What Actually Makes You Senior
26th December 2025
Just a few questions, as an example, that senior+ engineers ask:
- What problem are we actually trying to solve? (Not what solution do we want, but what’s the underlying problem?)
- Who’s the user here and what’s painful for them? (They try to be specific. “Users” isn’t an answer.)
- What are we assuming that might be wrong? (Every plan has hidden assumptions.)
- What happens if we’re wrong and ship this anyway? (How bad is the downside?)