Junior with 2.5 years of experience - is this normal?

Question

Career in IT

Hello!
I have been working as a programmer (web development) for about 2.5 years, but I still rate myself as a Junior. Now I will look for a job. Is it normal for the employer to react to the fact that for so many hours of work I still go in the junas? Or is it better to underestimate the work experience (up to 1 year, for example)?

Answer 1

Where do you even get these stripes from? You are not in the army and not in the civil service, where everything depends on the rank. You are in a market where only one thing is important - the professional performance of tasks that bring profit to the employer. You are either able to perform tasks and, in fact, perform them, receiving money for specific results, or you are not a market participant.
There are no criteria such as the number of years of "experience" sitting in a chair in an office. The employer is only interested in your specific skills, backed by a portfolio, and methods for solving the problems of his business. You can sit on a chair for 5 years in some office as a "web developer" and administer 1 corporate website on Bitrix, proudly calling yourself a php middle, or you can not have a work book at all and not a day of work for hire and for the same 5 years to raise several public services.
I'm afraid to imagine what you have been doing for 2.5 years, that you can so easily cross out 60% of your experience, just to fit into the frames invented by someone, so that they take you to work for the lowest possible ration. Perhaps you did something wrong, and even a year of experience to attribute to yourself is impudence.
And yet, about the army:
1. For self-hanging there on yourself with little stars / asterisks, you can grab it in the face;
2. In each unit you can meet the captain, who is valued and respected by all the personnel and officers, and the lieutenant colonel, to whom no one obeys and is considered a clown;
3. You can become a lieutenant colonel at the age of 30. And you can remain a senior lieutenant and an eternal platoon commander.
PS "The scale of a person (as well as the scale of her income :) is determined by the scale of her deeds." (with)

Answer 2

maybe you dunce
will correctly raise the level to the middle

Answer 3

In some companies, knowledge juniors occupy the position of middle. In others, on the contrary, middles are too modest and sit in juniors, afraid to take on extra. responsibility.
Perhaps you are too self-critical.
Personally, I am very skeptical of people who, after six months or a year of experience, call themselves middles. Or after 2 years by signs.
If your 2.5 years is 2.5 years of intensive development with normal requirements, then you can call yourself a middle.

Answer 4

IMHO
Jobs are looking for juns, and jun is a person with no work experience, like me: D
but they know what range of tasks to teach and try to do and apply them.
A person who has worked in his position for a year can hardly be called a junior, I would already consider myself a middle, mb weak, but I would consider myself.

Answer 5

I think there are few vacancies for junior/middle/senior web programmer (that would be strange).
There are vacancies for junior frontend, middle frontend, middle php, middle python...
I think while there is time it is worth deciding on the direction, first of all, go there by anyone, then pump in the skill in this direction.

Answer 6

This is fine.
If you worked alone, freelancing, stewing in your own juice, you would be a freelancer for 5 and 8 years. This is fine.
If you were lucky enough to get into a cool advanced technology company, where you are surrounded by experienced colleagues and you are trusted to participate (help them) in complex projects, then you would not stop being a junior even in 1 year.
There, I will willingly believe when applying for a job that you have only managed to achieve juna in 2.5 years.