“Senior” really means only one thing: ability to help and grow the people around you.
Not code output, not even successful projects. For managers it’s not how well your team is doing. A great engineer is not necessarily senior.
It’s all about the specific efforts that you made to help others along the way.
For example:
- Write good documentation Take on one dedicated mentorship opportunity Speak in
- public and give back to your tech community (internal or external) Interact
- well in Github (issues, PRs, etc.) Engage well in chat (e.g. slack help
- channels)
Does it seem like you’re working with a bunch of idiots? Like nobody can keep up and you’re having to constantly repeat yourself? Then you need to shift from building to helping.
If you jump on the next greatest thing because you’re bored and leave a wake of people scratching their heads, you’re not senior, you’re an asshat, even if you get promoted for it.