Argthtjtr

You are already a real developer. I'm guessing that your boss is belittling you in order to keep your morale down, so that you're less likely to look for another job or ask for a better salary. Five years of experience is more than enough to consider yourself a qualified developer.

Given that your current role is not going well, and you have an emotionally manipulative manager above you right now, I would definitely start looking for another job that gives you the respect that you've earned.

he told me there is no way I could get the same salary or position in another organization

The person is an idiot.

If he was unhappy with your work, he would fire you on the spot.

What the person was actually saying is:

I'm desperate to keep you since you get stuff done. And there's an incredible shortage of programmers. But I'm going to belittle you and try to trick you psychologically to keep you working here, and not have to increase your salary.

You already are a developer. There is a meme doing the rounds on LinkedIn at the moment which is worth quoting here:

Your value does not decrease by somebody else's failure to see your
worth

Developers are in huge demand. There have been recent articles stating that developers are more important to companies than gaining access to capital - and that value is rising all the time.

I suspect their ploy is to make you stay but if they're openly putting you down - why should you?

LOL

I remember when I was working for a major NY based newspaper and our entire team was slapped with that "Not a real developer" moniker. (We were separate from the main group and handled everything from development to desktop support, back in the 1990s and early 2000's)

The "Real developers", in the main IT group insisted they do the work.

Management decided to let each of the two groups do half the work (it was feasible) and let the end users, who would be using the solution, decide which way to go.

After calling our work "sh*t code" to our faces, and delivering their "masterpiece" to the end users, the end users chose our work over theirs and we quickly redid the job the "Real developers" made a mess of.

You're doing development, you are a real developer. You may need to branch out, and given the attitude at your company, I strongly suggest it.

Don't listen to anyone who says "SQL doesn't count". It sure does, many people can't even write basic SQL, and the reversed order of processing can screw up programmers badly. Being able to do both is a rare, and valued skillset.

Trust yourself a bit more. Don't listen to your detractors. IF you are lacking in an area, do freelance work to strengthen yourself, but don't let anyone discourage you.

Since you are a senior developer, I assume you have gone through several promotions to get there and weren't hired into the position as a fluke.

A senior developer should have a wealth of experience, and can perform most job tasks with little guidance. Your company should have a career matrix you can check to see what boxes you clearly checked off in order to get promoted to where you are.

You're a developer (that's what your job description says, doesn't it?). I think your mistake was telling your supervisor you were planning to look for another job. He might have made those comments out of bitterness. Just look for another job and let him know you're leaving after you have an offer somewhere else.

If you can write code that works, you are a developer.

Especially if you are in a senior role with five years of varied experience!
Your manager, working for the biz, needs good devs for the jobs. If you are classed as a senior developer, you are most definitely fulfilling that need (along with your colleagues).

If your boss is pushing you around, making you feel worthless, or even worse, making you believe you are not good enough, then leave him. Find a job with someone who cares about the employees. Prove to him that you can find a high-paying job, with a senior role.

Your manager is saying two things here:

• You are lucky to be where you are.


• You can't leave

Verrrrry manipulative.

You are in a senior role at a high-paying job. Clearly you are a great developer! This seems to me like you are losing interest, and he knows it.
Don't let someone else upset you. Do what you need to do, and remember:

He is only one person, with one opinion, with as much significance as you give him.

How to know if I am a 'real developer'

You've been working in software development for five years, I am sure that your company isn't employing you just to be nice to you and they are getting something out of the deal.

It's not your current managers place to tell you whether or not you are up to the task of working elsewhere. It will be down to the people who interview you for other positions who will decide if you are up to the task.

I would suggest you get your CV together and apply at some other companies and maybe you'll see your worth then.

I've never walked into any job and known all the the company jargon and everything in their tech stack, there has always been something to learn and I don't know anybody different.

Believe in yourself, and I hope you find something you like where you are appreciated.

Your manager is only providing opinion on what you are worth to him and his company, which may be biased by bullying you into staying. You have to take it on yourself to do your own research on what your salary would be based on open positions else where. I have a feeling you'd find lots of developer positions based on your level of experience.

How do I know if he is right?

By applying to another position and seeing if you can get the same salary. Just to give you a background my last job had a manager who talked like yours. The area is spotty with tech jobs and as such, he's correct to some degree that finding a similar job for the same pay for the same length of time would not be possible. A lot of folks who quit, left the area completely and met great success.

With that said, his approach to employee retention failed. He was wrong as there were plenty of jobs in the area that offered more salary and better retention rates than the company. He was fired some time later as a lot of folks left and the web product was failing. It's easy to get discouraged when someone tell you that you're worthless and it's "confirmed" with the first failure. Consider this: if he considers you worthless and unable to find a job, why is he paying you?

You just have to be smart and apply, look, and talk to folks. Look at others who left the company. Where are they going? Are they leaving the area? Or are they still in the area?

These are all some very good answers; I really enjoyed the boyfriend/girlfriend comment above. And others have addressed that you have been employed for 5 years, so that proves that there is a legitimate business need for you and your services. I would add the caveat that that it proves you a a "real" professional, but not necessarily a "real" developer.

What makes you a "real" developer?

Don't let anybody tell you that SQL doesn't count. There is no language that doesn't count. If you understand HTML, or XML, at a very high, broad, and detailed level, you are developer. If you understand EDI files, or even MIDI files, at a very high, broad, and detailed level, you are a developer.

I think that what separates the "real" developers from mere coders, IT support, and technical interns is: understanding of systems, understanding of software-development life cycle, untaught aptitude, natural or practiced... and successful, deployed projects. If you are competent to provision your operating systems, IDEs, servers, and testing environments, from off-the-shelf hardware, software packages and cloud services, you are a developer. If you understand in theory and practice how to track down bugs, how to do feature-branching and unit testing, you are a developer. If you have tried, sometimes unsuccessfully, to teach and train others on what comes second-nature to you, are you a developer. If your stuff works, you are a developer.

Don't let anybody tell you that being a "real" developer is somehow a function of pay or professional advancement. It is good to have pay and professional advancement, but there are college students and even high school students who are very talented in building their fun open-source and hobby projects: retrocomputing, gaming, linux-from-scratch, amateur radio, crypto mining, screensavers, customized firmware, making art on graphing calculators, and whatnot. Even if those kids don't have the pay and advancement appropriate for their skill level, because of lack of formal qualifications, lack of professional maturity and "soft skills", or a lack of business need for their specific specialties, I would never dare say to their faces that they are not "real" developers.

Because their stuff works.

You should read the Wikipedia page on Impostor Syndrome. I've also questioned whether I'm a "real developer", especially while working with people who are much more accomplished than me, or who seem to do what I can do, only much, much faster.

But I still believe I'm a real developer, and the reason for that is because I can write code that does what my users need it to do. That's the baseline: can you get your application to do what your users need it to do? If the answer is yes, then you are a real developer.

Sure, there will be bugs, and sometimes it's because you did something dumb, but that doesn't mean you're not a real developer. If a tennis player misses a return, does that make them not a real tennis player?

Then only way you can know for sure whether you can get another role with the same (or higher) pay, and the same position, is to put yourself out there and interview for it. The interviewers will have steps in place to filter out the people who don't meet their requirements.

Unfortunately, I agree with him. I only know the fundamentals of the languages I work with (C# & JavaScript), although I do consider myself an advanced SQL guy (but I'm regularly told that doesn't count).

So, how will I know when I know enough to call myself a developer?

With regards to your question, being a developer isn't just about having X amounts of knowledge. A more important skill is to know how to find the knowledge you need to get the job done.

Lastly, don't discount the non-coding skills you've picked up over the years: being able to debug code, analyse requirements / use cases, come up with solution designs, etc.

Ignore the commentary and drama at your current job. Go apply for jobs elsewhere. If you don’t get the job, you’re out nothing. If you do get an offer, you’ll know what your skills are worth on the open market and can decide where you want to work.

It never hurts to look around.

he told me there is no way I could get the same salary or position in another organization as I'm not a real developer yet.

And yet, here you are, getting paid by your current company.

There is no such thing as a "real developer". It's just how good you are at your job, and that is not a binary thing. It is a scale.

If as you say, you have identified holes in your knowledge, it's time to rectify them. However, you also need to realise that no developer worth their salt feels comfortable/knowledgeable every single day, as they are constantly stretching beyond their comfort zone and feeling like beginners everytime they learn something new. That is a good thing.

Lastly, being a developer is not just about programming knowledge. It's also learning to be a professional, and part of that is understanding what kinds of feedback to take in and what to ignore/push back. I'll leave you to decide which category this kind of feedback belongs in.