BearBear
BearBear

What is the difference between a Junior and a Senior Frontend developer?

What things and technologies one should know and different aspects of the frontend to become a senior developer. Let's go with the React ecosystem.

14mo ago
BroCodeComeOn
BroCodeComeOn

A 3+ exp full stack dev here.

I can center any div span img etc without any major effort. I can use set Timeout efficiently I can write media queries with closed eyes

Jokes aside over time you become better at it. It only takes time amd effort. Otherwise I've seen people with 8+ years exp under their belt as a frontend engineer struggling immensely

BearBear
BearBear

As a Jr dev, I'm trying to change my approach. I'm doing react for the 1st time. Earlier I was watching videos to learn everything. Now 1st I refer to documentation and if not able to understand then I watch a video and later come back to read the documentation again to understand what it says. I hope I can reach the SDE-2 level in a year or so

BroCodeComeOn
BroCodeComeOn

Tbh that's the best approach. Reading documentation. People skip documentation and try to find the solution first.

AITookMyJob
AITookMyJob

The scope and ambiguity of problems solved by senior FE folks is a decent bit higher. They have to help establish scope and aid in planning.

There are usually some distinguishing factors in the technical work done by a senior FE (more modular, awesome tests, refactored a complex piece along the way etc.). They also dabble more with FE architecture and system design aspects like - rendering patterns, state design and management, modularised component design with dependency injection, CDN abstractions, caching patterns, bundle-size optimisations, SEO optimisations etc.

They might also be expected to lead small teams (2-3 folks) and small-moderate projects (3-4 single dev months).

BearBear
BearBear

Bro how do I learn these things by myself, give me some kind of reference that using these resources and building these kinds of projects I can reach that level.

HumanBeing
HumanBeing
Saxo14mo

Nothing, senior might get a better package than junior. They do same thing in same technology

BearBear
BearBear

Bro par thoda toh complex kaam hota hoga compared to sde-1/2

HumanBeing
HumanBeing
Saxo14mo

Kuch ni Hota dost, bs tumhe bol Dia jaega now you are senior developer, you need to own stuff bla.bla . Kr tum wahi Rahe Hoge Jo phle kr Rahe the.

Jb tk lead profile ni aata tb tk sb same Kam krte h (Individual Contributer)

Kabhi aisa hua k tumne kisi Kaam ko mna Kia ho saying I am a developer and this work should be done by a senior developer?

0case
0case

Senior most dev in any-end is expected to bring design, scalability sense to the table.

Design and iterate the codebase in such a way productivity of junior devs (1-6 yrs) increases. This is around building design systems, toolings, ci/cd, e2e, principles, distributed debugging and tracing.

Obsess over metrics that move business needle like - response time (p50-p99), ttfb, splitting, performance, cache invalidation etc.

Constantly running multi variate experiments internally and externally and owning the outcomes.

Lastly Hiring 😁

BearBear
BearBear

Thank you so much, If I need to learn on my own. How do I go ahead and get a hold of these things at least basics on my own. I'm not aware so asking for sincere guidance sir 🙏🏻

0case
0case

Best way to learn these is taking up additional responsibilities in small increment with your employer.

Flow: ask for tiny extra responsibility, deliver outcome, you will see hike will follow and then rinse and repeat.

Shortcut (risky and unsafe) to this is - Leave job and become founder, you will be forced to learn all these everything on your own.

If you are assuming you will just read a book/blg/video and learn these then it's wrong. These are learnt by doing mistakes repeatedly over multiple years and learning from them and most importantly being responsible for the outcome (i.e taking responsibility if customers are not happy).

I haven't seen any <15yrs exp having these skills, who is not a founder.

K_os
K_os

Experience

BearBear
BearBear

Bhai thoda explain karoge experience in terms of what

AITookMyJob
AITookMyJob

L take. Experience is not even close to the most important difference between junior and senior FE

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