’t get me wrong, those are definitely useful to a degree. What’s commonly neglected are crucial behavioural descriptors that guarantee success in the long run.

There are already a ton of career and growth frameworks out there. I’m not about to bore you with yet another framework. Instead, I’ll focus on a few low-noise signals that help you identify whether someone is performing at a senior level in my book. An admittedly limited book that has only seen the innards of bureaucratic organisations through the eyes of a designer and software engineer.

This discussion transcends job titles. We’re going to talk more about mindsets and behaviour rather than waste time nitpicking on arbitrary levels (e.g. IC3 → IC4). There are far too many factors that come into play concerning promotion. Even in the best of environments, your opportunities to be promoted to a ‘Senior’ level are limited by role availability and budget. Regardless of your performance.

A word of caution before we dive in: some of these things will sound familiar. Too familiar. And that’s dangerous. It will be tempting to gloss over or brush them away because you “already know”. Slow down, take a few steps back. Take some time to consider and reflect on these things.

Giving a shit

A senior takes ownership of problems beyond their “scope”. They take a stab at things outside of their direct control and sphere of influence. Meaning the risk of failure increases. As someone gets more senior, the type of problems they solve gradually progress in this fashion:

my own problems
  → other people's problems
    → problems _nobody_ wants to touch

Go outside

What I like about this framing is that it goes beyond technical skills. Being a senior is more than just being good at your craft and being able to mentor junior staff in it. It’s about sticking your neck out and helping people (apart from your own team) do their job better in any aspect—outside of your technical expertise.

When someone constantly steps out of their comfort zone and is still able to contribute value, it is a good sign of their seniority. You can help unblock your teammates who are stuck on a pipeline error even if you don’t know anything about DevOps. You could just take ownership of the problem, reach out to a DevOps engineer and see it through all the way to resolution. Even if their project has got nothing to do with you!

Navigating the org

Seniors have a firm grasp of a variety of levers they can pull to get things moving. They understand that different parties might have conflicting agendas, and are able to negotiate in a give-and-take. Like Neo in the Matrix, they pierce through complex bureaucracies. They perceive invisible incentive structures that drive action, and weave them together to create what we all love to call ‘win-win’ situations.

An implicit behavioural trait here is being a team player. Seniors are not selfish, and don’t just look at their own plate. They understand deeply that complex problems are never solved alone, and lean heavily on effective communication and collaboration to achieve success. That’s their motivation for venturing into unfamiliar territory. They share context and information readily within and without their team, and are generous with giving credit. They don’t stop at just handing over a deliverable. Their job doesn’t end the moment they ‘finish their part’.

Just one more

Initiative. Going the extra mile. Following through. That’s how it’s described sometimes. Too many people make the mistake of trying to frame this around tangible achievements: “John stayed up the entire night to fix a critical bug”, or “Jane volunteered to work with nasty stakeholders”.

Let me be clear: those contributions are great. But take care not to treat them like trophies. They are clear indicators of ‘giving a shit’ and ‘following through’, and would serve you well as evidence or ammunition for a promotion nomination. Personally, I find that incentives muddy the water. Relying solely on these make you blind to other opportunities for demonstrating seniority, because what if there’s not enough fires to put out?

The little things

What I look for instead is a consistent demonstration of a particular behaviour—what I call ‘just one more’—in the smallest, most trivial and mundane tasks. And often unrewarding too, like painting the back of the fence. Such as when you ask someone, “do you know what these acronyms stand for?”, and they go, “I don’t know, but I’ll go find out” instead of “I’m not sure, maybe you can check with so-and-so”. And not because their boss or a V.I.P asked—they would do it for anyone, for interns, even the janitor.

And guess what? They don’t stop there. They document it for posterity, building up the team’s shared knowledge base. They’d even further improve the page by asking around the department for more acronym definitions, beyond what you originally asked for.

Don’t just flag out problems

One key differentiator I use is someone who doesn’t just tell you what the problem is when they spot one. Very often, seniors would in the same breath or conversation start to give shape to a rough plan for immediate next steps. What other parties we could involve or avoid. What level of hierarchy we are dealing with. What information are we missing? And so on.

More experienced ones are even able to offer multiple framings or perspectives of the problem right there and then. Whether from a technical, business or people angle. Of course, this depends on already holding a ton of institutional knowledge in their head, which does require a certain amount of time to acquire.

That requisite time is why ‘years of experience’ is sometimes conflated with seniority. There’s an expectation that if you’ve worked long enough, these should come naturally to you. In my experience, not necessarily so. Seniors make their presence felt with actions, not credentials or past achievements. And surely not through loud posturing or vapid grandstanding. When we put all that we’ve discussed so far together, we see something of a multiplicative effect that they bring to the table.

Multiplier

With this final point, we’re starting to cross over into ’lead’ territory. What I’m proposing here are things you’ll see team leads do well. Like all levels, there’s always some overlap and I think it’s appropriate to discuss this here because it gives you a picture of what’s to come after senior level—strong leadership.

A senior is not just a fully-independent individual contributor. Perhaps this is more observable in larger teams. They influence team culture positively. They challenge the status quo and improve practices, processes and workflows. Seniors also help team members grow professionally through mentorship and coaching, even at the same level. Iron sharpeneth iron.

You can see them as some sort of baking mould or cast. A definitive shape that you’d like see other people modelling after. A sign that someone is senior is when you place them in a team and expect replication of a particular behaviour or outcome from other people. Things like improved code hygiene, attention to detail or sharper business acumen. Notice that they’re all intangible, like some sort of aura.

Permeating influence

Seniors have auras about them that provide a variety of benefits to the team. It could be a calming presence, an infectious optimism or a constant boost to morale. Sadly, morale is one of the most neglected aspects of performance because, well, work is work. You’re paid a salary, just do the job. Who cares about how you feel?

A durable positive morale is one of the best things money can’t buy, and is a surefire way to induce people putting in a 110% or more in their work. I’m not talking about one-off hype trains that you can throw money at like monetary bonuses, or a lavish celebration filled with good wine and dine. You and I know that those can’t even exit the halls of merrymaking.

A senior is able to exude qualities that influence others and raise morale if they have confidence. And confidence is developed under pressure, forged in fiery furnaces over a long period of time. They stem from an unwavering conviction born out of battle scars sprinkled with songs of victory. It emanates from their core, and is quite frankly a sight to behold. It could be as simple as seeing them bristle with excitement when faced with a new challenge. Or even just maintaining a stoic facial expression as they methodically dismantle and break down a complex problem as if it was a toy.

Conclusion

Giving a shit. Just one more. Multiplier. These are the few things I use for self-assessment and my own professional development. I’ve found them to be reliable markers of personal growth and a faithful guide in hiring, nurturing and developing people. I like that they’re qualitative rather than quantitative. Even if they feel a little too lofty and out of reach, they still serve their purpose well. They were never meant to be used as a strict yardstick.

Growing from a mid to a senior is not a 6-month journey. It requires great discomfort and a certain amount of experience overcoming challenges. It requires head space for regular reflections, and ability to keep your wits about you in the midst of challenges, distractions and firefighting. It’s easy to lose sight of your progress and growth in these areas because they’re not measurable at all. Bookmark this page or just save it somewhere you can revisit once in a while to see if you’ve grown.

Personally, it helps that I can observe these same traits in other people, just so I know I’m not smelling too much of my own farts. Leaders, seniors and friends whom I respect display these traits in their own ways. Just being cognizant of them makes my interactions with them more meaningful rather than just treating them like cogs in a machine. If you’re looking to grow professionally, you certainly don’t want to behave like a mindless robot no matter where you are.

I hope this rumination is helpful for you and provide some value; it turned out much longer than I initially expected. I would love to hear your thoughts if you’d ever like to reach out. My DMs and emails are open.

Addendum: Org dysfunction, role availability and opportunities

It is worth emphasising again that this article focuses on behaviours and mindsets, not job titles. If you are working in a fundamentally broken or dysfunctional company, most of what was presented here could very well make you burn out even faster.

Nonetheless, I’d like to also offer a word of comfort to those of you who are giving their all, and yet not receiving the recognition or reward you desire. Keep your chin up. The best and the brightest talent will still be left by the wayside simply because their bosses disliked them. For no good reason.

If you find yourself fitting the bill based on this article, take comfort in the fact that you have grown. Sometimes all you need to change is the environment, not yourself.