Take a look at this email and think about what it would mean about your career.

What about this email is different than most of the job postings out there that you routinely see?

Obviously, I put a big fat outline under one of those aspects; that they don’t care if I even know the language. The thing that most starting or junior developers are most worried about–“I need to know XYZ”–a hiring business in my area doesn’t even care about. The big list of qualifications you must have for this job are no where to be seen in this job posting. They’re not asking for 5 years experience in X or 3 years experience in Y.

Why is that?

The answer is the difference between a Senior Developer and a Junior Developer. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. How to quantify this difference and how to explain this difference to those who have only seen one side of it. How to show someone what they need to know to go from a Junior Developer to a Senior Developer. And if you think it’s just work experience that makes this difference, you’re absolutely wrong. Going from Junior to Senior has much more to do with how you approach the job than with what you do on it.

But what are some things you notice in the email above versus the job postings you get as a new or Junior Developer? What do you think those differences mean?