How can you become a senior in 3-3.5 years?

Question

Career in IT

These badges can mean different levels of experience in DIFFERENT COMPANIES.
Is it possible to become a senior for 3-4 years? Or do you have to work for 10 years to become a senior?
Or does it depend on the IT industry? Is it possible to become a senior in web dev for 3-4 years?

Answer 1

Senior in what area? Software/web development, software engineering, network engineering, something else?
Let's start with the fact that these are not "basics", but a set of real skills, which includes both what one learns formally (standards, techniques) and from real experience. It is almost impossible to fit both into a three-year career, unless you get into a company that is growing rapidly, and in which promotions are given "automatically". And then, for this it will be necessary to withstand a certain competition, for which it will be necessary to plow around the clock. Put yourself in the shoes of higher management and try to be honest about why you should be promoted and not someone else. That's about the honest way to really become a senior.
And it makes no sense to talk about dishonest ways, because, firstly, in the ass of such "seniors" who have only a position, not skills (I hope you don't want to be in a situation where your subordinates deservedly hate you for the sake of money) . Secondly, it is always individual: someone knows how to lie beautifully, someone can skillfully blame everyone, and present themselves as a hero, someone knows how to lick different places to the authorities (both figuratively and literally), some have influential relatives, and someone knows how to make the necessary friendship and get positions through this. But this filth is rare.

Answer 2

For starters, studying is not so much pure time as it is effort. It all depends on how much you invest in work and study.
Yes, for 3-3.5 years it is realistic.
But you need to understand that
1) It will be a lot of effort. Combining such zadrotstva with anything else is almost impossible.
2) It would be nice to understand with what baggage of knowledge you generally start. "Advanced user" can mean a completely different level of knowledge.
3) It would be nice to understand in general how far you have already learned to learn and organize yourself by this moment - you don’t become seniors out of a stick.
In total, this is the lot of less than 1% of those who tried.

Answer 3

In companies where the concept of "senior" means something.
If you start from the middle - it's quite real.
If you start with a junior, it’s real, but you have to work very hard.
If you start with a trainee, it's not realistic.
Starting from 0 is not realistic.
In companies where you are one developer - from 0 to senior in a year - it's easy. True, in the first type of companies you will be a junior, or a trainee.

Answer 4

In a modern front-end, you can do something like this:
1st year: you came to the company with good fundamental knowledge, you know the basic APIs of the tools you will work with. There is a beautiful ToDo List or WeatherApp on your favorite framework on github, and you can’t really find fault with its code. You were hired for your first job in a good company, selected from several candidates. You are junior. The company is developing serious projects (social networks, e-commerce, fintech, etc.). The team is very strong. Here they use linters, precommits, typing, strict workflow and code-review. In the first year, you have time to participate in a couple of projects. Gain experience, work hard on yourself, read articles, watch conferences. Ability to successfully find solutions to common problems. Choose the best ones and easily rewrite them for the current task if they do not quite fit.
2nd year: you are well aware of all the tools you work with, you know all the tools of a web developer, you know how to solve many typical tasks, you study the source codes of the libraries you use, you know how best to design this or that part in a particular case, and you can answer questions the question "why would it be better?", easily deploy a new project, which in the end you are trusted. You are a sure Middle .
3rd year: you understand that, first of all, you solve business problems, you know how to do it effectively, you understand that, in principle, there are no problems that cannot be solved. You have experience in supporting live projects (fixing bugs, expanding functionality, migrations, refactoring, onboarding for beginners). You are interviewing new team members. You start another project, perhaps already in another company, this time everything is much more serious and your role in the project is much more important, it all depends on your decisions. The project has been released. Support, new features, refactoring.
Year 4: Started another one. There are several projects in your portfolio, in some you simply participated and made one or another contribution, but at least one that reached the release can be called yours. You are Senior .
All IMHO, of course.