🔧 How to Spot a Fake Senior Developer in 5 Minutes

🕛 Zeit seit Veröffentlichung: 49 Tage, 13 Stunden 0 Minuten
📆 Veröffentlicht am: 04.03.2025 um 21:05 Uhr
Nachrichtenbereich: 🔧 Programmierung
🔗 Quelle: dev.to

We’ve all worked with them. The so-called “senior developer” who somehow made it through the hiring process, talks a big game in meetings, and then… does absolutely nothing useful. They avoid real coding like it’s a biohazard, yet somehow they’re the first to offer “architectural guidance” (which translates to vague suggestions with zero implementation).

But fear not. I’m here to give you a five-minute crash course on spotting a fake senior dev before they waste your time, derail your project, or—God forbid—get promoted.

1. They Talk More Than They Code

A real senior developer solves problems—they don’t just discuss them to death. But a fake senior? They love meetings. They thrive in “alignment sessions.” They need “just one more brainstorming session” before they can commit to anything.

🚩 Red Flag: Ask them about a technical issue, and they’ll respond with some vague nonsense about “scalability concerns” and “observability.” If you press for specifics, they pivot to “We should take this offline.”

✅ Real Senior Move: Cuts the fluff and gives you a clear, actionable answer—or, better yet, fixes the issue themselves.

1. Their GitHub Contributions Are a Ghost Town

Check their commits. Oh wait—you can’t, because they haven’t made any. Their GitHub is emptier than a Black Friday sale at Circuit City. Meanwhile, they’re always “too busy” to code but somehow have time to review pull requests with pointless comments like, “Have you considered renaming this variable?”

🚩 Red Flag: Their biggest contributions are documentation edits and Jira comments.

✅ Real Senior Move: Writes actual, valuable code while still guiding the team.

1. They Love Theoretical Architecture Diagrams

A fake senior developer’s favorite tool isn’t VS Code or IntelliJ—it’s Miro. They could spend weeks designing a perfect microservices diagram but would break into a cold sweat if asked to implement even one API.

🚩 Red Flag: Their diagrams look great, but none of it actually works in production.

✅ Real Senior Move: Can take an idea from architecture to implementation without needing three weeks of PowerPoint slides.

1. They Have a PhD in Buzzwords

Fake seniors don’t solve problems—they just regurgitate the latest trends from Hacker News. Ask them how to improve performance, and they’ll hit you with “Well, we could implement an event-driven, CQRS-based, serverless solution using Rust and WASM with a side of machine learning.”

🚩 Red Flag: Uses AI-generated jargon to confuse people into thinking they’re smart.

✅ Real Senior Move: Knows when to use simple, proven solutions instead of chasing every shiny new framework.

1. They Avoid Accountability Like It’s a Merge Conflict

Ever notice how fake senior devs are always “helping with multiple teams” but never seem to be directly responsible for anything? That’s not an accident. Their entire career is built on avoiding deliverables while taking credit for the work of others.

🚩 Red Flag: When a project fails, they suddenly had nothing to do with it.

✅ Real Senior Move: Owns their work, the successes and the failures.

The Final Test: Ask Them to Code

If you’re still unsure whether someone is a real senior developer or just a highly paid meeting enthusiast, there’s one surefire test:

🛑 Ask them to sit down and write some code.

Watch what happens. Do they suddenly get “super busy”? Do they start sweating and mumbling about “higher-level concerns”? If so, congratulations—you’ve found yourself a certified Fake Senior Developer™.

Your Turn

What’s the biggest red flag you’ve seen in a so-called senior developer? Drop your stories in the comments—I’m ready for some horror stories. 🚀

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