Clayton Lengel‑Zigich: Welcome to another episode of the “Agile Weekly Podcast”, I’m Clayton Lengel‑Zigich.

Jade Meskill: I’m Jade Meskill.

Roy vandeWater: I’m Roy vandeWater.

Clayton: Joining us today is David Foster. Say, “Hi, David.”

David Foster: Hi.

Jade: No, say, “Hi David.”

Roy: Hi, David.

Clayton: All right, good job.

[laughter]

What It Means To Be A Senior Developer From A Manager’s Point Of View

Clayton: As usual, it’s guest choice for the topic. We wanted to talk a little bit about what it means to be a senior developer, and maybe even more specifically from a manager’s point of view. How do you define those things, and what’s the whole process?

David, this is something that you’ve been working with for a little bit now. Can you explain where you are, and what struggles you’ve had so far?

David: There’s three development managers in our organization, and we’ve been working on this for the last several months.

We recently transitioned from an organization that was definitely more hierarchically driven. We wanted to be able to move into more of a management stance where we’re actually empowering the teams, and letting the teams make decisions on their own. Which of course calls into question, what is our role as managers?

We look at it as if the teams’ products are the software that they’re actually building and delivering for the product owners, then our product is actually the teams themselves. What would be our responsibility in helping the teams to be better teams?

We decided that one of the things that we could do was try and set a vision for what we saw as being the kind of characteristics that a senior developer should have on a team. A “Senior” being defined as somebody that would help with the growth of the team, help with the creation of the team, and making sure that the team is running well, as a team. They would be a lead, in that respect.

Titles Are Stupid

Clayton: I think some people would say, “Titles are stupid,” and, “Why do you need a senior developer role?” What do you say to that?

David: I would probably agree with that, from the perspective of having an organization that is completely run by titles, where you’re just pigeonholing people into some position and role, based on what you’ve hired them for.

We definitely want to have teams where the teams can organize themselves, according to whatever the context is that they find themselves. What is the problem that they are trying to solve?

In order to distill that into what we’re looking for, the criteria we came up with were really more along the lines of the kinds of things that we would expect to see from an Agile team member.

Not so much somebody who’s just a senior developer, as defined by typical enterprise cultures these days, where it’s defined by the kinds of things that they do from a skill perspective, and the kinds of things that they do from the coding perspective. These are really more of the kinds of skills that we would see in an Agile team.

Loyalty And Length Of Service

Roy: What about loyalty? I feel like the title of “Senior” is oftentimes a reward for loyalty. Like, “I’ve been with this company five years. Shouldn’t I get some recognition for that?”

David: Yeah, that’s basically what we find ourselves with in the company structure, because the company definitely has that, from an HR perspective. They definitely have that, where the actual salary is banded to a specific kind of a title.

There’s a senior‑level band, and that has a salary range that’s associated with it. If you want to actually progress according to the company’s HR department, then you have to be able to fit within these bands. That’s kind of a constraint that we had as a management team.

We want to be able to have a fairly flat hierarchy, where we’re not really telling the teams what to do. We’re not really acting in the traditional role of a manager, the teams can decide for themselves. But we still have to be able to help them along with a career path within this organization that is still hierarchical.

Impact Of Not Having Hierarchy

Clayton: Jade, I was going to ask you. We’ve never really had a big hierarchical situation, or really big on titles at all. Do you think that ever had a negative impact with Integrum?

Jade: It’s something that we’d discussed a lot when we were first starting the company. We tried really hard to map people into all these different levels. It just got so confusing and so hard that we decided to throw it out the window and say, “Who needs this crap? We’re going to do this totally differently.”

As far as did it cause any problems with the organization? I think it caused problems with individuals who are looking for that recognition. Either they wanted it on their resume or for their ego, or whatever it is, they wanted to be called a “Senior Developer.”

As from the actual organization standpoint, I don’t think it caused us any problems. You guys were there. What do you think?

Roy: I remember interacting with a few people while I was still in the intern, and that I was at first somewhat treated a little bit as an intern, and then there was somebody else who considered themselves a “Junior Developer.” I don’t think anybody in the organization would have said, “Oh, this title is ‘Junior Developer.’”

I remember that being kind of interesting, because I remember acting not like an intern, and it very quickly stopped. I was no longer treated like an intern. I still had the lack of knowledge. I had the amount of knowledge as an intern, I just acted a little bit more confidently.

I think that was interesting to see, that he was still stuck in the “Junior Developer” role, and couldn’t get himself out of that, to step out. I don’t know, Jade. I think you know who I’m talking about. Did he actually have…

Jade: Is this the person that became our senior intern?

Roy: Yes, that’s right.

Jade: [laughs]

Falling Into The Prison Of Your Assigned Title

Roy: Was that a self‑assigned title?

Jade: Yeah, very much so. I think he mentally assumed the role of intern, instead of imagining himself as coequal with the rest of his team.

Roy: Because I see that as one of the big problems with titles, is you put yourself in the box. David, we’ve had this interaction with a few different people, where somebody says “This is my title. I shouldn’t be doing this other stuff. Even though I am passionate about it, and I think it should be done, that’s not me, that’s not my title. I shouldn’t be doing that.”

David: Yes, we were definitely running into that. We know that by actually going this route, which is a complete change from what existed before, that there’s going to definitely be a major friction created by this.

We expect that we’re going to have people that are going to just be completely uncomfortable by this, because when we actually show these criteria that we would expect from one of these developers, they’re not oriented along the ways that they’re used to. “I just want a check list.” It’s not going to be like that.

It’s really going to be “These are the kinds of things we’re looking for out of a senior‑level developer, and we expect you to figure out, and set your own goals, for how you’re actually going to achieve these things that you may be lacking.” That is definitely different.

We don’t really know what that means, in terms of how many people are going to be uncomfortable with that. But just like you said, Roy, we’ve had some people that have already butted up against that.

“We’re empowering you to make decisions, we’re empowering you to find solutions for yourself,” and there are people that are really uncomfortable with stepping out of their box, their prescribed box that they’ve been given. It’s definitely going to create some friction.

Having A Roadmap To Progression Helps With Self-Awareness

David: I’ve worked in jobs that have a traditional hierarchical organization, and one thing that was nice about having all those hierarchies was that you knew what was expected to go to the next thing.

Sometimes it was very cut and dried, and I think that’s one thing that’s difficult if you have a very flat structure. It’s hard to know what you need to do to improve. Most people I don’t think have the self‑awareness to realize where they’re deficient, or where they maybe could be more valuable, if they were to do certain things.

I think that’s something, at least the stuff that you’ve been talking about so far, that I’ve liked about the way you guys are trying to define what it means to be a senior developer. It’s that those things are very tangible things that I think you could grow towards.

If you looked at one of the requirements and said “I don’t really understand what it means to do X, Y, Z,” I think you and the rest of the management team could say, “Here are some more fine‑grained details about what it mea