I graduated with a PhD 10 years ago from the same university (Nottingham) as he did, in mechanical engineering, and have been working in academia ever since, working my way up to senior lecturer (UK equivalent to associate professor), and I'm still earning much less than him. I do a lot of coding in research projects in my job and have some experience in web development from side-projects, as well as contributions to open-source libraries (mainly statistics and simulation based in Python) etc. Been thinking of making the career switch into a software development role for a while but wondered if it's too late. This makes me think it may still be worthwhile, even if getting that first role might prove difficult given my academic background and I'd have to start at the bottom again.

If you go the data science / machine learning route, your academic knowledge (applied maths, formulating and running experiments, etc.) will be a lot more valuable than if you go for standard software developer roles. Also, no reason you'd start at the bottom.

You won’t have to start at the bottom again, given your experience. Sounds like you could get a decent job in data science, and I guess you know of engineering businesses where you could apply your knowledge.

> I'd have to start at the bottom again

If you have 10 years of weak coding experience and have managed to finish a PhD, you'd probably start at least at a mid level, not junior, and quickly get up from that.

Not really, because we've invented staff, principle, lead, and architect roles that are all above senior.

Architect is becoming more adjacent akin to the manager path at some places. Lead is also more adjacent, given a junior can be a lead by proxy of leading others.

Haven't heard much of 'staff' and principle seems reserved for Fortune N types.

I was made "senior" developer six months after graduation. Mind you, that was back in the 2000 dotcom era.

I'm reminded of Lincoln's "I can make a new general in three minutes": if you need to staff a hierarchy, and you have a bunch of young men to do it with (+), you take the ones that look like they have initiative and stick titles on them and let the results shake out.

I was also trying to remember which famous classical composer died young, and the answer turns out to be "most of them": https://www.classical-music.com/composers/composers-who-died...

(+) the industry has always been pretty terrible at hiring and promoting women, and the way we handle recognition is part of that

I want to join a team and become señor developer. Everytime somebody mentions me in conversation, a flamenco guitar does a quick crescendo in E major.

>the industry has always been pretty terrible at hiring and promoting women, and the way we handle recognition is part of that

By highschool, you have as large of a gap in boys and girls enrolling in computer science AP classes and extracurriculars as it's going to get by adulthood. Additionally, in wealthier countries, with more gender equality, less women choose computer science degrees.

So no, it's not the fault of the industry. Man and women just have different interests for complicated reasons. You can verify it with your own two eyes - in any big corporation, (and in many smaller companies), there is a big drive to hire women, there are events exclusively for women, career groups, opportunities exclusively for women.

> (+) the industry has always been pretty terrible at hiring and promoting women, and the way we handle recognition is part of that

I wonder if, in a parallel universe, HR departments of schools are beating themselves up for not hiring enough men, college admissions departments are asking themselves if they're failing the boys of the current generation, or hospitals thinking if they should have a more inclusive culture in nursing.

Somehow I doubt it.

Hospitals and Nursing programs do indeed beat themselves up over how to get more men into nursing, can't say anything about other fields though.

Not necessarily master, but you may well be better at it than the majority of your colleagues by that stage and should probably be compensated/treated accordingly.

The majority of software engineers don't dedicate themselves solely to practice and improvement of their skills so can't compete with somebody that does

No, not at all. "Senior" does not mean "master of your craft". What do you think "Senior" means here?

I usually tell people it means I forget things sometimes.

It's just how the industry works. And by 50, you're an old donkey ready for recycling. /s

A senior donkey please.

It's as funny as CTOs I know are just below average developers. Senior for me is scoped by company, since it will only cover range of knowledge the business requires. Some seniors are just the ones who stay long enough in a company. I only respect developers from what they created or does. Cool title is often false alarm.

I'd find it strange that you can only become senior after X amount of years. Some people are just more skilled than others. One person can do a job for 20 years and still only be medicore, whereas others could do a job for 1 year and be a master at it.

I would assume the title is based on merit and ability, not X number of years regardless of how good or not they are.

"Senior" doesn't mean "master". It just means you're capable of leading projects on your own of reasonable size. The terms we use for people who have truly mastered their field are things like "technical fellow" or "distinguished engineer". (And, FWIW, people can reach "senior" far earlier than 6 years of work experience.)

> It just means you're capable of leading projects on your own of reasonable size.

That's a "team lead" which is a particular skill of its own - I'm definitely a senior (age, experience, skills, breadth of knowledge, etc.) but absolutely not a "team lead" (or any kind of management) because that is a skill that eludes my brain.

A team lead is not a project manager which is not a technical lead. These are mostly disjoint sets of skills, which may or may not have disjoint roles in a particular org.

Well Silicon Valley on Twitter expect you to be CTO at at 3x and retire by 40. And this has been going on for quite sometime.

I mean they aren't wrong, after all a Fresh Grad gets $200K Total Comp from FANNG. That is nearly double ( adjusting for exchange rate ) the "Senior" software engineering roles in the blog post.

In high school and college, you become a senior after just 3 years of experience.

Outside of domain specific knowledge some people have Senior traits right away; ownership, tenacity, attention to detail, empathy to risk. They will ask for help more readily but also become blocked less than other "seniors" with years of experience(by both asking for help and trying to help themselves more).

Others will have a few years of experience and a "senior" title but may never obtain those traits.

The problem is those areas are often conflated under a single "senior" title at companies. But you definitely know who's going and who's staying when the layoffs come.