I’ve seen people call themselves “senior” after 3 years on the job, other become CTOs in the same time, and others still have a senior title after 20(!) years in the industry yet have a fuckton of technical experience.
I’ve heard that they are all just titles and opinions from “if you don’t have the technical skill you can’t call yourself a senior”, to “senior and staff are just a feeling, principal is the actual senior” and “staff? above senior? we call that manager”.
What’s your story? Is there a ladder? Do you feel like you belong on it? Where are you on it? Does it make sense? Did you see major bumps in salary? Did titles count at all?
Some people like myself also just want to stay as a senior dev. Senior dev is a valid terminal position IMO. It pays a sht load already so it’s not like I need way more money. If you’re goal is to literally maximize money and nothing else then yeah the obvious route is to transition to EM. But I would be miserable if I don’t get to write code at my job so I’m sacrificing a bit of money for way more happiness and fulfillment on the job.