For the longest time I wanted to be a 'Senior' because I saw the disproportionate amount of Senior jobs available and wanted to be "desirable" as a hire.

It took me over 10 years as a developer before I made senior and I still think it might have been too short a time. https://twitter.com/JanDavidHassel/status/1385519151431704577

I've spoken to a lot of devs who want to be senior, want to be seen as 'good', and will try and push through promotions to get that recognition, to get that validation FAR before they are ready for that title. Sometimes not having even shipped a title yet.

I've been involved in career development a lot these past few years, hearing a lot of devs that, when faced with critical feedback will hide, deflect, or make excuses for why they aren't as good as they need to be, using other, less qualified superiors as a benchmark they surpass

It's very hard to tell a mid-level dev they can't make senior just because they do a better job than the senior next to them. We don't have a culture of demoting bad people, we just reward good behaviour because that's all we have as an industry.

So craft managers create growth plans, try and get people feedback but at the end of the day its up to the dev to grow. Sometimes that takes a whole project, maybe two projects, before that person has mastered a role professionally. That could be 3 to 6 years. That's FINE!

But devs can just jump to another studio when offered a title bump. "They're offering me senior at ___". Do we promote above their ability to keep hold of good talent?
Sometimes yeah, and they, in turn, get pointed at by lower-level devs as a reason THEY should be promoted

We hope to mentor those seniors and leads who are operating beyond their capacity, give them the support and training they should have had before, but often that role comes with responsibility they cannot handle or have never been exposed to and no one has time to support them.

So you put a Senior job ad out, and everyone sees that "___ is looking for ANOTHER senior, wow, I need to be senior, then I can walk into any job" and so try to get promoted to senior before their time.

If I could give advice to anyone looking to move up in the game industry is to not be in such a hurry to increase your title that you skip over the lessons that bring it.

Knowing your value is important, but knowing your weaknesses is greater.

And I would say that looking at the numbers David shared, if there is something the industry needs as much as we need new talent and entry-level roles, its capable seniors to mentor them, and role models to build a team around.