I used to speak regularly at many of the Chicago-area coding bootcamps and one of the common questions that students posed to me was, “How can I become a ‘senior software engineer’?” I’ve seen versions of this question countless times on forums and Reddit threads as well, and I suspect it’s because many readers think their careers will just get easier if they have had “senior engineer” in their title. On the other hand, companies give out this title somewhat arbitrarily. A few years ago, I caugh...