When You’re Suddenly That Developer

Software development can be an unnerving destabilizing experience at the best of times. The surprise all-hands meeting (you’re going to LOVE the re-org), a production outage or failed deployment can contribute to a disturbing career.

There’s a subtler, quieter brand of experience almost all software developers have been through. It’s the sound of Slack going oddly silent after your senior dev drops a resignation bomb and walks out the door.

Soon enough you realize that the inevitable has happened. You’re now the senior dev.

Don’t Panic

You check your job title. It still says “Engineer.”

You check your compensation. No change.

You check your inbox.

Twelve meeting invites and a pile of Jira tickets that say “Ask [insert your name here]”.

This is not a drill. This is how it happens.

You weren’t promoted. You were… undermoted? Pushed upwards?

No, that’s not it. You were tricked.

Welcome to Senior

Senior, that great role.

You need to step up and deliver, and that means that you:

• Have to “champion initiatives”

• You’re expected to know the architecture no one documented

• You’re the unofficial historian of decisions made during a panic in Q3 2021

• You’re expected to mentor people who are making the same mistakes as you are

People now ask you questions like you know the answer. That’s awkward because you simply don’t.

They tell you to document things that you have no idea about. You’re pretty good at engaging ChatGPT at this point, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problem that you don’t really know what you’re doing.

You’re The One Who Remained™, so congratulations. Leadership now thinks you’re the institutional memory.

Why It Happens

The company seemingly forgot that you joined six months ago, which explains why you need to justify CI/CD implementation decisions from 2018.

You aren’t the first one to have this happen to you, and it’s practically forward planning. It’s a consequence of what happens when companies run thin, depend too much on goodwill and could care less about employee retention. Management remembers someone is important when they resign, and rush to get them to document everything they know. They then build up the next person, and we all move on.

Someone will always be the last engineer standing.

This is why senior developers start to grow a rather large ego, and seek to destroy new people in interviews. It’s all we have at the end of the day.

The Cycle Restarts

When you’re a newly installed senior developer you might appreciate the attention, status and recognition. You might even get a pay bump to the very bottom of the next payscale ($10,000? It’s good for my career development too!).

Yet eventually you’ll look around the room and realise what is going on.

“I’m the one fixing everything. I’m mentoring everyone. I’m the adult in the room.”

Within 18 months you know that you can do the same job elsewhere for $40k more with better benefits, and or a company where you don’t need to deal with two-hour stand-ups. Then you’ll be gone too.

There’s never a succession plan. Knowledge transfer is something management says but in concrete terms means nothing at all. We should call the whole process vibe succession.

So What Do You Do?

It’s all a cycle. The first time you’re moved into a senior role you won’t know what you’re doing. You survive. You stumble. You learn. You carry the torch and swear you’ll do better.

That part about being good for your career, well ultimately it is because over time you can do more and better than you ever have before. Because seniority is something you need to grow into, and it can’t happen in a day exactly when your senior leaves.

Conclusion

Here comes the dirty little secret of tech promotions. They’re frequently accidental, and they usually happen when there simply isn’t another developer to take up the reins.

The good news? You’ll grow.

The bad news? You’ll grow through pain.

Oh, and don’t expect a raise until you quit (or threaten to).

Then suddenly you’re valuable. Unless they let you go, and you just need to document your work.

The Secret Developer job hops to get promotions. Their performance reviews more resemble “hanging on” than “taking the next step”.

About The Author

Professional Software Developer “The Secret Developer” can be found on Twitter @TheSDeveloper.

The Secret Developer never mistypes “github.com”. Except for that one time. Or the other three. But that’s it. Probably. I types gud.