It's generally awarded on your level of skill and responsibilities relative to your peers in the company, and not the industry per se.
I think some companies are starting to call all graduates at least 'senior'. Like how almost everyone at a bank is called a Vice President.
My first job before I even graduated was 'senior'. Of course I wasn't really senior in any regard.
Even though I proposed and started my own project inside the company, I would not call myself a senior engineer. Funnily enough, the value I added to the business may have been more than some of true seniors would have brought…
Your average data processing guy in a non-tech company was probably two corporate notches lower in 1990 as compared to 2020.
Ha, I recall a link to a blog post on the subject here on HN very recently. It certainly struck a cord with me.
> The problem here seems to be that you are in fact a Lead Engineer, not a Senior Engineer, which does have some pretty hefty expectations associated with it. You feel like the blind leading the blind.
This is totally correct. It's been more pronounced since we hired an engineer who had a short tenure at a FAANG. While I believe there is rough parity in how we model and build software, there's a huge gap in our understanding of devops and systems architecture. I am a painful bottle neck in that area and I am sure the engineer in question feels the same.
"Senior Developer" is a heavily diluted term at this point. You can generally only count on it meaning 3 years experience. It's effectively code for "did not wash out".
The problem here seems to be that you are in fact a Lead Engineer, not a Senior Engineer, which does have some pretty hefty expectations associated with it. You feel like the blind leading the blind.
If you want to go back to being 'just' a Senior engineer, then you need to do what the rest of us do when we are objectively or subjectively good at something that makes us uncomfortable or unhappy.
You lie by omission.
Downplay the leadership responsibilities of your position on your resume, so you look like someone who can be groomed into a lead role instead of expected to do it from Day 1. You'll get to backfill some of your experience along the way into that role, or they'll leave you alone.