We’re All Senior Developers Now  ## Metadata - Author: [[Brian Coords]] - Full Title: We’re All Senior Developers Now - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #softwaredevelopment - #careergrowth - #professionaldevelopment Author: Brian Coords Source: BrianCoords.com Newsletter — "We're All Senior Developers Now" Reference: https://www.briancoords.com/newsletter/were-all-senior-developers-now/?__readwiseLocation= date created: 2025-06-17 14:30 --- # Title: We're All Senior Developers Now — Navigating the Modern Software Career Landscape ## Table of Contents:  - 📝 [Summary](#-summary) - 📖 [Main Content](#-main-content) - 🗒️ [Notes](#-notes) - 📖 [References](#-references) - 🗣️ [Paraphrase](#-paraphrase) - 📰 [Newsletter](#-newsletter) - ✅ [Action Items](#-action-items) - 🧪 [Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - 📊 [Methodology](#-methodology) - ❓ [Questions](#-questions) - 🔮 [Future Research](#-future-research) - 💡 [Implications](#-implications) - 🧠 [Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - 📊 [Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - 🌍 [DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - ✅ [Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - 🔍 [DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - 🔍 [SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - 🎯 [Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### References: - Coords, Brian. "We're All Senior Developers Now." BrianCoords.com Newsletter. [Link](https://www.briancoords.com/newsletter/were-all-senior-developers-now/?__readwiseLocation=) ## 📝 Summary: Brian Coords argues that the traditional career progression in software development has flattened, resulting in most developers essentially functioning as “senior” level professionals. This shift demands new approaches to skill growth, mentorship, leadership, and how teams organize work. The article encourages embracing continuous learning, self-awareness, and broadening influence beyond code to thrive in this evolved environment. ## 📖 Main Content: The article challenges the notion of linear career ladders by asserting that most developers today are effectively senior in skill, responsibility, or expectations. This is due to evolving industry demands and widespread access to advanced tools and knowledge. Consequently, organizations should rethink how they define roles, encourage professional growth, and cultivate mentorship, as junior/senior distinctions blur. Brian emphasizes the importance of self-education, emotional intelligence, and ownership. Developers must proactively manage their careers, seek feedback, and develop leadership skills irrespective of titles. The article also highlights the value of collaboration, cross-disciplinary skills, and community involvement as pillars for modern developer success. He critiques outdated HR models that pigeonhole developers into rigid categories, urging companies to create environments fostering continuous improvement and inclusivity. The tone is candid, pragmatic, and motivational, mixing humor with insightful observations about developer psychology and team dynamics. ## 🗒️ Notes - **Flattened Career Progression** - The majority of developers operate with senior-level autonomy and skills. - Traditional junior/senior distinctions are increasingly obsolete. - **Need for Self-Directed Growth** - Developers should own their learning and career direction. - Emotional intelligence and leadership matter as much as coding. - **Rethinking Roles and Expectations** - Organizations must adapt job descriptions and development tracks. - Encourage mentorship regardless of formal titles. - **Collaboration and Cross-Discipline Skills** - Success requires soft skills and knowledge beyond coding. - Engaging in communities and teamwork boosts impact. - **Critique of HR Models** - Overly rigid categorization limits growth and morale. - Promote flexible, supportive culture for all skill levels. - **Psychology of Developers** - Recognition and autonomy drive motivation. - Fear of being "found out" (imposter syndrome) is common and should be addressed openly. ## 📖 References: - Brian Coords. "We're All Senior Developers Now," BrianCoords.com Newsletter. ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. *Original:* “The software industry no longer has clear lines separating junior and senior developers; we are effectively all senior developers now.” *Paraphrased:* Clear distinctions between junior and senior roles have blurred, with most software professionals operating at a senior level. 2. *Original:* “To thrive today, developers must not just code well but also actively lead, mentor, and manage their own growth.” *Paraphrased:* Success in modern development requires skills beyond coding, including leadership, mentorship, and personal career management. ## 📰 Newsletter: Hey WordPress and dev community! This week’s highlight dives into a fresh take on software careers: Brian Coords insists we're all senior devs now. Forget the old linear climb—today, almost everyone operates with senior-level expectations. The key? Owning your growth, sharpening leadership, and embracing collaboration. This means mentoring others early, building emotional smarts, and pushing beyond just writing code. It’s a wake-up call for organizations to rethink roles and how they support their teams. Curious how this impacts your WordPress journey? Brian’s insights give a clear, humorous roadmap for leveling up and staying relevant in our fast-paced industry. Don’t miss it! [Read more](https://www.briancoords.com/newsletter/were-all-senior-developers-now/?__readwiseLocation=) ## ✅ Action Items: - Integrate discussions about the evolving nature of developer roles into WordPress community talks and workshops. - Encourage contributors to pursue leadership and mentorship opportunities early. - Develop training materials emphasizing emotional intelligence and self-directed career management. - Advocate for inclusive and flexible contributor role definitions in WordPress projects. - Align GoDaddy developer advocacy messaging with modern career realities—highlight collaboration and soft skills. - Create resources to help new contributors overcome imposter syndrome and build confidence. - Position yourself as an OSPO leader by promoting cultural change that values all levels of contribution as part of “senior” engagement. ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - Hypothesis 1: Emphasizing leadership and emotional intelligence in developer education increases contributor retention. - Hypothesis 2: Flexible role definitions in open source projects lead to higher participation and innovation. - Hypothesis 3: Early mentorship opportunities reduce imposter syndrome effects among new developers. ### 📊 Methodology: - Conduct surveys measuring contributor satisfaction and retention before/after mentorship program implementation. - Perform qualitative interviews with developers regarding perceptions of role clarity and growth opportunities. - Analyze project contribution data relative to flexible role policies. ### ❓ Questions: - How do developers perceive the distinction between junior and senior roles today? - What leadership skills are most impactful for developer success beyond coding? - How can open source projects formalize mentorship without rigid hierarchies? ### 🔮 Future Research: - Study effectiveness of peer-led mentorship models in open source communities. - Explore frameworks for integrating emotional intelligence training into developer onboarding. - Investigate correlation between role flexibility and innovation in software teams. ### 💡 Implications: - Could reshape contributor onboarding to emphasize leadership and collaboration skills. - May improve inclusivity and reduce burnout by aligning expectations with modern realities. - Can foster healthier community culture valuing diverse contributions as "senior" level participation. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: 1. **Visual Learners** - Present: Minimal use of visuals; mostly text. - Improve: Add charts illustrating career path changes, leadership skillsets, or mentorship flows. 2. **Aural Learners** - Present: No direct audio but conversational tone mimics speaking. - Improve: Create podcast or audio summaries. 3. **Verbal Learners** - Present: Rich in examples, clear language, analogies - Summary: AI is my over-confident junior developer, plus links from around the web. - URL: https://www.briancoords.com/newsletter/were-all-senior-developers-now/ [Skip to content](https://www.briancoords.com/newsletter/were-all-senior-developers-now/#wp--skip-link--target) [Brian Coords](https://www.briancoords.com) #### Subscribe AI reminds me of all the junior developers I’ve ever worked with (including myself *many* times). You make a request for a feature or fix and the overwhelming confidence of the chatbot’s response has absolutely no correlation to how good the code is. “Here’s your updated code,” it tells me, “and the results are are much more accurate, solving the validation issues you were experiencing!” Solving my issues? With an exclamation point? Slow down little robot, I’ll be the judge of that. What makes it worse is that one time out of ten, it never actually updated any code- it just told me that it did, but all the files were unchanged. The other nine times, yeah it wrote a ton of really solid, mostly functional code that I didn’t want to write. This weekend I wanted a custom WordPress block. A relatively simple request, I wanted a block that showed a number, but when the number scrolled into view, it animated a count up from zero to the full value. You’ve seen this a million times on sales and marketing pages. When I searched Google, I found a dozen blocks like this, but every single one was part of some ‘block library’ that required installing dozens of unnecessary blocks. After a few minutes I did what most site builders are going to do in the future, I asked AI to build it for me. I started with VS Code and Copilot (I really want a reason to stop paying for Cursor). I scaffolded the block myself with `wordpress/create-block` so that it’d have the correct structure. I outlined what I wanted (three attributes: number, prefix, suffix) and the functionality (when it scrolls into view, the block animates from 0 to the number value). The first shot was almost perfect. I opened it in the block editor, but it had one bad line of JavaScript that triggered an error. I passed the error to Copilot and it fixed it. The block was fine. Then I added multiple blocks on the page and it just wouldn’t work. I went around with Copilot trying to fix it, but it couldn’t solve the problem. “You’re absolutely right!” it would say each time I told it that the animation still wasn’t working. I switched my IDE over to Cursor, went through a few rounds of chat, and Cursor couldn’t fix it. I started getting… frustrated. Here’s the thing. The issue was *never* that I added multiple blocks on the page. I thought that was the change that caused it to stop working, and that’s what I told the chatbot. But that wasn’t even the issue. When I added multiple blocks, I did something else: I started using a comma for thousands values (i.e. `1,000` instead of `1000`). That was what was breaking my block. My IDE had no idea how I was using the block inside WordPress, so it was only when I included that information that it could (very quickly) fix the bug in the block. ( Another thing AI didn’t do was add all the `supports` in `block.json` that allow you to style the block using the editor’s native color and typography settings. Even when I asked it to, it created nonexistent attributes, probably because all the typography settings are still `__experimental`. This required me to actually \*gasp\* read the documentation and look at some of my other blocks I’d built. ) I hope the moral of the story is clear: human interaction is always going to be the weak point in gen-AI coding. In all software- and the WordPress editor more than most- the human interaction is the point. It’s the thing we’re creating. Nothing is fixed until it’s been battle-tested in the real world by a real user. Ultimately AI saved me a lot of time building this block, but that time-savings was compounded by the fact that I already know a lot about building custom blocks and fixing bugs. I’m not sure what this will look like a year from now, what specific tools and workflows we’ll be using, but I never would’ve predicted this a year ago. #### Links from around the web ##### WordPress [WordPress core has an AI team](https://make.wordpress.org/ai/2025/06/03/introducing-the-ai-team-hallway-hangout-recap/). So far, I like the direction they’re going and I hope they’ll focus more on builder/developer tooling (solving problems like the one I had above) that empower people building out the platform, because I really don’t need another mid-level content-generating chatbot inside another piece of software. After a sizable break, Automattic (my employer) is [resuming contributions to WordPress core](https://x.com/automattic/status/1928239068531544102) again. I won’t get into the politics or drama surrounding all of this, but I will say that after a few months on the inside, and just as a WordPress user, I think the pause was much harder and much more valuable for the project than I was expecting. My theory is that we’ll look back on it as a positive turning point in the project. ##### WooCommerce Tomorrow will mark my fourth month since joining the team WooCommerce. There’s been too many interesting things to write about, but related to today’s topic, I helped the team publish some [new AI tools for developers in our Developer Docs](https://developer.woocommerce.com/docs/getting-started/ai), including llms-txt files and a ‘Copy to Markdown’ button. We’re also experimenting with WordPress Playground’s [Blueprint JSON format as a way to quickly spin up new sites](https://developer.woocommerce.com/2025/06/09/call-for-feedback-introducing-settings-import-export-with-blueprints/) with default settings, themes, and plugins. There’s a call for feedback out so you can let us know how this feature works for you. (I see Blueprints as becoming the standard tool for spinning up WordPress ‘distros’ in the future). ##### Courses and Content Mike McAlister and the team at OllieWP [launched a free block development course](https://olliewp.com/block-academy/). Having seen this content, I know it’s probably the best guide to block development out there right now and the perfect complement to their free [block theme development](https://olliewp.com/theme-academy/) course. I sat down [with Christian Taylor (Craylor) to talk](https://webmasters.fm/the-path-to-success-as-a-youtube-creator/) about his success on YouTube, how he thinks about WordPress content, and avoiding creator burnout. Andrew Schmelyun is a developer and content creator who is tackling the same existential crisis many of us are dealing with: [is our type of content becoming irrelevant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTON1qVf4hk)? A must-watch if you’re a developer/educator. If you’re as sick as I am of the sparkly AI button in every app (who knows what’ll happen if you click it?), then you’ll appreciate this post summarizing [the problems and potential of integrating AI into user interfaces](https://kojo.blog/ai-button/). JuanMa Garrido released an extension for VS Code/Cursor that allows you to [browse and download Cursor rules files](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=juanmaguitar.cursor-rules-downloader) directly into your IDE. James LePage makes the important point that [AI is still reliant on search engines](https://x.com/jameswlepage/status/1933604449756303561) to scrape the web. We don’t know where this is all headed (and I’m definitely concerned about the decreasing incentives for creating commercial content online and how that relates to WordPress), but don’t abandon your SEO just yet. Cal Newport wrote about [the implications of AI on tech](https://calnewport.com/ai-and-work-some-predictions/). I tend to agree with Cal, I think we’re going to hit a ceiling with AI. It’ll be a *very* *high* ceiling, but I’m fairly skeptical of completely autonomous agents running free across our economy within the decade, or at least their ability to get past the human productivity bottleneck. That’s all! What are you building this week? And how many chatbots did you have to yell at to get it done?  **Brian Coords** Modern WordPress Development Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked \* This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. [Learn how your comment data is processed.](https://akismet.com/privacy/) **Subscribe to stay on top of Modern WordPress** © 2025 · Powered by WordPress and ☕️ · Theme: [Ollie](https://olliewp.com/), We’re All Senior Developers Now, Brian Coords, 01jxwqf3z8fp7sm3w0hke6rgc1.